It’s a business of sadists and masochists, and you know which one you are.  This week, we watched Peggy go on a date with Abe, a left thinking writer and avid reader of the village voice. When Abe criticizes Peggy for working at an agency that does business with racist corporations, she quickly beats him at his own game. Peggy lucidly pokes holes in Abe’s easy ‘anti-establishment’ rhetoric, pointing out the fact that most of the companies she engages with are family owned and organized. Moreover, if she were to take a true political stand, she could never do business with any one. While some of the companies she works for are racist, all of them are sexist. Abe, faced with Peggy’s proto-feminist sentiments, merely laughs: ‘a civil rights march for women?’. Well yes, Abe, precisely. Peggy is, in her own words, ‘not a political person.’ And yet on a personal level, she is keenly aware of the ways that sex functions in the workplace. Everyone assumes she has earned her position as copywriter by sleeping with Don, and so she is constantly trying to prove herself. She sacrifices not only her lunch hour, but her personal relationships on behalf of her ‘work,’ only to be dismissed by her boss who can’t talk to her until he’s had his afternoon nap. The severity of the situation of gender is such that even a radical like Abe can’t understand what Peggy is talking about. This episode seemed to perfectly encapsulate that tired old feminist slogan from the seventies: the personal is political. Peggy may not be a political person, but her personal life has political relevance, and it seems like she is finally starting to realize it. I look forward to seeing what happens with old Abe, who is surely not gone for good. Will he publish his piece out of spite or will Peggy have a change of heart?

She’s pushy, that one, I guess that’s what it takes. Dr. Faye has taken a lover in Don, and it seems like the sex might be mutually satisfying, a nice change from the monotony of Don’s former partners. But Faye is in dangerous territory. She’s not only sleeping with her boss, she also seems to be falling in love with him. When Sally showed up at the office, Don asked Faye to take her home and babysit. The next day, when Sally had a break down, he asked Faye to deal with it. At the end of the episode, she confronted Don with her insecurities. She is worried that she failed the ‘mother-test’ because she was not capable of calming Sally down. But why is this the critique? Why is she not angry at Don for treating her like a secretary… for demanding that she do the maternal work of caring for his child? Of course, Faye views Don’s treatment not as sexist, but as generous. She is thrilled that he would entrust his child to her care… this must mean he really likes her. I’m not quite convinced…

She looked so chubby in the pictures. Kiernan Shipka was dazzling this week as Sally Draper; she delivered every line with just the right mix of sexual innuendo and childish play. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sally arrives at SCDP mid-morning, accompanied by a woman who found her dodging the conductor on the commuter rail from Ossening to Manhattan. When Don apologizes to this good Samaritan, she merely replies “men never know what’s going on.” This line encapsulates all of the plot lines that occurred this week, but most poignantly in the case of Sally Draper. When Don calls Betty to pick up her daughter, she tells him she will collect her at her own convenience, the following evening. The implication is that things at home are far worse than we know.  Don is thus stuck with his daughter for 36 hours. As usual, the parents are incapable of disciplining the children. Don tells Sally she must never do this again, and then proceeds to order a pizza and take the morning off so he can take his daughter to the zoo.

Sally looked positively thrilled to be laying on the couch with her dad all to herself. And here is where I must make my Freudian critique: Sally was clearly attempting to seduce her father into letting her live with him. My roommate was appalled by this reading, but it was textbook Freud. For Freud, part of the trauma of growing up (especially for the girl-child) is the knowledge that you are not in fact the only object of your mother’s love. As a baby, the mother nurses the baby, and loves it unconditionally. This unselfish and pure love is only temporary… soon the baby must begin to eat solid food, and once taken from the mother’s breast, life is never the same. The child learns that the mother’s love is directed not at her, but at the father.  The girl child knows she cannot satisfy the mother, she feels a profound lack, and envies the boy child for his penis. Unconsciously, the girl resents her mother for desiring the father, and so she attempts to win the father’s love for herself. ”Daddy’s little girl” takes on a whole new meaning.

The theory relies on the assumption that all of our relationships to other people are (in some sense) libidinal… we may not realize it, but sex is always part of the equation. All of this made Sally’s behavior in last night’s episode all the more meaningful. She is threatened by Faye’s hold on her father… when Don tells her she might get to meet Faye again sometime, she responds with a simple “oh.” But that small word was full of resentment and frustration, as if to say, but Daddy, you said you weren’t going to marry her!  Sally wakes up early and makes Don breakfast… when Don tells her not to use the stove she coyly replies “Oh Daddy, I do it all the time.” All of this is made all the more significant because we know that Sally has discovered her own sexuality…  she is no longer an innocent little girl. She has asserted her own desire, and is projecting it onto her father. Perhaps you think this Freudian stuff is crazy-talk, but I find it hard to imagine watching last night’s episode and NOT sensing something slightly provocative in Sally’s behavior.

