Mad Men -- Episode 4:6

Matt Weiner has a thing about hotels.

Hotels play a fascinating role in "Mad Men." For one thing, they never look quite as glamorous as the other sets. Everything is usually a little too dark -- the lamps a little too big -- the bedspreads a little too florid -- everything a bit dated. For another, scenes in hotels almost always involve some type of illicit sex. Sal was seduced by the bell boy at a hotel in Baltimore last year. Peggy and Duck learned about the assassination of Kennedy in a hotel room after a "nooner." Roger and Joan met in a hotel when their affair was still going in Season 1. Don used to go to a hotel when Betty would kick him out of the house for cheating. (Interestingly, when Don and Betty went to a hotel for Valentine's Day, 1962, they were just about the only couple in the history of "Mad Men" to go to a hotel and not have sex. And even the romantic time Don and Betty enjoyed at a hotel in Rome served only to highlight Betty's frustration with life in Westchester County. In "Mad Men," hotels only hurt marriages; they don't help them.)

But that's not all. Last season, Don spent the whole year trying to please Conrad Hilton, the famous hotel magnate. It didn't work out, of course: Don ended up getting dumped by Hilton -- in a hotel. That was also where Don learned that PPL was planning to sell Sterling Cooper. (It is true that the newly constituted SCDP started life in a hotel -- but they didn't stay there long, and Joan warned them not to bring clients there. She knows all about the danger of hotels).

So I knew our characters were in trouble when I saw that this episode was called "Waldorf Stories." And I was right. What a collection of stories. We learned that Roger met Don while buying a mink in hopes of launching his affair with Joan. (This means, by the way, that that affair went on for a very long time -- roughly 6 years or so, because it was still going in 1960.) We saw Peggy have to get naked to deal with a sexist art director (Don apparently wasn't taking a chance on hiring another homosexual). Most importantly, of course, we saw Don simply degenerate in a way we've never seen him before -- he couldn't pick up Faye the pollster, he couldn't make a coherent pitch to his client, he couldn't keep track of his own award, he couldn't remember to pick up his kids on Sunday, he couldn't remember who he went to bed with Saturday night, and he couldn't even remember to tell her that his name is "Don," not "Dick." By the end of the episode he was apologizing to Roger and taking orders from Peggy.

All of which shows that Matt Weiner has properly captured the vibe of the mid-1960s. These days -- in large part thanks to Richard Nixon and Norman Lear -- we tend to think of the 1960s as a battle between working-class white like Archie Bunker and their hippie children. But this is not how the 1960s started. For most of the decade, lefties idolized the working-man. Think of Bob Dylan and his cap, or Bobby Kennedy drawing huge crowds in Gary, Indiana. If you watch a movie like "The Graduate," you'll see that originally, the liberals of the 1960s were not complaining that American morality was too strict -- instead, they were complaining that it wasn't strict enough. It's all there in "Mrs. Robinson" -- the glamor, the drinking, the cigarettes, the casual sex -- all seductive on the outside, all hideous on the inside. That's what everyone was so angry about -- the hypocrisy, the phoniness (these folks all read "Catcher in the Rye") of it all. It was only later in the 1960s -- after Bobby Kennedy's death, after it became clear that working-class folks had their own version of morality that made the hippies uncomfortable, after Nixon rallied the squares (not the beautiful people like Roger Sterling and Don Draper, although I have no doubt those guys contributed to Nixon's 1968 campaign) in defense of mid-American puritanism -- did the hippies start seeing themselves as hedonists. Before then, they were the Puritans.

And now Matt Weiner is carrying on that battle. Having spent several years showing the grace and style of mid-century life, he's now showing us the pain -- the hangovers, the broken hearts, the sloppy, silly wastefulness of it all. The question at this point is how far he will go in punishing Don.

A few other random observations about this week:

1. I loved the Mets pennant in Lane's office.

2. I'm tired of seeing Peggy do scenes with a different male character each week. She needs a real arc, not a series of one-offs. If it turns out that she is going to be the one to confront Don over his decline, that will be fine.

3. Very nice cameo by Betty. That's about as much of Betty as I want in an episode.

4. I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that it was stupid to have Kenny on for a single scene, especially when it seemed obvious that SCDP should try to get Kenny back. Matt Weiner obviously agreed.

5. I liked the fact that they did their honors episode on the night that "Mad Men" was up for the Emmy. I'm sure it annoyed some people, but I have a high tolerance for shows that wink at the audience in this manner.

6. I think it's great that when Peggy thinks of someone being embarrassed, she thinks of coughing in church.

7. It was heartbreaking to see how bright-eyed and eager Don used to be -- just as it was heartbreaking to see his joy over winning that award. For most of the time we've known him, Don has been extremely morose. It's sad to think that he actually used to be excited about going to work in the morning, and that he still longs for the type of validation represented by a trophy and a pretty girl. I wonder how many of us middle-aged men -- if we could see ourselves 15 years ago -- would be saddened at how cynical we have become.