20) Another Break occurs as we go to Don looking in on his sleeping daughter, Sally, and is silently reminded of what he is about to lose. This solo dramatic moment registers as a down arrow. As a silent scene carried by Jon Hamm’s performance, we can’t make air-tight assumptions about its literal meaning. But given the rest of the scene, episode, and series, it’s not a huge stretch to suggest that Don has just sustained a loss in his constant war with himself. The authentic man, the man who should concern himself with his connection to his family above all, has been defeated by the inauthentic, outwardly masterful Don of the advertising world. In his expression we see the tension between his poles play out.
21) We then again go to a Flashback transition. Archie Whitman tries to reassure Don’s (or should we say Dick’s?) mother, Abigail, that everything will be alright, but she rebuffs him. In response, he angrily heads to the stables, announcing that he’s going to drive off and sell his grain. Because he’s drunk, Abigail tells Dick to go with him. All of this distresses our viewpoint character, Dick, tipping the arrow further down.
22) Dick’s drunken father is kicked by a horse, and it looks pretty fatal. Clearly a down arrow. This flashback concerns itself with Don’s emotional life, rather than the practical consequences of losing his father, so I’m calling this a Dramatic beat. If you instead wanted to label it a Reveal, I wouldn’t argue with you, although no particular mystery surrounding Don’s father’s fate has been introduced, and the detail doesn’t factor into the rest of the episode’s plot particularly.
23) The Return transition that ends the Flashback brings us back to Don as he gazes at Sally. Now we see the full significance of his recollection: he is thinking of the event that ended his childhood family, because he’s now reaching the end of his adult family.
24) Moving again between Don’s two plot threads, and thus via a Turn transition, we return to the Sterling Cooper offices, where Don petitions Lane to come with him and his fellow mutineers. He demurs, and Don once more resorts to his invariably terrible tactic of lashing out in anger. Another down arrow.
25) Don has a practical realization that breaks the impasse: Lane has the authority to fire all of them, releasing them from their obligations to McCann. This addresses a practical problem and is thus a Procedural beat, one that points us toward hope.
26) Don resumes his pitch to Lane, now invoking the reluctant Brit’s self-interest. Don tells him, in regard to McCann, that: “You’ll be a corpse knocking against their hull.” Knowingly or not, Don is now appealing to one of Lane’s dramatic poles, the need for belonging. This gives power to his offer to include Lane’s name in the company name—in the advertising world, there’s no more tangible emblem of belonging than that. Lane accepts, for an up arrow.
27) Now united, the four move on to the procedural task of listing the accounts they can take with them to a new company. We’ve suddenly moved from the despairing drama to plotting a caper. The scene ends on a couple of jokes, as sure sign that we get an up arrow.
28) Don barks brisk orders to receptionist Alison, moving from plan to action—a hopeful sign, measured by another up arrow. That’s three up beats in a row, our longest series of them so far. Can the move toward hope continue?
29) Don meets with Peggy Olson, reminding us that the show’s second lead has been absent from the episode until now. Once more adopting a less-than-clever tactic, he basically orders her to come with him to the new firm. She asserts her autonomy, rebuffing him. As proud as we might be for her, we don’t like to see these two protagonists at odds. And his failure to bring her on board throws a wrench into the escape plan. So it falls as a down arrow.
30) A Break transition brings us to another major cast member we haven’t seen until now, account exec Pete Campbell, whose dramatic poles can be summed up as ambition vs. insecurity. As he offloads stress onto his wife Trudy, we learn that he’s activated the ambition side of his poles, feigning illness to attend an interview at yet another rival firm. Armed with her weapons-grade chipper attitude, Trudy impatiently dismisses his fussing. Though she’s a supporting character and Pete a protagonist, the show encourages us to like her and to revel in his setbacks, so her rebuff lands as an up arrow.
31) Roger and Don appear at their door. Trudy responds with aplomb; truant Pete is gobsmacked. Once again, in the world of Mad Men, any outcome that gives Trudy a win and makes Pete sweat provides an up arrow.
32) Pete starts to rebuff Don and Roger’s petition, at which point Trudy sweetly calls out to them from the other room, subtly warning him that he’s about to make a terrible mistake. This quick exchange keeps the caper on track and is funny in its own right—another up arrow. Oh thank goodness for Trudy, who (in this episode at least) delivers a much-needed lightness, and keeps pushing the arrow up.
33) But Pete still has a petition to make, to the primary object of his insecurity. He demands acknowledgment, not from Roger, but from Don. Unusually at this point in the series, Don grants it. Another up arrow.
34) In exchange, Pete now meets their petition, agreeing to join the new firm—another up arrow. We’ve now reached five up beats in a row—the longest consecutive stretch of moments moving us toward hope. In fact, since beat 23, in which Don realizes that they can just ask Lane to fire them, we’ve had only one down beat.