There’s much more to say about the women in this episode, but I’m off for now,I’ll leave you to ruminate (consciously or not) on penis-envy and the astronomical prowess of Ida Blankenship:)

Who is Peggy Olsen?: Last week, Peggy and Don spent the night together at the offices of SCDP. Peggy chose Don and the Samsonite account over birthday dinner with her smarmy boyfriend and her family. I loved the way she handled herself on the phone, the way that she seemed to mourning not the loss of her boyfriend (whatshisname?), but the loss of what he represented for her: everything she is supposed to want out of life– a husband, a house in the suburbs, a couple of blonde kids. Peggy represents the paradigm of the working girl, and all of the contradictions she must encapsulate. Peggy’s resolve that this is what she wants to do has to be strengthened by the presence of Dr. Faye Smith, a woman with a career who is well-respected by both men and women. Note, that this feeling of respect does not extend to her name… she is referred to as ‘Dr. Faye,’ never ‘Dr. Smith’… I suppose in 1965, you have to choose your battles.

This tension between one’s work and one’s femininity is something we saw play out further this week, when Peggy and Joan engaged in what I am tempted to call a ‘battle of the sexes’. What I mean by that is that Peggy and Joan are fighting over what it means to be a woman, and what is the most effective use of the power one wields as woman. Peggy, taking her cue from Don, wields the power she holds not as a girl-copywriter, but as a senior copywriter, who has power to wield over her underlings. Joan prefers to use her femininity itself as a force for charming the men above her into doing as she pleases. Other mad men blogs have pointed out the generational difference between these two women, and surely, there is something to be said for the fact that the office Joan entered as a secretary (in the mid 1950s) is different from the one Peggy walked into in 1960. But I also think that the difference is related to the kind of power these women wield. Joan entered the world of advertising looking for a husband, Peggy seemed to be looking for something else… satisfaction? a vocation? I think Joan’s anger toward Peggy must in part stem from the fact that married life has not turned out how she expected. Her husband is about to head to Vietnam, and she is still working in an office. I also think that Peggy and Joan’s varying performances of femininity have to do with the way they are limited by their bodies. Joan’s curves make it virtually impossible for her to be read as anything but super sexy. If she tried to cover up her considerable figure, she would look frumpy… and so she dresses to enhance. Peggy, on the other hand, is (in Don’s words) “cute as hell.” I know I know, you are thinking: Sexy beats cute every time. But Peggy’s character makes a convincing argument to the contrary. With her slim figure she can play it both ways… at times, she can be just one of the boys, but when you least expect it, she sleeps with Duck (or Pete) or strips down to the nude in front of a co-worker. She’s negotiated an entirely different role for herself as a woman than the one Joan embodies.

Who is Don Draper?: These past two episodes have seemed to answer the question that opened up this season of Mad Men: who is don draper? These fateful words were uttered by the journalist who wrote that scathing review for which Don was reprimanded by Burt and Roger. Don Draper, it seems, is a man who has lost everything, and shockingly, is capable of demonstrating emotion. Last week, he cried in front of Peggy. We saw a broken man dealing with the loss of not only his family, but the only person on earth who knew the real Don. This week, the answer to this inevitable question became even more complex. Don is a person that exercises, a person that keeps a diary, a man comfortable encouraging his female protegé to fire a sexist brute of an employee.

I have to say that I’ve felt very uncomfortable with this new Don Draper. I felt like I knew what to expect from the cold emotionally bereft silent type that occupied the past 3 seasons of this show. It almost seems like this new Don is … “empowered.” What a detestable word… so uncouth, so very HIP. But perhaps there is another way to read this new Don, as an inevitable transition from depression to something more sustainable. The fact is, when you are in the depths of depression, journaling, cheesy though it may be, helps. So does being submerged in water, or maybe that’s only useful for the ‘religious rebirth.’

Final thoughts: Betty Draper is on the verge of doing something crazy, I can’t wait to see what it is. I love that Faye hasn’t lost her outer-borough accent. More Francine please, less Bethany.

