Hobo A-Go-Go

In the eighth episode of Mad Men, "The Hobo Code," Don gets high with Midge, Salvatore fails to come out of the closet, and the rest of the Mad Boys and Girls do the Twist.

Previously on Mad Men: Peggy was asked to do some copywriting for Belle Jolie lipsticks, Don’s mistress Midge was a crazy hippie, Salvatore was blindingly gay, and Pete slept with Peggy on the night before his wedding.

Pete and Peggy ride the elevator up to their floor together; both have come into the office early. Peggy says that she was too nervous to sleep, since her copy is being presented to the Belle Jolie people today. Pete came in early because he has to go home at lunch to supervise the move to his and Trudie’s new apartment, and might not get back to the office in the afternoon. A bit later in the morning, Pete is sitting in his office, staring out the window, when Peggy stops by. She offers to get him some coffee when she goes to get a cup for herself. Pete, in a really creepy tone, tells her to come in and shut the door behind her. Peggy does, because she’s an idiot, and I more than halfway expected Pete to start smacking her around. But instead, Pete tells her how hard it is to see her walking around her everyday, then grabs her face and starts making out. At one point he pulls her ponytail back, exposing her neck the way farmers do before cutting the heads off chickens. Not hot! Icky! He pulls the couch in front of the door, and Pete and Peggy have sex. I recently rewatched the episode Ladies’ Room, where Paul and Peggy become friends but then he blows it by coming onto her. He suggests that they pull the couch in front of the door and have sex while everyone leaves the office for lunch—almost exactly what Peggy ends up doing with Pete six episodes later.

Afterwards, Peggy and Pete are putting their clothes back on when Pete tells her that he never read the copy she wrote for Belle Jolie. She’d rather that he didn’t read it than he didn’t like it, so she’s not upset. He stops her from going and tries to explain, “I have all these things going on in my head and I can’t say them.” She asks if he thinks about her, and he says, “A few times. You’re only twenty yards away.” He continues that when he looks into Trudie’s eyes, he knows how wrong they are together. Peggy brushes his hair off his forehead and tenderly tells him, “You’re not alone in this.”

In the switchboard operating room, a new girl is listening to Salvatore talk, in Italian, to his mother. She’s infatuated with this caring, suave man, despite never meeting him. Joan brings in some breakfast pastries, and the new girl asks Joan what Salvatore looks like. She sums him up as handsome, debonair, with expensive, possibly European cologne. They compliment her knowledge of the office men, and Joan says, “You have voices, I have other things.”

Don arrives to the office, and Peggy lets him know that Mr. Cooper, but not Sterling, is waiting to talk to him. Don notices that the collar of her blouse is ripped (a sex-related injury), and Peggy smoothly lies that she caught it on something.

Don, barefoot, enters Cooper’s office. Cooper tells him that he wants to “quantify” how appreciative Sterling Cooper is of Don’s talents, and hands over a bonus check for $2,500. Don’s a bit speechless, but Cooper brushes off Don’s gratitude and changes the topic to Ayn Rand. He says that Atlas Shrugged is “the one,” and he knows that Don hasn’t read it. “See, when you hit 40, you realize that you’ve met or seen every kind of person there is. And I know what kind you are, because I believe we are alike.” Don is unsure if Cooper means this as a compliment, and Cooper continues, “You are a productive and reasonable man, and in the end, completely self-interested.” Don looks a bit taken aback at this assessment, but Cooper explains, “It’s strength. We are different. Unsentimental about all the people who depend on our hard work.” Like your wives and children? I’m a fan of The Fountainhead, but it’s a pretty well-established fact that a lot of Ayn Rand fans just use her theories as an excuse to be assholes to people they consider inferior.

