Loaded Couch Potatoes

Well, if the following photo doesn’t give you pause, I don’t know what will:

Read on anyways, won’t you?

“My Old Kentucky Home” is the name of this episode, and that title comes from a song that Wikipedia assures me is the state song of Kentucky, and one abolitionist Frederick Douglass didn’t think was so bad.

Nevertheless, when you see Roger Sterling in blackface, singing it to his child bride, it’ll make your eyes bug out a little bit.  No pun intended.

Following up on one of the predominant themes of the previous episode, this one begins with Gene sitting in bed, having Sally read aloud to him from a book titled The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  When Don comes in and tells Sally it’s time for her to go to bed, Gene points at the book and tells her, “You just wait, all Hell’s gonna break loose.” 

At this point, it’s clear that the third season of Mad Men is leading up to some sort of titanic shift.  This not being a science-fiction or fantasy show, there’s a fairly limited range of posibilities in terms of what this could amount to, but there are already hints that it may involve the (first) Kennedy assassination.  Or it could be that all hell breaking loose here may be restricted to more personal apocalypses.

Certainly, the seeds continue to be sown for that sort of thing throughout this episode, and overall, there’s just a vague sort of doomish feeling in the air.  One of the primary plot threads of the episode involves Sally having stolen $5 from her grandfather, and his frantic, sulky attempts to figure out where the money has gone.  He never comes right out and accuses the Drapers’ housekeeper, Carla, of having taken it, but it’s strongly intimated that such is on his mind … and the racial overtones elsewhere in the episode certainly do nothing to lessen these feelings.

Eventually, though, Gene susses out that it was Sally who took the money, and there is a great moment in which he crooks a finger at her to beckon her over that is just plain scary.  Believably scary, too; not overdone in any way.  This is all very uncomfortable.

The episode is filled with uncomfortable scenes, and I’m not at all sure Roger Sterling pretending to be a “darkie” is the worst: no, that may be the scene in which another country club guest hits on an obviously pregnant Betty, who in turn does nothing to rebuff the man’s advances.  They should both be very thanful that Don didn’t see this stranger with his palm on Betty’s stomach.

Then, too, there is a bit of a scene between Don and Roger.  Jane, drunk and stumbling, has told Betty that she always knew her and Don would get back together; Betty storms off, and Jane grabs Don’s belt and asks him why he doesn’t like her.  This is seen by Roger, who seems to want to jump to the wrong conclusion, and ends up accusing Don of being jealous of Roger’s happiness.  “No one thinks you’re happy,” Don counters, “they think you’re foolish.”

How much of Betty’s reaction to Jane’s accusation can be attributed to Betty’s guilt over her own unfaithfulness at the end of last season?  Or of her flirtations with the man at the country club?  He turns up again, later, introduced by Bert Cooper; Cooper is talking about divorce being political suicide, and in the background Betty is glancing at this man with somewhat interested eyes.

Anybody else got a bad feeling about where this might be headed?

Elsewhere in the episode, Joan is hosting a dinner party for some of her husband’s colleagues, and there are signs that things aren’t going too well for him.  At one point, he goads Joan into playing “C’est Magnifique” on the accordion.  She doesn’t want to do it, but is a cordial host, and obliges; she shoots him a wonderfully subtle “you’re in deep shit” look at one point.

The remainder of the episode is devoted to Peggy, Kinsey, and another of the creative people (I don’t know his name) having to work on Saturday to brainstorm ideas for Baccardi.  Kinsey calls a former school friend, who brings over and sells them all some pot.  Peggy, much to the chagrin of her secretary Olive, gets stoned.

Peggy continues to be one of the show’s best characters.  Unlike Kinsey, who seems to use the weed merely as an excuse to eat chips and do nothing, Peggy never stops working, and while the others are crashed out in the floor, she is having Olive hook up a dictophone so she can get her ideas down.

Even more admirable, when Olive cautions her to think of her future, Peggy looks at her and replies that she’s already got a job, that she’s already living her future.  And, she says, she’s not afraid of it; not of any of it.

I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention two other factoids:

One, the guy who shows up to sell Kinsey the weed is played by an actor named Miles Fisher.  I strongly suspect his mother of having received seed from Tom Cruise at some point during 1982 or 1983; this dude looks, sounds, and acts a LOT like Tom Cruise.

Two, there is a nice little dance scene between Pete and Trudy.  Both Vincent Kartheiser and Alison Brie appear to be rather good dancers, and as for Ms. Brie, well, anybody who can look good while dancing in that hat deserves some sort of award.