The Televangelist: ‘Mad Men’ Season 5, Ep 7

Makeup won’t make you a grown up, Sally, but seeing your grandma go down on your date will.

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Last year at the Emmys, “Mad Men” won Best Drama (again) for a season that many felt was not, perhaps, as deserving when compared to some of the other contenders. There was a feeling that after so many years the voters weren’t even bothering to think about it - it is “Mad Men,” and always shall be “Mad Men!” After this last season of “Breaking Bad” I predicted that that show would finally eclipse its AMC brother and take home the title prize. There was no show on TV that could touch its suffocatingly horrifying and fantastic anxiety-inducing madness.

And now “Mad Men” is back - not just back, but back with a vengeance. Though it has had its detractors this season, I think its most recent episodes have been the best we’ve seen in, well, years. Has it proved itself better than “Breaking Bad?” There’s still plenty of season to go before making that decision, but I would say currently it’s certainly on route to coming close.

“At the Codfish Ball” was all about the ladies, but while each female seemed to be on track for success, the reality was much dimmer. The episode was framed by telephone conversations between Sally and That Creepy Former Neighbor Kid Glen (also known as series creator Matthew Weiner’s son). The two have stayed in touch, it seems, since his departure from her neighborhood, and Glen is clearly the only real confident that Sally has. While in their first conversation the two chat and crack wise, in the second conversation Sally has been changed. The conversation isn’t taking place on a sunny afternoon but in the dark. “How’s the city?” Glen asks. “Dirty,” Sally replies quickly and without hesitation.

Sally, like a grownup, took care of her grandmother after she tripped on the telephone cord (or “Gene’s toy” as it later turned into), but when she came to her father’s apartment Megan made her spaghetti as a kid-friendly alternative to their dinner. Wanting to seem more grown up, Sally puts on makeup later which Don immediately tells her to take off. “There’s nothing you can do, Don” Megan’s father Jean-Paul Sartre Emile interjects. “One day your daughter is going to spread her legs and fly away.” Whoops! It’s the kind of comment that can’t just be laughed away - Emile is (accidentally) talking about his own resentment about his daughter’s relationship with Don, and it turned into foreshadowing for Sally. Her “date” with Roger was incredibly cute until we all saw, like a slow-motion car wreck, the events that would lead to Sally walking in on Megan’s mother going down on Roger (or in other terms, her grandmother sucking off her date). Dirty indeed.