The new switchboard operator wanders into the art department hoping to see Salvatore for herself. She introduces herself as Lois, and claims that she got lost trying to find accounting to drop off some paperwork. Sal is very charming and suave as he gives her directions, while the other two art department guys, geeky young Marty and old bald Dwayne, just gawk like they’ve never seen a woman before. Before leaving, Lois awkwardly repeats the greeting Salvatore gave his mother on the phone earlier: “Ciao, ciao!” After she leaves, Sal heteros it up and says that he wasn’t sure about buying the tie he’s wearing, but “I’d have bought it right away if I knew it worked.” Marty tells him that it’s not the tie, and all the girls flirt with Sal.

Pete is drinking alone in his office when Hildy buzzes that Trudie is outside. Pete quickly hides his drink in a file cabinet, and jumps up to pretend that he’s happy to see his wife. She says that she wanted them to walk together to their new home, and brought a bottle of champagne. He tells her that his day is busier than he thought. Trudie goes to sit on the couch, and when she turns to put her purse down Pete rushes over to flip the other couch cushion. Heh! She asks if it really matters if Pete skips out for a long lunch, and he harshly yells at her, “This is my office! How do you think it looks?” She suggests that it looks like she loves him. Pete changes tactics and scolds her like a naughty toddler: “You see what happens when you show up here like this? We fight.” Trudie pouts about how he’s killed her apartment buzz, and Pete apologizes and goes to open the champagne. Trudie says she’s sorry too: “We’re going to live there a long time. There’s no point in being superstitious.” Did she want to be carried over the threshold or something? Pete looks nauseous at the idea of spending the rest of his life with Trudie.

Fred Rumson, the man who suggested Peggy wrote copy, is presenting the new ads to the Belle Jolie people in a meeting while Don looks on. Fred describes it as a “From many, one” sort of thing, with each woman having her own unique lipstick from a “basket of kisses” that “colors her kiss, and her kiss, well, colors her man. Belle Jolie lipstick: Mark your man.” Salvatore unveils the artwork, which has the slogan “Mark your man” over drawings of a woman smiling in the foreground and a man with a big lipstick kiss on his cheek in the background. Mr. Belle Jolie bitches that there’s only one color in the ads, and women want colors, “lots and lots of colors.” He sarcastically says that maybe they’ll just make five shades, or one. Ken tries to change Mr. Jolie’s mind by calling it a “fresh approach,” but Don stops him. He stands up and closes his folder, suggesting that they call it a day. Mr. Jolie is surprised that Don is giving up so easily, but it’s all part of Don’s plan.

“You’re a non-believer,” he starts. “Why should we waste time on kabuki?” Mr. Jolie doesn’t know what “kabuki” means (it’s a form of Japanese theater with really elaborate makeup), so Don says, “You’ve already tried your plan, and you’re number 4. You’ve enlisted my expertise and you’ve rejected it to go on the way you’ve been going. I’m not interested in that. You can understand.” Mr. Jolie tells them that he doesn’t think Don is entitled to change the core of his business. Don says, “Listen, I’m not here to tell you about Jesus. You already know about Jesus: either he lives in your heart or he doesn’t.” Fred and Ken stare at Don with, “WTF did this come from and where is it going?” looks. “Every woman wants choices. But in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box.” I love how both Fred and Don worked Peggy’s off-hand comments, along with her writing, into the meeting. “She’s unique. She makes the choices and she chooses him. She wants to tell the world, ‘He’s mine.’ He belongs to me, not you. She marks her man with her lips. He is her possession. You’ve given every girl who wears your lipstick the gift of total ownership.”

That is undoubtedly quite a speech—comparing having Jesus in your heart to “getting” the message of this campaign? Well done. And it’s impressive how well Don can sell the idea of female ownership of a man without believing in it at all. Don Draper being some girl’s possession, even if that girl is his wife or his mistress or his Jewish department store heiress? Never gonna happen.

Mr. Belle Jolie takes another look at the ads and tells Draper to sit back down. Don knows he’s holding all the cards: “No. Not until I know I’m not wasting my time.” Mr. Jolie repeats the order to sit down as a way of telling him that they’re all in.