We might frame last night’s episode as about two concepts: origins and their repression. Peggy peeled off her clothes; Roger remembered Don Draper as he used to be– a bright young man with big ambitions and a healthy respect for authority. As usual, the parallels between these two characters point out the carefully built walls that shield Don and Peggy from getting too close to anyone or anything. This season, we can’t turn away as Don’s defense mechanisms crumble all around him, revealing a broken man who bears little resemblance to the dapper gentlemen we met some years ago in the pilot.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This episode we watched Peggy attempt to work with the new art director, Stan Rizzo, on copy for Vick Caugh syrup. Poor Stan Rizzo, it’s tought to be a nudist in a world of clothed people. Luckily, the secretaries are impressed with his Johnson campaign stories and KKK footage.  Peggy is unimpressed– and presumably this is why he has such antagonism toward her. Or perhaps he dislikes her because she assumes she has nothing to learn from him and he knows it. Regardless, Stan claims Peggy is not only sexually repressed, but should be ashamed of her body. Sexual harassment in the workplace is mere par for the course in the world of Mad Men, but this actually seems unnecessarily cruel. Is he threatened by her talent or does he just want to sleep with her? I can’t tell.

After a drunk Don commands Peggy and Stan to spend the weekend working on Vicks, things get really wild. Exasperated by Stan’s laziness, Peggy calls him out on his bullshit and strips down to her birthday suit. Stan, called on his own bluff, takes off his pants, revealing an erection he claims has NOTHING to do with Peggy’s nudity. I loved this scene. Just when I give up on Peggy (who I do think is sort of smug and self-important) she does something to surprise me. She seems to be constantly reinventing herself with every action. One minute she’s sexually promiscuous, the next minute she’s a virgin. One minute a buttoned up catholic, the next minute, a marijuana smoker. It’s refreshing to watch someone so playfully act out identity– which is of course, always in flux.

But even as Peggy reveals her flesh, she keeps a wall up around herself. She has no desire to let anyone (either at the office or elsewhere) know her secrets. Don, however, is becoming increasingly transparent. This episode we learned via flashback how Roger discovered Don Draper some years ago. We got a glimpse of a young man (probably around Peggy’s age) with raw talent and a thirst for success, selling fur coats at a mom and pop shop. After talking his way into a job at Sterling Cooper, Don apparently quickly rose to the top, snagging a lovely wife and a house in Ossining along the way. But after years of building up a professional persona, Don is cracking up in real-time. For the first time, we are seeing alcohol have an effect on Don. He drunkenly embarrasses himself in front of the Life Cereal executives; he leaves his Clio at the bar; he gets rejected by Faye Miller, and seems to be blacked out for an entire weekend (he picks up a brunette on Friday night and wakes up with a blonde on Sunday). Don has always been a drinker, but never before has his drinking effected his performance at work.

The repression of one’s origins may be painful, it has also always been essential to Don’s survival.

The episode begins as we watch Don and Roger handle a conference call with Lee Garner Jr., who, as the agency’s most important and most lucrative client, needs to be coddled and nurtured like a small child. Faye appears with Peggy and attempts to work out the details for a focus group she’ll be leading about Pond’s cold cream. The idea she will be testing out is Peggy’s bit on ritual and looking in the mirror. The focus group that follows seemed to me to be the crux of this episode. Faye assembles a group of 18-25 year old women in the conference room for a focus group to discuss beauty. Before meeting her subjects, Faye transforms herself into a secretary; she changes her clothes and deposits her engagement ring with Peggy for safe keeping. I love this detail, and it speaks to Faye’s ability to earn the trust of her test-subjects.

On the other side of the mirror, Peggy, Don and Freddy watch the show unfold as Faye has a candid discussion about beauty with her test subjects. After loosening up, the women inevitably express their many insecurities about dating and marriage. Beauty, it seems, is always in the eye of the beholder. One girl explains that makeup can only do so much, the true test is not how she feels when she looks in the mirror, but how men respond to her. In yet another lovely detail, Don catches Peggy trying on Faye’s engagement ring; she sees him see her, and quickly removes the ring. We know Peggy wants to get married, but the gesture of trying on the ring points out the way this desire is also a desire to be the sort of person who wears an engagement ring. That ring is powerful currency. Being a working-woman is all well and good, but Peggy has no diamond, and in the eyes of many of her peers, this makes her professional success irrelevant.Freddy watches the girls express their fears through crocodile tears and decides that he was right all along. They all just want to get married, and will buy anything that might win them a husband.

