Let's talk 'Mad Men': 'The Grown-Ups'

Big Sunday shows 'This Is It' isn't performing like a concert film

"This Is It" continues to throw all the old rules about concert movies out the window.

Domestic ticket sales for the Michael Jackson movie totaled $8.3 million on Sunday, nearly $2 million more than the $6.3 million Sony Pictures projected Sunday morning and 17% more than the movie grossed on Saturday. The movie's total domestic gross is now $34.4 million, making the worldwide number $103 million.

Concert movies traditionally see ticket sales decline rapidly after they premiere, as avid fans who turn out on opening day make up most of the audience. But "This Is It" grossed more on Sunday than any day since it debuted, a sign that word-of-mouth is strong and moviegoers who initially may have been hesitant are turning out. There also may be repeat viewing, which is often the case for concert films.

If the trend continues, "This Is It" should enjoy a relatively modest decline next weekend, and what initially looked like a middling domestic performance may actually turn into a pretty good one, albeit not nearly as big as overseas. That's where Jackson is really cleaning up.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Michael Jackson in "This Is It." Credit: Kevin Mazur

Let's talk 'Mad Men': 'The Grown-Ups'

The following post discusses "The Grown-Ups," Sunday's episode of "Mad Men."

"It felt for a second like everything was about to change." Pete Campbell


So. The calamity we've all been waiting for happened.

Before I get into my reactions to "The Grown-Ups," I first have to praise one of the show's unheralded players. Deborah Lacey has been subtle and terrific as Carla for three seasons now. And her reaction to the death of John F. Kennedy sent chills over my whole body, both times I watched the episode.

We've probably all seen those grainy bits of footage -- or excerpts from them -- quite a few times in our lives. To produce a shocked, horrified reaction to an event that has been part of the fabric of history for so long is indeed a tall order for any television show.

In that brief scene, Carla's reaction is what made the assassination seem fresh and shocking to me. For a character who is so notably restrained, her tears were especially poignant. Kudos to Lacey, who I hope gets even more opportunities than she's gotten this season to do her brilliant and finely nuanced acting.

In some ways, that scene told the story of the episode. The social order was upended -- before that event, Carla would never have sat down on the couch with Betty, let alone pulled out a cigarette and begun smoking. But Betty didn't notice, or care. In that moment, they were both just grieving people and their normal social roles just fell away.

There was a role reversal for the children and the adults as well. The adults were bereft: Sally comforted her mother, instead of the other way around. Throughout the episode, it was clear that Sally and even Bobby were pretty perceptive about what was going on with the adults. They may not have understood the full impact of JFK's death, but Sally understood a lot about her parents' reactions. She's smart enough to know that the grown-ups did not fully have a handle on this tragedy -- and their marriage was pretty fragile too.

The title of the episode was "The Grown-Ups," but to whom did that refer? Much of the episode explored people's varied reactions were to this shattering event. When the world fell apart, who did these people want to be with? Who did they want to talk to? How did it affect their perceptions of their lives? Would it make them take responsibility for themselves -- would they act like grown-ups? Or would they, like children, attempt to retreat into a cocoon of dependence and safety?

It's interesting that the children and the adults were equally dependent on the television. Perhaps it was reassuring that the news anchors themselves were grown-ups. Their voices may have wavered, but these men didn't lose it. They acted as the nation's surrogate fathers as a new media era dawned.  

Speaking of dependence, at the start of the episode, the heating in the Sterling Cooper building wasn't working. It was either too hot or too cold in the offices. I wasn't quite sure what that was about until it occurred to me that the workers in the building were just waiting for someone to take care of it. Somebody would fix the situation, so that, like the porridge in the Goldilocks story, their building would not be too hot or too cold but just right. They just assumed that someone would attend to the problem for them.

But nobody could tell them how to react to JFK's death. And massive tragedies force people to re-evaluate their lives. They make people really look at what's important to them and what isn't. Since the assassination affected everyone a different way, I thought it might be helpful to go through the arcs of a few major characters in this episode:

Don: The shattering event of this episode, for Don, was not the death of JFK. Don has experienced so much pain and tragedy in his life that he's familiar with the trajectory of grief. Sure, he still has a lot of unexpressed pain still bottled up inside him, but he knows that the worst of it eventually passes. It's possible to move on and function.