After the meeting, Ken offers to give Mr. Jolie and his younger partner directions back to their hotel. The young guy says that their hotel was just renovated, and it reminds him of a steamship. Plus, the other night he had a drink in the lobby with Robert Mitchum! All the men shake hands goodbye, and Mr. Jolie tells Don that he hopes Don’s right about the campaign. “Well, we’ll never know, will we?” he says. Mr. Jolie’s like, “Huh?” and Don tells him that it’s not a science, but they do their best. As the Jolie men leave, Ken tells Don how his “Jesus” speech was probably better than “dangling them out the window by their ankles.” This seems a bit anachronistic to me—I associate that particular business practice with hip hop record label guys like Suge Knight, although I guess maybe the same thing went on during the Rat Pack era with Mob bosses and what not. Don tells Ken that he’ll learn to realize that “at a certain point, seduction is over and force is actually being requested.” Is that another way of saying, “Her mouth said no, but her eyes said yes”? The men all laugh as they head into Don’s office, blowing right by Peggy, who looks ready to explode if they make her wait any longer to hear if her copy was accepted. She can hear them laughing some more when Don buzzes her on the phone to bring some ice in.

She dutifully brings in a small bowl of ice, and Don gestures to the glass of whiskey. She asks how many cubes, and Don says, “How do you take it?” Peggy looks up in surprise, and Fred tells her the Belle Jolie meeting was a “home run, ballerina.” Shouldn’t it be either “home run, softball slugger,” or “triple pirouette, ballerina”? Peggy takes a little sip, and Salvatore teases her, “You call that celebrating?” She downs the rest, and the men laugh. Peggy says that she was worried because the meeting was so long, and Don tells her that the Belle Jolie people loved her writing right away. Fred says that Don’s being modest: “Don walked around the village three times, and then set it on fire.” Peggy asks to see the artwork, and after calling it marvelous, asks, “I thought it was going to say, ‘It’s the mark you make on your man’?” Aw, I love assertive Peggy! Fred says, “You may be a writer, honey. You’re arrogant.” She laughs at herself, and Don offers her another drink. “I don’t know, she says, and Don and Fred joke in unison, “Not a writer.”

In the break room, Lois the new operator is writing her name on some list. Another operator walks up to tell her not to do that, because “they keep track of everything we do here. Have you never heard of Joseph McCarthy?” “It’s the bowling team,” Lois says. Heh. Peggy bursts in to spread her good news about the Belle Jolie account, and Joan tells her, with some degree of good natured-ness, “I’m glad your other work was suffering for a reason.” Joan is standing on the other side of the room from Peggy and the other girls, who are congratulating and encouraging her. You can see that Joan is a little stunned and jealous that a woman could be getting attention for something other than her assets or conquests, so to speak, but she also seems a bit proud of little Peggy. The girls all decide to go out after work to celebrate.

The Mad Boys are gathered in Pete’s office, and Harry notices the bottle of champagne. Pete pretends it was a gift from a client. Paul asks Pete what happened to the big apartment move, and Pete says that he told Trudie, “I already have a job.” “Do they ever stop asking for things?” Harry asks rhetorically. I don’t know, are you going to stop asking for dinner every night? Peggy knocks and enters, eager to tell Pete her good news. Ken, Paul and Harry all congratulate her sincerely, and the three do some funny banter about how Ken’s a published author but can’t write copy. Pete just stares silently at Peggy, looking more horny than happy. Peggy spreads the word about the celebration party tonight, and Paul tells her that since Cooper, Sterling and Draper have already left for the day, they should go right now. Pete says he doesn’t know if he can leave early, since “I’m kind of senior ranking when those other men are gone.” Is he really? This is the man who come back from his honeymoon to find a Chinaman, his family and a chicken in his office—not exactly a sign of respect from lower employees. Paul laughs that Pete’ll be there, but Pete awkwardly says that he should probably go home. Peggy’s trying to maintain her chipperness, and reminds him that if they go to the bar at 3 then he can go home at 5. Pete agrees, and Peggy leaves. As she walks back to her desk, she checks that no one is watching and then does a little bit of skipping. Aw.