This episode, both Don and Peggy have to face the consequences of their inter-office hook ups. After she breaks down during the focus group, Allison quits, telling Don that he is ‘not a good person.’ She hopes to find a job where she might work for a woman (instead of a no-good drunk who takes advantage of his secretaries). Peggy finds out that Trudy is pregnant. She does not contribute any money to the Campbell gift fund, nor does she sign the card, but she does walk over to Pete’s office to offer her sincere congratulations. After Allison leaves, Don pours himself a drink; after her interaction with Pete, Peggy bangs her head against her desk. Their situations are certainly not the same. While Don was merely drunk and stupid, it did seem that Peggy (God knows why) had some feelings for Pete at some point. In spite of the differences, neither Peggy nor Don is interested in having a real conversation about the situations they find themselves in. They both prefer to keep their affairs private, and balk at the thought that anyone might know them on that level in the office.

Finally, this was an episode about art and advertising, and the progressive vision Peggy and Don share about their work. Peggy offers the beatnik photographer she meets work at her agency and he scoffs at her: “Art in advertising? Why would anyone do that after Warhol?”. The answer is pretty obvious to Peggy: you would do it to make money. But she’s just had her first contact with the counter-culture, and the value system she is encountering is not her own. [Side note: It was exciting to watch her at that party surrounded by creative people with a political conscience. I would love to see her become such a person, but Peggy Olson is too naive, and too much of a workaholic to really get behind any social movement.] Regardless, the exchange between avant garde photographer and copywriter pointed out the supposed dichotomy between the art world and the advertising world. Later on in the episode, Don makes the argument that Peggy couldn’t: Advertising may not be capital ‘A’ Art, but it is a powerful medium that has social consequences, and if done right, can produce a different world than the one in which we current live. I’m speaking of course of Don’s exchange with Faye about the results of her focus group. She says that Peggy’s idea was wrong. In the end, women are not motivated to buy beauty products because they enjoy the experience of self-indulgence; they buy beauty products in order to attract men. Don rejects Faye’s conclusions, insisting that it is no longer 1925. He claims that “a new idea is something they don’t know yet” and thus would never be discovered via focus group. His harsh reaction seemed to be a direct response not only to Allison’s behavior, but to Peggy trying on Faye’s engagement ring. It seemed to me that the new idea he wanted to plant in young women’s brains (that beauty is a self-indulgence) was an almost paternal gesture toward these young women who have so whole heartedly swallowed societies expectations about love and marriage.

Perhaps I am over-analyzing because this discussion of love of marriage is so pertinent to my own research, but I loved Don’s insistence that he would not produce more advertisements that feed into a desire for marriage that transforms otherwise bright and talented young women into weepy little girls. This was a cry for the artistic power of advertising within a television show that is forcefully suggesting that television too, is an art form.  Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not about to sell my soul for a job as a copy-writer (I’m too much of an art snob for all that) but I might consider making a deal with the devil if I could somehow find a job working for Don Draper.

I sincerely hoped we had seen the last of Anna Draper (and California for that matter) in Season 2. It’s not that I don’t find the subplot interesting, it’s just that while Anna is an interesting character, she makes no sense in the world of Mad Men. The Don Draper that Anna knows (perhaps we should call him Dick Whitman) is unrecognizable. Who is this hyper-disclosive man who talks about his feelings? Scenes with Glen Bishop are uncomfortable, but in a way I find fascinating… scenes with Anna feel like they come from a different television show. For a show that is so good at discretion, I suppose I think we would all be better off if we didn’t know WHY Don was the way he was.California, similarly, feels like a place the show can reference, but never truly understand. The good news, it seems, is that Anna is terminally ill, and this episode seemed a bit like a giant goodbye to the only person in the world Don may actually love without condition.

Was this ‘festive’ New Year’s celebration a sendoff to Dick Whitman via Anna? Or was Don determined to really live having been so close to death? Perhaps this too, was evident in the opening scene of the show, where we learn that Joan has had two abortions. We learned a lot about Joan this week… Lane’s bumbling mix-up of the flowers was a wonderful detail. I loved Joan’s outrage at the slip, and I loved how quickly she composed herself in order to punish the idiot secretary who was actually at fault. I am sure her line about taking responsibility was probably about something else– this is Mad Men we are talking about– but I don’t quite know what. The New Years night on the town was marvelous. I think my favorite part had to be the scene in the comedy club, where the stand-up asks why Wall Street has such an ugly boyfriend. I did feel a bit like Don was corrupting Lane, who doesn’t seem to actually WANT to leave his wife. Then again, he has many outs throughout the night, and he keeps persisting.

