‘Mad Men’: The jet set

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I once took a novel-writing class taught by author Elizabeth McCracken. When we were discussing a classmate’s in-process novel, in which the main character seemed a bit empty, McCracken said, “If you have a hollow character, you must keep him busy.” She went on to cite Philip Marlowe –- the detective in Raymond Chandler’s novels –- as an excellent example of how this could be done well. Marlowe does have a back story, but we only get suggestions of it, never a complete narrative. I sort of dispute the idea that he is hollow –- rather, he is fully formed and placed into action –- but the idea of keeping such a character busy seems to have been a wise choice, and, in this episode of “Mad Men,” it’s what the writers are doing to our hero, good old hollow Don Draper.

In a nutshell, they put Don Draper on a plane and dropped him into a David Lynch movie. Don and Pete Campbell go to Los Angeles to attend an aerospace conference and drum up business. We first see Don looking quite a bit like Philip Marlowe in a suit and fedora, looking out over the pool at an L.A. hotel. Don’s luggage, you see, has been lost. While Pete has dreams of lounging by the pool, Don at first goes completely by the book: They’re here to do business, and there will be no vacationing. Inside the bar at the hotel, however, Don encounters an odd trio: an older foreign man who says he’s a viscount, a glamorous foreign woman draped on his arm and a pretty younger woman who, the older man tells Don, is interested in him. When asked to join them, Don demurs, but he notices them again later at dinner.

Pete and Don attend presentations at the conference the next day, including one by a company that will produce MIRVs –- missiles that allow multiple warheads to hit various cities in the USSR. Don stares at the illustration on the slide, which suggests total annihilation of anything in the MIRVs’ path. Oh, he stares intently. But what is he thinking?

Afterward, back at the hotel, he and Pete prepare to meet a potential client for lunch. Pete goes off to meet the clients, and the attractive young woman from the odd trio –- her name is Joy –- saunters up to him. Don smiles at her as if he knows her. She kisses him on both cheeks, as if she knows him. She says she’s going to Palm Springs and that he should go with her. Why, she wonders, is he denying himself something he wants? He stares at her while she climbs into her convertible and ties a scarf over her hair –- and then he climbs in, ditching Pete. No, I’m not leaving anything out.

And he doesn’t just ditch Pete for the lunch meeting. No, he stays in Palm Springs with Joy and her weird, motley bunch of aristocratic, vaguely European layabouts. They’re staying in a midcentury modern house that could cause paroxysms of joy among the entire subscriber base of Dwell. When Don and Joy arrive at the house and greet the other guests (including Willy, the viscount, and Rocky, his arm candy), Don takes a sip of a drink and passes out. When he wakes up, he finds that one of the pool loungers, Carlos, is going to give him an injection of something or other. Don demurs, saying water and aspirin are all he needs. He asks Joy who all these people are. She replies, “Friends.” No one has a job, it appears –- they all just lounge in vacation destinations, eating, drinking, playing games, having sex. And then they move on to the next place.

Amid fine midcentury décor, Joy seduces Don. It is no more difficult than usual. He asks how old she is; she’s 21. She asks how old he is; he’s 36. Hey, me too! It turns out that Joy is the daughter of Willy, the viscount, who professes to liking Don’s appearance. It’s all rather creepy. (Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Pete conducts various client meetings and flirts by the pool.) Don learns that Joy spent a little time at Pembroke when they were based at Willy’s place in Newport –- she’s reading “The Sound and the Fury” when he wakes up after their interlude. Later, while he and Joy are in the pool, a mysterious man named Christian shows up with his two kids, asking after his wife, whom he is apparently divorcing. Don gives up his and Joy’s room to this little family, and Don stares meaningfully at a crack in his bar glass. Joy wants Don to go with them to the Caribbean, but he doesn’t jump on this invitation. We last see Don in this episode, calling up someone and saying, “It’s Dick Whitman.” He makes arrangements to see someone (I think), writes it on a page of “The Sound and the Fury” and tears it out. Despite my HDTV, I couldn’t read what his writing said. Pete returns to the office and lightly asks whether anyone has heard from Don. Meanwhile, what appears to be a Maytag repairman returns Don’s lost luggage to the doorstep of the house in Westchester. See what I mean about the David Lynch movie?

Divorce is a motif of this episode. Early on, we see Roger Sterling and Jane Siegel, holed up in a hotel, where Jane nakedly reads Roger some poetry, and Roger is so smitten that he asks her to marry him. Roger then consults with his lawyer, telling him that his life with Jane is the one he was meant to have, and that the lawyer needs to do whatever it takes to get rid of Mona. The lawyer advises that this will be costly. When the lawyer leaves Roger’s office, he encounters Duck Phillips. Turns out they know each other –- George was Duck’s divorce lawyer too.

Duck wants Roger to make him a partner in Sterling Cooper; Roger wants to know what Duck has done to deserve that since Roger can’t think of anything. He suggests that Duck get out there and “make rain” to improve his chances. What Duck does is to go meet up with some jolly old Brits he knows, ad guys who might be interested in establishing a U.S. beachhead by, say, buying Sterling Cooper. If it were for sale. Like, if either Sterling’s or Cooper’s wife were going to clean him out in a divorce because he ran off with a 20-year-old secretary. The jolly Brits, who first had no openings for Duck, are suddenly interested, and Duck is suddenly off the wagon. (I’d mistakenly assumed he had already fallen off, but this episode appears to be the official tumble.) They drink martinis together, and Duck wants a finder’s fee and the job of the president. Oh, and he’ll have a second martini too. And he can have many more martinis, since the Brits send him a case of Tanqueray at the office. Duck pops in to see Roger and Bert Cooper, letting them know he’d been approached by the British ad guys about buying Sterling Cooper. Cooper looks impressed, and Roger looks realistic. They agree to meet with the Brits if the Brits will make an offer in short order, so this train looks as if it has left the station.

In other Sterling Cooper news, Paul Kinsey is in Mississippi, which concerns everyone in the office, since things aren’t looking good down there: This turns out to be when James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi and riots ensued. No one has heard from Kinsey, and the news coverage on television is troubling.

Peggy Olson appears to be undertaking a flirtation with the European Smith –- a.k.a. Curt –- who has been a man about town, going to see the newfangled musician Bob Dylan, among other shows. Curt suggests that he and Peggy go to a Dylan show together. When others in the office find out about this, Curt disabuses them of the idea that he and Peggy are an item –- you see, he tells them in his blunt, accented way, he is a homosexual. Everyone is stunned and thinks he must not mean what he thinks he means. “No, I make love with the men, not with the women,” he clarifies, and blithely departs. Sal Romano stares and gulps. Curt’s sidekick, Smitty, says that Curt is European, that things are different there. Ken Cosgrove says he knew “queers” existed, but he doesn’t want to work with them. Smitty, exasperated, incredulously asks whether Curt is the “first homo you’ve ever met in advertising?” On their nondate, Peggy looks to Curt for advice on why she’s not more successful with men. He says it’s her style, and he gives her a new, more fashionable haircut. How’s that for a stereotype?

So there we are –- 11 episodes into Season 2 of “Mad Men.” Will Don return to the office? Will he even return to the East Coast? Will we learn something new about Dick Whitman? Did January Jones enjoy having a week off from playing Betty Draper? I hope some answers are forthcoming.

-- Sarah Rogers