The Women, from Puberty to Grave.

Season 4, episode 9, The Beautiful Girls. 

Oh My God.

Matthew Weiner is a) in touch with his feminine side, b) had an incredible mother, c) has a phenomenal wife, or d) really appreciates women. Of course, his co-writer Dahvi Waller probably had something to do with this episode being a masterpiece.  I propose that the superior quality of Mad Men, the series in general and this episode in particular, has a lot to do with the fact that, unlike so may other television shows, seven of its nine writers are women.  I read that in this article from the Wall Street Journal so it has to be true:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574332284143366134.html
 


Did anyone catch the brilliant transition to the opening shot of the show? The familiar  opening title and credit sequence; the silhouette of what appears to be the back of Don Draper standing at the entrance of his office, the black shoes and briefcase, the office again as it falls to pieces, then shadow Don free-falls down the side of the sky-scraper, past the image of an Olympus-sized blond in a red spaghetti-strap dress, her shoulders bare, her lips and nails as red as her dress, then his falling body floats down the path of a pair of shapely thighs as another giant smiling blond looks on in the background, and suddenly shadow Don is in control, sitting in profile at his desk looking all he-man and confident. We've seen this sequence countless times, but after this episode it has a whole new meaning. All those female lips and shoulders, the thighs, and the foot that flirts with the free-falling man in Don Draper's suit, these are powerful symbols. Sex sells products, that's no mystery. But women are now making themselves matter, claiming their place in Don's life as well as in society.

Notice the opening shot of the real, live-action Don sitting in his chair in the exact same position as his two-dimensional doppelganger?  He's on the phone, telling whoever is on the other end that he wants what he wants when he wants it.

Next thing you know a woman is groaning in ecstasy off camera, and we hear a crash. The crash was Don, who knocked over a lamp. The groaning was Dr. Faye in the expert hands of Don, enjoying that orgasm our mothers could never dare talk about with us in the same house, even though they all had Masters and Johnson's book on their nightstand, or somewhere in the bedroom. Faye is a liberated woman; she has a PhD and orgasms, God bless her. No children though, but that was her choice. She couldn't possibly have it all.

Anyway, she comes, Don goes, and leaves her in his drab Waverly Place apartment with his only set of keys.

Peggy, that budding vixen, finds Mr. Right again, at PJ Clarkes of all places. But this beau has a social conscience. Civil rights and the plight of the "negro" matter to him, and he thinks Peggy is a kindred spirit. Is she or isn't she? Her firm represents known bigots, macho Bostonians who deal auto parts but refuse to employ blacks and are thus enduring an annoying civil rights boycott. Peggy was unaware of these issues because she doesn't read the Voice. But she does care, she just cares more about her career. If she could force her way in to an all boys network then surely the negroes can do the same thing, she argues. New suitor laughs that one off; sure, he says, let's have a civil rights movement for women. Hello Betty Friedan? The Feminist Mystique had been published two years earlier, in 1963, and ignited the Women's Movement, but apparently Peggy's intellectual hottie doesn't read girl stuff.

Sally Draper runs away from home, asserting herself to her father, being alternately stoic, silent, contrite, adorable, helpful (mmm, french toast with rum), charming, and heartwrenchingly honest. She hates her mother (so do I), loves her father (so do I, but for totally different reasons), and insists that he love her back. You go Sally! Even though I fear your chutzpah will ultimately get you to the exact same place as your mother – chain smoking in the suburbs. But for a few wonderful hours Sally forced her father to be, well, a father. She's as tough as her mother but not yet as cold and heartless.  The way she hugged the too-beautiful-for-words secretary broke my heart. How about that, a beautiful woman (in a menial position) who genuinely loves children?


How about Miss Blankenship? She was one of the most amusing characters ever on a drama series. Oh but I am going to miss her. Why did they have to kill her off so early in the season?  It is still early in the season, isn't it?  She was Burt Cooper's Joan back in the day. Her wit must have been sexy back then, until it morphed into lonely-old-lady cynicism. At least we know she got laid a lot in her youth. "She died like she lived, surrounded by the people she answered phones for," Roger tells Joan. Ouch. "She was born in a barn in 1898 and died in a skyscraper," Burt Cooper's says later. "She was an astronaut." Then he has the old gal's corpse respectfully carted off the swanky Frank Campbell Funeral Home on the Upper East Side (the same facility that will later prepare and display the body of Jacqui O). Burt's impromptu epitaph is, to borrow a classic ad tagline, priceless.

So, have we covered all the meaningful stages of a woman's life, the Gail Sheehey Passages? Little girl wants daddy. Young professional woman fighting her way in and up the corporate jungle jim wants love, enlightenment,  and excitement, but is made aware of her unwitting support for unjust social corporate practices.  Joan, married to a handsome jerk of a doctor who raped her on the floor of her office before they got married then joined the Army without consulting her and is finally shipped off to Vietnam (good riddance, I say, I don't care how cute you were when you sewed up her kitchen knife wound), is alone, and cranky.  Like Dr. Faye, Joan needs to get laid. Betty, divorced and rashly remarried, is a bitter bitch. "It's not going to be okay," Sally says when a woman who could be her mother but isn't gives her the physical affection she so desperately needs. Sally is right; when it comes to her cold hard mother, it is not going to be okay.

The final shot of The Women arranging themselves in the elevator like dots on a di, equidistant and completely independent of one another, was downright theatrical. That image will remain etched in my imagination for a long, long time.

I predict that in the near future Women's Studies and History departments in colleges all over the country will be teaching Mad Men, just as Harvard is now teaching The Wire.