Some final rambling thoughts: I’ve been thinking about the timing of the show. Matthew Wiener deliberately chooses to set Mad Men against the actual calendar. Christmas in July, New Years in August. It seems odd, considering how often television is designed to line up with holidays, but I think this strategy really allows for some kind of critical distance. Perhaps I’m over-thinking this, but it seems to me that this week I was able to really see ‘New Years’ as the anxiety-producing hoax that it is. When you are bound up in the anxiety yourself you miss it, but holiday-induced tension was hyper-visible (in Peggy, Lane, Joan, Don, etc.) from the perspective  of summertime.

Oh My Goodness it’s Glen and Freddy!: I never thought I would see these characters again! Welcome back Glen Bishop. He’s grown into a real hooligan in the past couple of years. The moments between Betty and Glen are some of my favorite in this show, probably because I find them to be a wonderful mix of sincerity and slime. Last night, it seemed Glen’s desire for Betty has been displaced onto the more appropriate target, Sally. I loved the phone conversation between Sally and Glen… it was so fabulously serious. I think that’s actually how children talk to each other on the phone… or how they used to before they started texting. Glen probably wants to do dirty things to Sally, but I’m clinging to the hope that their friendship might just stay platonic. Or better yet, that it will hover somewhere in-between, allowing Glen to play the role of the therapist that Sally surely needs, and Sally to be the blonde that Glen lusts after.

I’m happy to see that Freddy is back. Though I find him irritating, he’s a good character. I wanted Peggy to tell him what was really bugging her: that he was sitting in her desk, acting like he was her superior when she in fact was the copy-writer hand-picked by Don for the new firm. But perhaps what she was really feeling was that she DOES want to get married. I doubt it. Peggy may want to get married, but she is never going to want to quit working at SCDP. Her rationale for wanting a husband: “I don’t want to spend New Year’s alone,” is very Don Draperesque. Unfortunately, Peggy can’t ‘do’ marriage like a man does marriage, or can she? I loved Peggy and Freddy’s conversation about sex, even as it made me cringe. Is the message here that it’s OK to sleep around with men, but not with the one you want to marry? It will be interested to see what happens between Peggy and boy toy Mark. Will he stick around now that she’s gone all the way? Did Peggy sleep with him because she decided that she doesn’t want to marry him? Or did she sleep with him to prove that she’s not traditional? Let’s just hope she used protection.

They don’t make dresses like that anymore: This was a great fashion week on Mad Men. All those lovely party dresses seem reminiscent of a time that really is lost. And this is not just a nostalgia for an imagined past. I have a distinct memory of a green satin dress that belonged to my grandmother in the 60s which looked a lot like Don’s secretary’s (Allison’s) dress. My grandmother’s dress was one of my dress-up clothes as a kid. How I wish we had preserved it better– though it wouldn’t have fit any of the women of my generation– my grandmother had the tiny frame of a Betty Draper. This Christmas party was all nostalgia. It seemed to call our attention to all the other office parties we’ve seen on this show, and to the way that this one was not like the others. This time all the fun was surface level, generated purely for the entertainment of Lee Garner Jr. I don’t quite know what to make of this shift, but it feels like the distinction between work life and home life is more sharply differentiated than we’ve seen it before. In the past, Roger and Don had wives and children at home, and work was the place they could be themselves. But now that they’ve both been divorced, all the secrecy of their infidelities have been aired. And something’s lost in that transition. The other big change is of course that they are now responsible for maintaining their new fledgling business. Watching Roger dress up in a Santa suit was truly something, and seemed to articulate precisely how much things have changed for these characters. One more note about the party: How many women work at SCDP? Can there be a need for THAT many secretaries? Though I suppose they are so cheap to employ that Lane need not protest too much.

Some unorganized parting words: Trudy is the worst, she may actually be more annoying than Pete. Don better not marry that secretary just because he slept with her. More Dr. Faye Miller please, and more Hitler jokes.

Like other bestsellers (The DaVinci Code, Twilight, etc), Larsson’s books are not particularly well-written. Many have noted the excessive use of extraneous detail that colors his prose, and surely, this is a fair critique. While I too, was bored by Larsson’s descriptions, the biggest problem with the writing is that it paints all peripheral characters (and there are perhaps hundreds of peripheral characters) as entirely one-dimensional.