Salvatore’s phone rings, and it’s Lois, claiming to have a call for him. She pretends that it got disconnected, but Salvatore knows there was no call. She tells him how great she heard his Belle Jolie artwork was, and that he has to come out with them for drinks. “This is Lois Sadler, by the way,” she says very endearingly. I’m a big fan of that old joke where a guy calls a girl’s answering machine and leaves this big, heartfelt message, like, “I love you so much and I shouldn’t have run over your dog with my car, and I know you told me that you could never forgive me, but I’m so sorry and I love you and would be devastated if I lost you so please, please give me another chance. Oh, this message is from Bill.” I’m pretty easy when it comes to self-deprecating humor. Anyway, Salvatore assures her that he knows who she is, and promises to be there. After he hangs up, he gives a long look at the phone. The flirting, being smooth with women part? Easy. Dealing with her expectations afterwards is harder.

Don knocks on Midge’s door, which is answered by a man wearing a fez. Roy appears too, the man who took Don and Midge to that jazz club and then got all, “How do you sleep at night working at an ad firm? I’m an artist!” Don brushes past them and sees two other girls inside, plus Midge. Midge is wearing a black skirt and this cropped Mexican peasant blouse that I find really, really cute. He greets her with a huge kiss, obviously marking his territory in front of her beatnik friends. He tells her to pack a bag, because they’re going to Paris. He pulls out his bonus check (he claims he doesn’t know what it’s for), and it just kills me that Midge is what Don wants to spend that money on—not his wife or his kids, or even saving it for another secret brother that could pop up and need to be paid off. On the other hand, it kills me that Midge says no, because who wouldn’t want to go to Paris with Don Draper? She tells him that she has a special night planned already, and he’s going to stay and join in. The Fez dude pulls out some drugs, and Roy tells Don that the plan is to “get high and listen to Miles.” Pretentious much? Don is suitably unimpressed, but Midge says that they can smoke now and screw later, when it’ll be a lot more fun. Don lights up and could not look more out of place in his dapper suit and tie.

Later, everyone’s lying around and probably claiming that they “can see the colors of the music, man.” One of the girls offers Don the joint, and he declines. After a second, he dopily says ok and takes a hit. Don Draper is smiling goofily! That’s so new! Don goes to the bathroom, looks into the mirror, and falls into a flashback!

Little Dick Whitman, around age 8 or 9, is digging a hole in his yard while his not-mother hangs up laundry. They’re obviously on a farm in the middle of nowhere. A rattily dressed man comes down the road, and asks if there’s any way the family can spare a meal for him. Dick’s father, Archie, tells him to look around, “we’re not Christians here no more.” Abigail, Archie’s wife but not Dick’s mom, hoarsely says that’s not true, and Archie says that even if they were, there’s no work to be done here today. The hobo asks if he can come back tomorrow, but Abigail says that he can stay and eat dinner with them, and do the work in the morning. This woman doesn’t seem so bad; not the type of person you’d hear died of stomach cancer and say “good.” She interrupts her conversation with the hobo to yell at Dick to stop digging holes—maybe this is why Dick hates her so much, because she robbed him of his true calling in life, hole-digging. She orders him to go start a fire, and the hobo waves hello. Dick starts backing away wordlessly, and the hobo says that Dick reminds him of himself. Abigail says, “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” in a tone that’s insulting to both the hobo and Dick.

