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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: October 17, 2010
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Mad Men, “Tomorrowland” (Season 4, Episode 13). [Stream on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Imagine working with Don Draper. He’s a great television character, of course, and a compelling man to follow. Flawed and of his time and kind of a huge bastard when you think about it. But also a brilliant ad man when he’s able to pull his shit together and come up with yet another magical campaign to designed to fool the American public into buying some product or another. “Tomorrowland” — the 4th season finale of Mad Men — is an episode with no shortage of things going on: Betty fires Carla, who comes juuust short of giving Betty a real piece of her mind; Peggy and Ken Cosgrove sign the Topaz panty hose account; Betty moves unhappily to Rye; we find out that Joan is in fact still pregnant with her rotten husband’s child; and we get a guest appearance by Glen. But all of that takes a back seat once Don and Megan get together and (after Don is so impressed by how she handles a spilled milkshake) get engaged.
The Don/Megan partnership meant a lot of things for Mad Men. It meant the end for Dr. Faye, it meant the elevation of Megan as a character, something that was decently controversial among the Mad Men viewership. But it mostly meant that Don was basically succumbing to the temptations of his time and his job and essentially becoming another Roger Sterling. And while that’s great for the men in power, everybody else at Sterling Cooper has to sit around and watch Don go off and marry his secretary like a damned cliché.
This is the vibe that’s going around the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce when Peggy and Joan slam the door behind them, grab their cigarettes, and read Don Draper and the whole SDCP operation for filth. It’s a phenomenal scene, not least because it’s a landmark for two characters who were quite adversarial when the show debuted. In the pilot, Joan shows naive young Peggy around and brusquely gives her the lay of the land. There was always an edge of resentment that ran both ways in the Peggy/Joan relationship. Even when they supported each other, even when they liked each other, there was something in the air that said that these two were always on the opposite sides of some invisible divide.
Which is what makes the dialogue between them such a crackling delight. They’re both furious that Don and Megan’s engagement trumped both of their good news (Peggy signing Topaz; Joan getting a title-only promotion), but they’re mostly just sharing in the unspoken bond of being working women in the ’60s watching their lout of a boss marry his secretary, wondering when he’ll decide to let Megan leapfrog them on the corporate ladder.
They’re furious but also deeply, snarkily funny, as if they’re both commenting on a TV show called Mad Men they’re watching on TV. Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks make the most of their all-too-rare screen time together. It’s one of the best scenes of the season, and probably the series.