In Larsson’s world, some people (usually men) are simply bad eggs, and these people are beyond redemption or transformation. Case and point, detective Faste, a sexist pig working on the Salander investigation:

“Faste knew better than to argue with a doctor, since they were the closest things to God’s representatives here on earth. Policemen possibly excepted” (Hornet’s Nest 276).

For some reason, this line really stuck with me as an example of what’s wrong with these books. When I first read it, I assumed it must be sarcasm, mocking the way most people (particularly Grandmother’s) exhibit reverence for doctors, medical students, and undergrads who declare themselves pre- med. However, upon closer consideration, I realized that it cannot in fact be read as sarcasm, since Faste seriously does think that policemen might be God’s representatives on earth; and also, since he listens to the doctor he is speaking to, and does not put up a fight. This is just a sentence, but it is indicative of the weaknesses that infiltrate both the writing, and the meaning, of this book. Every move Faste makes is consistent with his characterization as sexist. He hates all women (especially those in authority) and instinctively respects the opinions of men (especially those that occupy respectable positions). We never see him do anything to contradict this behavioral pattern. On the other hand, characters that are painted as good always behave according to their goodness. Great fiction is about great characterization, building fictional figures that have all the contours of real people. Perhaps there are individuals as one-dimensionally sexist as Officer Faste, but I prefer to imagine a world where things are always more complicated than that. I should note that somehow, my critique of Larsson does not hold up in the Swedish film adaptation of the books. The films maintain all of the most compelling elements of the novels, and mercifully have lost all the excess baggage.

The books are successful (in that you KEEP reading) because of two wonderfully drawn characters: Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Salander is everything that Faste is not allowed to be; she is complex, contradictory, and fascinatingly human. Salander is a brilliant hacker with a photographic memory. She resists all organized structures and lives her life according to her own rules. On occasion, she is extraordinary violent, but only when she feels someone deserves it. Salander is the sort of feminist protagonist you rarely see on television, in theaters, or in fiction. While she refuses to see herself as a victim, Salander has been the recipient of some terribly violent acts by a couple of incredibly sexist men. While many might have reported such incidents (rape, sexual assault, etc.), Salander takes matters into her own hands and destroys the lives (usually not literally, but figuratively) of all the men who attempt to hurt her. There is something viscerally gratifying about such scenes. It is not insignificant that Salander is depicted as a petite woman who refuses to accept that her size and gender might make her inferior in any way.

Blomkist, a womanizing investigative journalist, seeks to destroy the reputations of those institutions, organizations, and governmental bodies that abuse people like Salander (young, seemingly helpless, women). When I spoke about these books with friends, they were quick to inform me that this ‘take down the establishment’ theme is omnipresent among crime thrillers. What I imagine separates this book from others like it is Salander. In certain ways, this book brings Tarantino to the literary world, and in the transition to text, democratizes the appeal. Many people– I will go so far as to say many women– find violence on-screen disconcerting and uncomfortable. But somehow, reading about it is different. I’m sure people are drawn to these books for all sorts of reasons (Laura Miller notes some possible reasons in Salon). I think it’s all about Lisbeth Salander, the girl who does not follow anyone else’s rules and refuses to be fucked with. How often do you get to live vicariously through a protagonist like that?

Advertising: I think it’s safe to say that this season will give us more moments in the conference room– though Bert Cooper may have to man up and buy a table first. The past two seasons have been sadly lacking in great advertising moments, but I think Matt Weiner knows we want to see more of the conversations with clients that got us hooked back in 2007. We also want more Sal, but I fear he may be gone forever since he’s been replaced by that young and adorable art man who has all the inside jokes with Peggy.

Broken Home Fallout: Last season Sally earned herself a place as one of Mad Men’s most compelling characters when she accused her mother of making her father leave. Her raw anger as her parents told her they were splitting up was gut-wrenching and poignant in spite of the fact that it followed all of the divorce talk scripts available. Is it me or do parents only ever assemble the children in the living room to inform them of a divorce or of another sibling? The children always know what is coming when the talk happens in the living room. This season Sally will continue to deal with the new situation she has found herself in. Last night, she made quite a scene over some sweet potatoes at Henry’s mother’s house at Thanksgiving; surely, more is to come. What I think this show has done so brilliantly is to place us (and our sympathy) with the children and not with the adults involved. Don was consistently unfaithful to Betty, even after she begged him to stop, and yet, I still feel, like Sally, that it’s all Betty’s fault. Of course, the show is ultimately about Don Draper, he is the character with the most complexity, for whom I am willing to make all the excuses. But there’s also something right about Sally’s fierce protection of her father. He’s the figure that she rarely sees (before and after the divorce) so of course she idolizes him, and places all the resentment she feels upon her mother, the woman who is actually present for all the ups and downs of a given day.

