SPOILERS BELOW FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAS AIRED TO DATE
I had the sudden realization this week that there’s something downright Shakespearean about Mad Men, possibly even mythological. You’ve got Don Draper, an advertising genius with a secret past that keeps threatening to catch up with him and a fatal flaw (women) that seems certain to eventually bring him down. It’s easy to imagine Don as a king rather than an ad man, lording it over his subjects, inspiring their admiration and fear and jealousy.
But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Don isn’t the protagonist of Mad Men. Or, if you prefer, he’s not the hero. Don’t get me wrong, he’s clearly the central character insofar as the show revolves around him and his life. But I think rather than being the hero, Don is actually the villain of the piece. He’s a seductive villain to be sure, but one wonders whether there’s any hope of redemption for someone like him. Don Draper is not necessarily a bad guy, but he’s not much of a good guy either. In short, Don Draper has sold his soul, and there’s no getting it back. He’s lost. He’s not the hero.
Peggy Olson is the hero.
“Love Among the Ruins” begins with the opening number for Bye Bye Birdie. Pepsi wants to mimic the scene in a TV spot for their new answer to Diet Rite, the awfully named Patio Cola. While the males on the account team sit delighted as they watch Ann-Margret tumble toward the camera while screeching the title song, Peggy wonders how on earth paying homage to a “twenty-five-year-old who can act like she’s fourteen” will help to sell cola to women. Peggy’s angle all along has been that she represents the target audience for most advertisements. And as usual, the men in the office are quick to dismiss her perspective. What’s not to like about Ann-Margret?
When Peggy brings the issue to Don, he agrees that the name is terrible (“It’s not a drink; it’s a floor.”), but he doesn’t share her concern that, since the target audience for the product is women, the fantasy the ad sells should be a female one. “Men want her. Women want to be her,” he says of Ann-Margret. “I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.” But Peggy has already tried on the role, signing a few bars of “Bye Bye Birdie” to herself in the mirror. She’s not buying it, but maybe she doesn’t understand women as well as she thinks she does. Maybe she’s just odd.
Peggy loses the battle with Don — “You’re not an artist,” he scolds her. “You solve problems.” — but she remains the only copywriter who’s really willing to challenge him. It’s not clear if he respects her more because of that, but let’s not forget that he was one who promoted her. Peggy, who was a fish out of water as a secretary, is firmly in her element writing copy. And the more time she spends doing that for Sterling-Cooper, the more like Don Draper she becomes.
Case in point: That night, Peggy goes out cruising for a guy, and ends up back in his apartment where she enjoys the pleasures of his pull-out sofa. She’s not willing to have sex without a condom — once bitten, twice shy — but assures the young engineering student that there are other things they can do. Peggy has never been portrayed as experienced, so I’m not sure how many tricks she has up her sleeve. Then again, she did write copy for a sex toy, so … Anyway, Peggy leaves the young man lying in his pathetic studio apartment, after some initial difficulty unlocking the door. It is not so easy to extricate oneself from these meaningless affairs.
Still, at least from the perspective of popular culture, Peggy’s one-night-stand is something guys do. Is she asserting her independent, liberated self as a response to being told she doesn’t understand what women want? Is she spending so much time around the guys that she is becoming one of the guys? Or is it actually unrelated to her job, merely a reflection of the fact that she is a lonely young woman with needs and desires? Well, this is a TV show, so it’s not the last one. Regardless, the next morning she follows Don into his office so they can talk about diapers.
The “ruins” of the title is cited by Paul, who makes the case that the greatest examples of Roman architecture are in places other than Rome. This is because the citizens of Rome derided anything old, preferring to tear all that stuff down and build new structures instead. Paul conjures this analogy as a means of goading the developer of Madison Square Garden, a hugely unpopular project because it will mean tearing down Penn Station. But the metaphor could easily be applied to other characters on the show, specifically Don and Roger.
Roger, of course, has left his wife Mona in favor of the much younger Jane, and now has to face a daughter who doesn’t want her new stepmother anywhere near her own wedding, even if it means Roger stays away too. And Don — who refers to an impending visit by Betty’s father and brother as “more antiques” — is about as faithful as a flight out of O’Hare. Don’s tendency to stray has little to do with age. Betty is, after all, still pretty young, and Don has cheated with women older than she (and he). What Don can’t suffer is familiarity, so he continues to wreck his marriage maybe if only to add a new wrinkle to it.
If those ideas had been the main thrust of the episode, I’d be able to recommend “Love Among the Ruins” more highly. Instead, far too much of the episode revolves around whether or not to put Betty’s sick father, Gene, into a nursing home. While it’s a heart-wrenching decision in real life, on television we’ve seen it all before. We know Gene is going to resist having decisions made for him. We know that Don and Betty are going to wake up in the middle of the night to find Gene doing something demented. And Don’s confrontation with Betty’s brother felt especially false. Don is an expert at convincing people they want what he has to offer, but there wasn’t one moment of that scene that seemed real.
It’s a shame, especially a week after I praised the consistent excellence of this series, to be presented with a plot so trite. Hopefully this was just a matter of moving pieces into place, and more interesting and incisive journeys into the relationship between Betty and Gene will follow. But it’s not just that. Last week’s episode was full of energy. Except for the subplot with Peggy, this one feels like going through the motions.
What do you make of Don fondling the grass while the children danced around the maypole?
Rating: 
Maybe that’s too harsh. There’s some thematic richness here, but it’s almost done in by the stuff with Gene and a general lifelessness throughout the episode.
So Peggy is Luke Skywalker and Don is Darth Vader. That’s my theory. When the series ends, will Peggy have become Don or will she destroy him? Don articulates a fine point of his own philosophy and behavior when trying to smooth things over with the Madison Square Garden developer: He should stop worrying about public opinion. It shows a guilty conscience. We’ll have some clues about Peggy’s progression toward the former if we see her take this advice.