At dinner, the hobo thanks them profusely for the meal, and says that he’s from New York, originally. Archie says, “New York. That’s how you took to being a bum so easy.” Abigail admonishes him that “nobody takes to charity easy,” and the bum says that he’s been a worker, even if he doesn’t know much about farming. Abigail asks if the hobo’s a communist, and the two agree that the souls of communists are obviously damned to hell. The hobo has now passed her test, and as Abigail stands up she says, “My mother always said that life was like a horseshoe: it’s fat in the middle, open on both ends, and hard all the way through.” She sets a quarter on the table for the hobo, but Archie leans over to take it back. He tells him that the hobo will get it tomorrow, after working. Instead of being pissed, the hobo repeats his thanks. All the time, Dick is sitting at the table, silently looking down at his food.

At the Roosevelt Hotel, Elliot (the younger Belle Jolie man) is drinking at the bar when Salvatore walks up. They greet each other warmly, and Elliot says, “When I mentioned the renovation, I didn’t know if you heard me.” Is that some sort of secret gay code? Salvatore says that he got it, and the two men gently flirt. Elliot says that even though he’s really a homebody, every time he comes to New York he gets a thrill. Salvatore agrees that New York is a masterpiece, but he takes it for granted. Elliot says that he always gets a hotel room with a view, because when you look at the buildings in a row, “it’s like you can do anything.”

At the bar, all of the Sterling Cooper underlings are drinking and dancing. Peggy’s doing the cha cha with Fred Rumson, and it’s rather adorable. Joan is by the jukebox, and tells Lois, “I’m not saying that Peggy doesn’t have something upstairs. It’s just that at Sterling Cooper, things are usually happening downstairs.” Lois is a little put-off by this comment, but is more interested in searching for Salvatore. Paul comes up and takes Joan’s arm, and they hit the dance floor. Joan’s dancing is hilarious: she holds her hands in front of her and just slightly moves her hips back and forth. It looks silly when you’re used to modern dancing, but since it’s Joan, it’s way sexy. Pete is leaning against the wall, looking mopey that Peggy is so happy and cute. The song ends, and when the opening bars of “The Twist” comes on, all the girls scream and clap and rush to the dance floor. I’m having flashbacks to when they played “Since You’ve Been Gone” at prom senior year of high school. Everyone but Pete is twisting away, and I just find it ridiculously cute. Can we bring the Twist back? Please?

Peggy twists happily, then makes eye contact with Pete. She slowly makes her way over to him, still twisting away. It’s a bit sexy, in that earnest Peggy way. She leans in close to Pete’s face and says, “Dance with me.” Pete looks at her, resentful of her success, and says, “I don’t like you like this.” Well, his short story may have been crap, but occasionally, Pete has a way with words. Peggy looks destroyed (they just had sex on his couch this morning and now he won’t dance with her!), and chokes back tears as she heads back to the dance floor.

At the Roosevelt, Elliot and Salvatore are having dinner. They chat casually about the nature of happiness. Elliot leans in and tells Sal, “You’re loud, but you’re shy.” Sal brushes off Elliot’s attempts to figure him out, and Elliot asks, “So, what do you want to do?” Sal says that he’d like to start his own ad firm, with an emphasis on art. Elliot says that he meant with regards to the view from Elliot’s hotel room—“You have to see it.” Sal is unsure, and things are getting awkward and heartbreakingly sad in equal measure. He tells Elliot that he’s thought about it, and he knows what he wants to do, but… Elliot assures Sal and says, “I know what you’re thinking. I’ll show you.” Sal is tempted, but shakes his head no. “What are you afraid of?” Elliot asks. Sal is totally shocked at Elliot’s flippancy, and asks, “Are you joking?” Sal’s stare conveys all of his fears: losing his friends, his job, his identity, losing everything if someone found out he is gay. Plus, having to go up to a strange man’s room to have sex for the first time? The scariest. Sal excuses himself and leaves. Aw, please let Sal find the love he deserves in season two!