Don’s Love Life: The more I think about it, the more I quite enjoyed the ‘mount holyoke gymnast Betty look-a-like’ that Don took on a date this week. You’ll recognize the actress that plays Bethany Van Nuys, Anna Camp, from Season 2 of True Blood, where she played Sarah Newlin, the vampire-hating preacher’s wife. I can’t help but read her Mad Men character Bethany through Newlin. They both seem overwhelmed (and simultaneously stimulated) by the evils of the world, and the inappropriate advances of men. But surely there will be other women for Don, especially now that he seems to have bitten the bullet and embraced his role as the rebellious cowboy of the Advertising business.

Many questions remain: Will Joan and Roger rekindle their affair now that they are both in unhappy marriages? Are their marriages still unhappy? Is Peggy getting married? Does Peggy have a steady? What’s up with Don wanting to be slapped during sex? Hopefully we will learn the answers to some of these questions next week…

The story is obviously better suited for the half hour format than the feature-length film, but still, the first movie was OK. Yes it was long, but it had a couple of wonderfully poignant moments. I’m thinking of Carrie, destroyed by heartbreak, staring into that mirror in the bathroom in Mexico, revealing an aging face. Or Carrie and Miranda, significant-otherless, watching the ball drop in their PJ’s on Miranda’s couch. These moments of friendship are why the show was so popular. Yes, it’s fun to watch women talk about sex, but it’s also fun to watch women talk to each other about all the other things real women talk about. It’s fun to watch a show where the plot revolves around the strong bonds of friendship that bind women to each other, as boyfriends and husbands come and go. The first movie maintained the integrity of the show; it had a plot, and the characters experienced growth through their 145 minutes of screen time. You will find no such plot, let alone growth in the sequel.

The film is basically one long montage of outfits, locales, and stars you always wanted to see on the show but never did.  The script appears to have been written on a weekend retreat at the Hampton’s, designed to include as much fun as possible, at the expense of plot, narrative arc, or logic. Before I move on, a brief list of some such moments:

The girls when they were in their twenties: In the opening monologue of the film,  we get to see each character donned in the clothes she was wearing (20 years ago) when she met Carrie. I have to admit, Miranda’s 80s look made me laugh out loud. Words cannot describe the fantastic bob-like hairdo and suit to match.

A gay wedding!(+ Liza Minelli & show tunes): Stanford and Anthony, the gang’s two gay best friends are getting married (because there are only two gay men in new york city). The ceremony includes an all male show choir performing classic show tunes. I seemed to be the only one in the theater interested in singing along with “Sunrise Sunset.” It gets better… Liza Minelli performs the ceremony and the opening number at the reception: “all the single ladies.” As A.O. Scott puts it in his his review: “it is somehow both the high point of and a grim harbinger of what is to come.” I tend to see this performance as more high point than harbinger– it’s LIZA– but his point is well taken.

Celebrities!: There’s Liza’s cameo, as well as small appearances by Miley Cyrus and Penelope Cruise.

Karaoke: The American girls, on their Abu Dhabi trip, perform “I am woman hear me roar” on a silvery stage, greeted by a standing ovation.

Burka clad women donning designer labels underneath their conservative dress: I kid you not. After rescuing our heroines from a group of angry men, a gaggle of Arabian women share their love of Susan Summers’s menopause book, and their love of fashion, pulling open their burkas to reveal Dior, Gucci, Versace, etc. As one explains, though they have never been to NYC, they love the fashion. Need I say more?

The “plot” of the film involves an all expense paid trip to Abu Dhabi for Samantha and her fabulous friends. Samantha’s been invited to check out a PR opportunity for a luxury hotel. There in Abu Dhabi the American girls find old flames, traditional values, and luxury beyond their wildest dreams. Each woman is assigned her own personal butler, her own personal white Maybach, and her own wing of a luxurious suite. In the Middle East, Charlotte and Miranda commiserate about the difficulties of parenting, raising a glass to those women “who do it without help,” reminding us yet again, that these women, and their paid domestic servants, are nothing like us. Carrie confesses that her marriage is losing its sparkle… Big likes watching TV on the couch, he has taken to ordering in rather than going out! And you think you’ve got problems! But not to worry, this is paradise, and whatever appears to trouble it will soon disappear.