And all things considered, a bigger bomb may have gone off in his life in last week's episode, when Betty confronted him about his secrets. He survived that terrifying situation, and in fact, after that he was better positioned to move forward with his life in a more positive way.

The events of last week's episode made those final shots of Don in "The Grown-Ups" all the more heartbreaking. He had laid himself bare to her. He had revealed almost everything (as much as he realistically could, and much more than he ever thought he would).

For him to expose himself like that, to be so honest and vulnerable, then to be so utterly rejected by Betty -- that must have been devastating. "I don't love you." That's heart-rending for anyone to hear, but for Don/Dick, who's known so much rejection, it's an unimaginable loss (but one he certainly had a role in bringing about).

Still, you had to feel for the guy. That moment is as awful as anything Don had ever gone through before. He had been trying to be there for his family -- comforting the baby at night, helping with the kids, not out having affairs. He's really, for him, trying his level best and being as good a man as he can be. And it's not enough.

Once again -- Jon Hamm, ladies and gentlemen. WOW. As he walked into that bedroom and sat down, he was the very picture of a gutted man. Hollowed out and destroyed. Kudos to the director, who used a funereal color palette in that final scene. Don folds his hands together, almost in prayer. Just like that, Don's dreams of a safe haven have been ripped apart.

The funeral that the endlessly droning TV kept talking about was for the death of a youthful, vigorous president, but what Don felt is the death of his marriage and the death of his wife's feelings for him. That's the tragedy he'll have to deal with.

But he did what Don does. He went to work. The final image of the episode is the famous "back of the head" shot we occasionally get of Don. Alone in his office, drinking. So, so sad, to have the promise of real intimacy with his wife right in front of him, only to have that tantalizing possibility ripped away.

Betty: Believe it or not, I don't blame Betty for what she said to Don. Now, how a woman could see Don Draper and Henry Francis side by side and feel more attracted to the latter -- well, as Tim Gunn would say, "It's a matter of taste."

It took me awhile, but I think I understand why Betty was attracted to the fantasy of a new life with Henry. Don has lied to her, he's deceived her from Day 1. She can't rely on him -- she can't be sure he's not hiding more lies or about to embark on more affairs. Her whole world has shattered -- the well-ordered society that she knew is ending. And Henry offers an escape from the life she has now as well as a refuge of sorts.

He's a way out -- and she needs a way out that accounts for the fact that she needs money and the right kind of mate if she and her children are going to keep their heads above water, socially speaking. She can't just run off, and divorcing Don with no backup plan is a terrifying idea to her.

But there's Henry -- looking for all the world like a kindly father figure. He'll take care of her, he'll treat her like a queen, he'll be the grown-up and she can be the dependent daughter again.

Interestingly enough, both Betty and Pete see that JFK's death marks a huge turning point in society, but they react to that change in very different ways. Pete sees that the era of "every man for himself" has arrived (Trudy agrees that "you don't owe [Sterling Cooper] anything"). Betty also sees that this is a sea change, but she doesn't respond, as Pete does, by growing closer to her spouse and forging a new, more independent path. Realistically speaking, that may not be an option for her. She's a mother of three with no job skills and a husband who has proved unreliable.

But she does want a change, and she doesn't love her husband, a man who doesn't want to change his life. He wants the status quo, with her doing her part as the trophy wife. Betty's just given up on that image, an image and lifestyle that Don is still clinging to fiercely, though his affair with Miss Farrell shows that the changes that are coming do hold some appeal for him.

It'll be interesting to see if this couple really does split up or stay together. And I'm thinking maybe "Mad Men" needs to decide whether they'll stay together or not. Honestly, if the show plays the "Don and Betty may be over for good" card again, it's going to start to get tired.

We've had three seasons now in which the show has threatened to break the couple apart -- but so far they haven't broken up. Looking at the season as a whole, I'd have to say again that there was too much repetitive home-front content for me, especially in the first half of the season.

If we get more of the same home-front stuff in Season 4 -- and we keep seeing the threat of those two possibly breaking up -- it's going to get tiresome. But let's not get ahead of ourselves (and just to be clear, I think the there have been things to like about almost every episode, the second half of the season has been really good and this episode in particular was satisfying and thought-provoking).

