Arts: Mad Men, Season 5

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Tv Club Mad Men, Season 5 "There's no number!?" By Patrick Radden Keefe Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2012, at 02:10 PM ET Hey John and Julia, "What price we could pay," Don murmurs during the Jaguar pitch, "what behavior we could forgive." Mad Men has always been about the things that people want—the nagging slippage between our lives as we actually live them and the siren of aspirational fantasy. But Sunday's episode stripped this theme to its discomfiting essence, by suggesting, with  harrowing cynicism, that sometimes we want a thing so badly that no price—our decency, our dignity—seems too high to pay. The episode turned on the parallel dilemmas of Joan and Peggy, the Jaguar and the Buick, and specifically, on how these women appraise their worth in the workplace—and how their male colleagues do. As you two (and Freddy Rumsen) point out, the firm has been marginalizing Peggy all season; Don's insulting display with the money was merely the coup de grace. But consider that gesture for a second. I've never actually seen anyone do it in real life, not in earnest, anyway, but it's a trope in our popular culture. To throw money at someone in the manner that Don does is to assert your power over them, and your extreme contempt. It echoes the strip club patron's acknowledgment of a stripper, and perhaps also the john's hasty, post-assignation payment of a whore. You can be bought, the gesture says, for a sum that I may carelessly toss aside. That's the same message that Joan receives, in rather more ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The War of 1812: America's Saddest, Silliest Least-Remembered Conflict How Many People Have Enough Native American Blood To Be Officially Native American? Viggle, the New Company That Will Pay You To Watch TV	Advertisement
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