The only legitimate ‘conflict’ that occurs in the film takes place when Samantha gets arrested for indecency on the beach of their resort. Suddenly, the ‘all expense paid’ trip has been cut short, and it appears (just for a moment) that the fab four might have to pay for their accommodations, or worse still, fly home coach instead of first class. There have been wonderful films made about exclusively THIS conflict. But the joke only works when the character in the luxurious suite ACTUALLY can’t afford it, it falls flat if the character (wearing Dior) is just annoyed that her all expense paid trip fell through.

The soundtrack of the film is equally ridiculous, concluding with Cindi Lauper singing “True Colors.” It’s a great song, but it feels a bit out-of-place here. This is the song that concluded the (admittedly flawed) 2001 film, Save the Last Dance. Remember this movie, starring Julia Stiles, about a white ballet dancer who moves to the ghetto and learns how to dance to hip hop music. But no matter. <em>Sex and the City 2</em> is about seeing your true colors too, right? SATC2 is full of moments of excess. When the show came out in the late 90s, such excess was everywhere, but in our current economic climate, it’s actually hard to watch. However, people will flock to the theaters, because in spite of the terrible reviews (and they really have slammed this film) you will of course want to see what happens for yourself. Luckily, the film doesn’t ask to be taken seriously, so you are free to sigh, grunt, hiss, laugh, and boo as the film takes you places you never thought it would go.

Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.

In response, blogger Jen McCreight calls for a boobquake, writing:

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it’ll be one involving plate tectonics.

I don’t want to suggest that McCreight’s call is utterly worthless. On some level, it’s just a funny joke. But on other levels, this entire discussion (which has been covered heavily among the blogosphere) is a symptom of a much bigger problem involving American feminism.

Feminism is a social movement, an intellectual project, and a politics. There are many feminisms; many different ways of embodying the politics, the social project, the theoretical tradition. But in all of these capacities, feminism faces a real problem in the form of what some call ‘postfeminism.’ How do you make feminism meaningful for women who think they don’t need it without deluding the very project itself? All of this comes to a head in this idea of the boobquake, which, by the way, is not a feminist project. Here’s why.

In her call for a boobquake, McCreight oversimplifies a truly complex situation. As a white woman in middle America, it’s easy to misunderstand the situated nature of islamic fundamentalism in Iran. Modesty has a very particular meaning in an Islamic context. Surely, the original incendiary statement is indicative of a patriarchal culture, however, I think we can agree that the appropriate response should come from the particular women being referenced, those that live within this religious context. When McCreight and her followers on twitter and facebook wear their ‘immodest’ clothes tomorrow, they will be exercising their own “freedom” to dress immodestly, but they are not going to prove anything to a person who sincerely believes that female immodesty causes earthquakes. Moreover, they will just provide more fodder to an ideology that presumes Westerners are all immodest and responsible for (apparently) natural disasters. What would be more politically relevant would be a response to those American fanatics who consistently blame the victim in date-rape situations. This doesn’t just happen in the media, I’m sure we can all recall a moment where a scantily clad woman was deemed to be “asking for it.” “It” being anything from the male gaze to sexual assault. Or perhaps, more analogously, those commentators who presumed that the destruction of the city of New Orleans was an act of God. The scary part about the immodesty quote is that the attitude behind it persists all over the world, even [gasp] in America!

My other gripe with McCreight’s boobquake is that it equates bodily display with social change. This is just bad feminism. What we think of as ‘immodest’ clothing is structured by the very male gaze that claims to be so influenced by female sexuality. McCreight’s call for cleavage and short-shorts is a call for a male fantasy. Fashion is structured by a particular vision of the female body that is unrealistic and constructed by male desire. If a woman wants to live in the world, she usually has to conform to this type in some ways. Both women and men are affectively invested in the particular versions of femininity and masculinity that ideologically structure American culture. That is, in spite of the fact that I know that beauty is subjective, and standards of beauty are arbitrary, I am invested in the beauty standards that permeate my culture. I think beauty is equated with a certain size, a certain weight, a certain bone structure, etc. Certainly, one can be a feminist and dress ‘immodestly,’ but one’s feminism is not determined, reflected, or constituted by her/his clothes.

McCreight’s blog post is getting lots of attention not because it is interesting, but because it is easy to criticize, and, if this is what ‘feminism looks like,’ it’s easily dismissed. The answer to the problem of patriarchy is never as simple as donning a low cut T-shirt, and those that think it is are simply not thinking about it hard enough. While these may be the stories that circulate, they are not the only stories we can tell.