35) So of course we need a down beat now. Pete introduces a note of procedural doubt, asking what happens if he comes up short on getting his new clients to follow him to the new company. Don tells him it isn’t an option—in other words, they don’t have a plan B if Pete fails. This momentary down beat prevents us from getting too complacent.
36) But after Don and Roger leave, Pete and Trudy indulge in a celebratory kiss, canceling that doubt with an up beat.
37) In a Continuation transition, we move to a new time and place, but still with Don, who appeared in the previous scene if not its final beat. (As always, we want the map to serve the meaning of the piece, rather than allowing ourselves to get hung up over technicalities of the beat system.) He and Roger commiserate in a bar and the topic shifts in mid-scene to Don’s personal plot line. Don seeks solace over his divorce. Disastrously, Roger mentions Henry Francis, incorrectly assuming that Don knows about him. Having given him the opposite of reassurance, Roger isn’t so much deliberately rebuffing Don’s petition as failing to grant it via an epic blunder. The heist thread might be delivering up beats, but the family plot has been waiting to pull the arrow down again.
38) Mortified, Roger asks Don for forgiveness. Don does not respond—a rebuff, and another dramatic down beat.
39) We stick with Don but shift to the Draper house, for a Continuation transition. In a scene of brutal emotion, he wakes up Betty to confront her about Henry. She meets him with defiance. This dramatic down beat lands with special force, not just for this episode but for the entire series, and Don and Betty’s relationship.
40) After that scene, we need a Break, both in transition terms, and tonally. So we return to the heist, and a comic scene in which Pete unexpectedly finds nebbishy television salesman Harry Crane at the office on the weekend. He must now try to conceal the plan from him. Though Pete fails, it’s one of his funny and thus enjoyable failures. It may put the heist at risk, however. Though humor outweighs suspense, we might nonetheless mark this as a crossed Procedural beat.
41) Harry finds out. Bert offers him a plum spot in the new firm as Head of Media, employing an advanced tactic not recommended for the amateur: the friendly threat. Harry accepts, moving the arrow up.
42) The heist returns to the practical realm as the assembled men realize they don’t know where anything is. When a procedural obstacle appears without an apparent resolution, it registers as a down note.
43) After a Break transition (which we later discover to be a Meanwhile, in that Don wasn’t in the previous office scene) we go to the Draper home as Don and Betty tell the kids he is moving out.
Don veers to the fraudulent side of his dramatic poles, trying to reassure the kids by lying. This has little effect, and so Sally and Bobby rebuff his entreaty, for a dramatic down note.
44) Sally turns on Betty, blaming her for the breakup. Here we’re seeing her start to become her father’s daughter, a thread the show will continue to develop throughout its run. Her angry lashing out mirrors Don, both in her choice of tactic, and in its ineffectiveness. Both mother and daughter end up unhappier as a result, and it points the arrow down.
45) Don repeats a tactic—always a sign of a bad hand being played—returning to his attempt to reassure the kids. This fails just as hard as it did two beats ago, for another down arrow.
46) Don switches tactics, training his sights on one granter only, urging Bobby to be a big boy. Though Bobby moves toward his father emotionally, trying to accept this, as modern viewers we’re probably not so fond of his invocation of old-school stoic masculinity, and Bobby does not seem much assured. Let’s call this one an ambiguous crossed beat.
47) In a Turn transition, we remain with Don but shift scene and goal, cutting to Peggy’s apartment, where he switches tactics in a revisiting of his previous petition for her to come with him to the new firm. This time he drops the peremptory assumptions for a full-on plea, structured like one of his famous product pitches: “There are people out there. People who buy things and something happened, something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do. And that’s very valuable.” In a show that carefully avoids on-the-nose expressions of its meaning, this speech presents the throughline of the show: grappling with convulsive times. Don promises that he won’t be angry if Peggy says no. Instead, he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to hire her. The scene leaves us in suspense over Peggy’s answer—a down note. However, since it’s a show of truth and self-awareness, something we hope to see from Don, we can tag this with an up arrow. Down plus up equals a crossed arrow.
48) A Meanwhile transition takes us back to the office. Ultra-efficient office manager Joan arrives, as the obvious solution to the procedural problem of not knowing where to find the stuff the gang needs to steal. The episode has withheld her so far and now gives her a gratifying entrance. We realize that our heist movie has been missing a key figure—the planner, who has finally arrived. An up arrow.
49) Don arrives with Peggy in tow, and we see the outcome of their previous scene together: she accepted his petition after all. Up arrow!
50) The group encounters a procedural obstacle, finding the door to the art department locked. Don solves the problem in action hero fashion, by kicking the door in. This funny departure from the show’s usual obstacle-and-solution pairings earns another up arrow.
51) A brief comic character note ticks the mood up another notch, as fussy Bert demands to know if his accomplices, removing items from his office, have washed their hands. This adjusts the mood without forwarding the story, and thus counts as a Gratification beat.
52) Don asks Joan to solve his living situation. She grants this petition briskly, with the desired minimally expressed sympathy, giving this beat an up arrow. This rare up beat for a situation involving his home life comes about because he has intertwined it with his work life, where Don can now reassert power and control.