Pete: We've seen Pete grow a lot, haven't we? He didn't lose his temper with Lane Pryce, he was quite perceptive about the assassination and peoples' reactions to it and he had several reasoned, thoughtful discussions with his wife about whether to go to the wedding and what to do with his career. Interestingly enough, Pete and Trudy seem to have the most solid marriage on the show. Both acted like grown-ups and recognized that Pete's attendance at the wedding would have been a farce and an unnecessary one at that.

With the united front they're showing, I think Pete could go far. But I do wonder if marketing would really be a better fit for Pete. He dismissed the idea as "a research job," but Pete's perceptive, analytical mind would be a great fit for that kind of position. Plus, in that arena, he'd have to deal less with clients. He has gotten better about refraining from sticking his foot in his mouth, but Ken Cosgrove does seem to be a more natural fit as an accounts man.

(Having said that, I've missed Kenny Cosgrove this season. All in all, I'd have preferred more SC story lines -- more Peggy, more Joan, more from the junior executives, more from Roger and Bert. Ah well. If nothing else, I'd have liked a better sense of why Ken got the job and not Pete. At this point, we just have to take Pryce's word for it that Ken deserved the top job.)

Peggy: Like Don, Peggy retreats to work when things get too overwhelming. And like Don, she's not one to overdo the sentimentality or the emotions of even a big moment; she's a practical woman.  She puts her head down and gets the job done (and that perseverance is going to take her far). She realized the Aquanet campaign needed work, and she realized her mother didn't really need an audience for her shows of grief.

I've no idea what she feels for Duck, maybe not much. At least it appears to be an enjoyable romp -- but will it last beyond that strange moment in time? Who knows. Peggy's a tough one to read sometimes, but it was amusing to see that, when "Mr. Herman" called, Paul Kinsey could read her like a book.

Roger: He seems to have exchanged one demanding daughter for another. And he may be realizing that losing Mona and gaining Jane wasn't such a great deal. She locked herself in a bathroom at one point like a disaffected teenager. And Roger told Bert Cooper to "keep an eye on her," as if she was an 8-year-old child. And Roger was right about Jane's gift to Margaret -- it was too much, and Jane should have consulted him. Instead, Jane acted like a spoiled brat when confronted with her mistake.

I think Roger may have finally realized -- and let me know if you agree or not -- that Joan is "The One." He wanted to talk to her after the assassination -- he could be serious with her and she understood why the event upset him so much. And Joan immediately saw that the jokester Roger had nothing funny to say about this event.

Joan's the only one who really sees behind Roger's light-hearted, cynical facade. Mona may have seen that serious side of him too, but that couple's time had passed. I just love Joan and Roger together, even on the phone. They have a bond that seems so real and unbreakable. But alas, they're both married to others -- people who don't really get them in any essential way. Sigh. 

By the way, I loved that look between Don and Roger at the wedding. It was quite cryptic, but there was the faintest hint that Don was enjoying the fact that this expensive event was so obviously a bust. Roger's bonhomie just about made the Derby Day party work, but even Roger recognized his magic wouldn't enliven this somber wedding.

Perhaps the look was also a recognition that, despite everything, these two operators have some kind of bond, maybe even a shred of sympathy for each other. I don't quite know, I could be reading that glance wrong. But I'm curious about where things will go with Don and Roger. I think a lot of us are hoping they'll band together to take over SC, but, as appears to be the case with Don and Betty, there may be too much history there. Maybe Don and Roger are past the point of making peace with each other.

Some other thoughts on the episode:

*From remarks Matthew Weiner has made, it seemed as though "Mad Men" might deal with the death of JFK in a glancing, elliptical way. Weiner told Alan Sepinwall that he didn't pick 1963 because it would allow him to deal with JFK -- it sounded as though it wasn't necessarily his intent to dwell on it in great detail.

Of course JFK's death is an obvious landmark in that year, but he told Sepinwall that "if we do [deal with the assassination], it's going to be something different." I guess what was surprising about "The Grown-Ups" is that it wasn't really something different. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

"The Grown-Ups" dealt with JFK's death exactly as I would have predicted a show set in 1963 would have -- it took on that event in a big, in-depth way. That event was the catalyst for the entire episode, and the source of its themes of dependence, crisis and the pain of transitions.