53) Another sign of Don’s power comes when Roger approaches him for reassurance: “How long till we wind up working in a place like this again?” Don suggests it’s not that important, which Roger appears to take in stride. Given Roger’s general jaded air, that’s enough to log an up arrow.
54) Don bends down to lock the main doors. Roger tells him not to bother, which he doesn’t. This moment reinforces Don’s reclamation of his much-valued autonomy, for another up beat.
55) In a Break transition to the next day, sharply edited for comic effect, receptionist Allison discovers the heist and exclaims, “We’ve been robbed!” As in any heist, the moment when the suckers discover they’ve been ripped off allows the audience a moment of vicarious victory, for another up arrow. It concerns the achievement of the group’s practical goal—a Procedural beat. This begins an extended denouement for the heist sequence—though not for the episode as a whole.
56) Another Break transition. Beleaguered Lane gets to exult in his victory, and enjoys being sacked. A dramatic up beat as he triumphs over his unfeeling boss.
57) And a third Break. This string of Break transitions would have disrupted momentum during the heist, but here give us the sense of all the consequences falling snappily into place. On a brisk note of procedural progress, we see Joan setting up their temporary office in a hotel room.
58) In a procedural up beat, the group snaps to attention as an apparent client call comes in…
59) …but then slumps in disappointment when it turns out to be bumbling Harry, who needs help finding the room…a Procedural down beat. This comic deflation ends a streak of eleven up beats.
60) Meanwhile, back at the old office, we see Allison crying. Ken Cosgrove has figured out what happened. A foil character who represents the ordinary ad man, we like Ken well enough, and here realize that the flight to the new firm will leave out some people who maybe didn’t deserve abandonment. However, the beat plays ambiguously, as we’re also still enjoying the discovery of our heisters’ clever victory.
61) However, our feelings about another foil character, the self-satisfied, affected Paul Kinsey aren’t so generous as for Kenny Cosgrove. So when he sees that he’s been left out and reacts with frustration, we can enjoy that just fine, for an up beat.
62) Meanwhile, back at the new office, chipper Trudy brings lunch and a cake—and when there’s cake, there’s an up beat…
63) …and if this was just a story about getting the firm back, that would be the simple final note. But its counterthread is about the end of Don’s family. In a reaction shot, we see that against the backdrop of group victory, he remains melancholy. A down beat.
64) Don calls Betty, switching his tactic to conciliation: “I want you to know I’m not going to fight you.” She does not meet his concession by coming toward him. Maybe that’s because, for a character as overtly aspirational, Don’s “I hope you get what you always wanted” comes off as a bit of a dig.
65) Rebuffed in his private life, Don goes to his work life, where his power remains intact. He seeks camaraderie from an unusually chuffed Lane, and gets it, for an up note.
66) The otherworldly voice of Roy Orbison swells on the soundtrack as a look of hope and possibility appears on Don’s face. An up note—will things be okay after all? Not if we know anything about Roy Orbison, they won’t. We’re hearing a deep cut from his melancholy catalog of tone poem pop hits, a number called “Shadahroba,” about a place that promises that the future will be better than the past, that it holds the prospect of a love that lasts—a place you think of when your dream dies, your tears flow, and you don’t know what to do. Note that outside of this song, no place called Shadahroba exists. It’s authenticity, like Don’s, leaves much to be desired.
67) As the montage continues, we go through a series of Break transitions, because that’s how montages roll. Betty sits on a flight to Reno with her baby and Henry. Her stone-faced expression suggests that her divorce represents not a new future of autonomy and getting everything she always wanted, but yet another assault on her dignity. A down note.
68) Break to Sally and Bobby, watching TV with their maid and a dog. The kids, most affected by this change, have been set aside by their restless, questing parents. A down note.
69) And one more Break. The camera pulls out as Don heads to his uncertain new living conditions and the sad Roy Orbison tune continues to play, for a final down note.
• • •
When recalled later, this episode acts as an emotional Rorschach test. Do you remember it chiefly as the heist episode where the gang steals their firm back f
rom McCann Erickson, or the one in which Don loses his family?
I admit I fell into the first category. But maybe that speaks more to the memory-making power of the up beat over the down beat, rather than to any regrettable failure of cynicism on my part.
If we zoom out to look at the trajectory of this very distinctive episode, we see a slightly unusual line, marking the intertwining of its two strongly contrasting threads.
Here we see marked changes in emotional direction depending on which of Don’s competing stories dominates. A down-slope occupies the first third, followed by an upward rally, a down-slope that wipes out its progress, a steep upward slope, and a jagged coda. The first rally starts at beat 25, where Don realizes Lane can just fire them. That puts us on a downward slide until the shift back to Sterling Cooper business on beat 47, kicking off our last generally upward slope. It lasts until beat 54 turns back to the melancholy coda of Don’s now-atomized family.
Beating the Story Page 20