So, in a way, the show did surprise me, by doing exactly what I thought it wouldn't do. Just as I thought the show would be true to its sometimes elliptical style and put off Betty confronting Don about the contents of the box, "Mad Men" had Betty confront Don about his secret drawer pretty quickly. The obvious choice was the surprising one, because often "Mad Men" makes the less obvious choice. In any case, I like being surprised, so the intense focus on JFK's death -- that was a surprise.

I thought it would have an impact, but I also thought it would be an offstage event, if you will. But here, it was front and center. That scene between Carla and Betty was telling, as were several other post-assassination moments. But the more I think about it, the more I think Betty seeing Oswald shot on live television was the turning point for her and for the episode. Betty's ideas about how her world worked were blown apart in that moment.

A man who was accused of assassinating the president was shot on live TV as Betty sat there in her bathrobe. "What is going on?" she cried. Don's revelations about his past may have, in that moment, seemed like small potatoes. That information changed Betty's life, but what she was witnessing was changing the world. And that's scary.

The tragedy did play a central role in the episode, but as with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the JFK assassination was used to shed light on the characters' inner lives and motivations. What was most important was how they reacted to this news.

Still, the amount of news footage we saw -- including the famous footage of Walter Cronkite almost losing his composure -- was surprising. It was there, I think, to show us the dawn of the modern media age.

We are all glued to the TV if something awful or huge happens, no matter how much (or how little) sense the talking heads on the box make. We just need those voices to be the grown-ups, to tell us that someone, somewhere, is making sense of the situation. The constant hum of those voices, that constant background chatter -- we hope that, in the aggregate, those voices will somehow reassure us that someone is on top of the situation, that the right information is being gathered, that it'll be OK.

Logically, we know that's a fantasy -- senseless tragedies will always, in some way, be senseless, no matter how many words are spoken on the subject. Yet we turn to the voices, again and again. And I'm sure I'm not the only one to ponder the fact that we now have many more voices speaking 24 hours a day about the news -- yet we feel less reassured than ever.

All that said, Sally may now trust the TV more than she trusts her parents. The adults are lying to her -- her father tells her "nothing" happened when Oswald was shot, and she knows he's not telling the truth. She knows he's shielding her from reality (which is a common and sometims commendable parental instinct).

But from now on, the TV will have a role in American life that it didn't have before -- it'll be the "hearth" that Betty's designer talked about. Harry doesn't know how safe his job is. Our dependence on television has only grown since that awful day in 1963.

*Henry Francis offers to marry Betty -- based on what? He knows she can be a fickle woman who doesn't really know what she wants. And they've only been in each other's presence a few times. In some ways, I just don't get why he'd want to marry her -- that character seems smarter and more jaded than that. But perhaps he sees himself as rescuing Betty, which plays into her fantasy of being rescued. Perhaps both of them, when it comes down to it, are children playing fairy-tale roles. (Note: On further review, I took the word "child-like" out of the second sentence of this item. I do think that's no longer the best adjective to describe Betty, but I would still say that some of her actions lack a certain maturity.)

*The scene of Betty and Henry meeting recalled, for me, Betty's parking-lot talk with Glen in an earlier season. She's matured some from that moment, but as her rescue-fantasy indicates, not all that much. I feel she still has a lot of heartbreak ahead of her; her road will not get easier, I predict.

*At least in that car scene, we got a real, big smile from Betty. They're so rare that I can't remember the last time she smiled like that.

*When Don kisses Betty on the dance floor, he has that "Dick Whitman" look of utter sincerity on his face. Really? That does nothing for her?

*There was at least one Roger zinger, when he urged the paltry number of wedding guests to eat both the prime rib and the fillet of sole. Goodness knows it was a horrible wedding reception, but nobody would go away hungry.

*I was glad there was a reference to Sal Romano. I want him back on the show!

*A couple of housekeeping notes: Sorry this post is up late. I didn't get home from a trip out of town until late Sunday and wrote this post Monday morning. I did enjoy my vacation, thanks! As always, please feel free to (kindly) point out any typos you see. Thanks in advance.

*Also, next week's post won't go up until Monday morning. Weiner is not sending that episode out to critics in advance, so I'll spend Sunday night watching the Season 3 finale twice and writing my thoughts. I hope to have that post up by noon Monday.

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