Back at Midge’s Apartment of Pot and Flashbacks, the beatniks have formed a train and are hopping around the apartment when Don comes out of the bathroom. The fun is interrupted by the sound of sirens, probably coming for the guy next door who, as Midge puts it, “uses his wife as a speed bag.” Don isn’t paying attention, and picks up Midge’s Polaroid camera. He snaps a photo of Midge and Roy, and… flashback!

The hobo is in the barn when Dick brings some blankets to make a bed with. Dicks passes on Abigail’s order to say your prayers, and the hobo says, “Praying won’t help you from this place, kid. Best keep your mind on your mother, she’ll probably look after you.” Dick says that Abigail isn’t his mother, because he’s a “whore child.” Dick observes that the hobo doesn’t talk like most bums, and the man says, “I’m a gentleman of the rails. For me, every day is brand new. For me, every day is a brand new place, people, what have you.” “So, you got no home?” Dick asks. The hobo says that he used to have a wife, family, job and mortgage, but “I couldn’t sleep at night, tied to all those things.” Gee, do you think this could somehow be applicable to Don’s current life? “So one morning I freed myself, with the clothes on my back, goodbye. Now I sleep like a stone.” This hobo is awful proud of his child abandonment lifestyle. Dick asks where the hobo will go next, and he says that he’ll be leaving the Whitman farm as soon as possible. “If death was coming any place, it’s here, kid. Creeping around every corner.” Yeah, that’s exactly the sort of imagery you want to place in a nine year-old’s head before bedtime. The hobo pulls out a piece of chalk and tells Dick that he can be an honorary hobo, and learn the code. Hobos make a mark on the front gate of every house to tell other hobos whether there’s good food, a nasty dog, a dishonest man, etc. He throws the chalk at Dick and says, “Don’t be scared, kid. You ain’t a man yet.”

Back in the present, Don is inspecting the back of the camera and pulls out the photo he took. He sees Midge and Roy looking rather intimate, and comes to a conclusion. “Of course. You two, you’re in love,” he says to them. Midge says that’s ridiculous, but Don replies that part of his job is making ads where people appear to be in love, so he can tell the real thing when he sees it. Ever pretentious and annoying Roy tells Don, “Love is bourgeois.” Don softly says to Midge, “You’re breaking my heart,” and the guy in the Fez is shocked that “ad man has a heart!” Fez is getting angry, and tells Don that advertising is not doing anything to improve the problems of their country. Don asks if buying some cheap wine and drinking it in Grand Central, “pretending you’re a vagrant,” is doing anything, either? Fez very maturely responds, “I wipe my ass with your Wall Street Journal.” Don tells Fez to stop talking and “make something of yourself.” “Like you?” Roy asks. “You make the lie. You invent want. You’re for them, not us.” Man, beatniks are freaking annoying.

Don puts his coat on and tells Roy that there is no “big lie, there is no system. The universe is indifferent.” Everyone’s buzz is pretty effectively killed, and Don fetches his hat. Midge walks over, and Don tells her it’s now or never for Paris. Holding the photo, Midge tells him no. Don looks sad, like he knows this is it with her (and thank goodness—who knew the Village in the 60’s was so dull?). He pulls out the bonus check, endorses the back, and tucks it into her blouse. “Buy yourself a car,” he whispers, then heads out. Roy says that Don can’t go out in the hall because of the cops. “You can’t,” Don says, putting on his hat and looking every bit the upright citizen. Well, if you’re going to lose your mistress to an annoying fruitcake like Roy, then you might as well get in a good burn before you go.

Don arrives home, and heads upstairs in the dark. He goes to the kids’ room, and wakes up Bobby. “Ask me anything,” he says to his son. Bobby says he’s tired, but Don looks a little desperate as he insists. “Uh, why do ladybugs light up?” His chance to come clean denied, the intensity goes out of Don’s eyes and he sighs. “I don’t know. But I will never lie to you.” Bobby reaches up and gives his dad a sweet hug.

Back in the past, the hobo is finishing up his day of work and thanks Archie for sharing his home. Archie wishes him good luck, and ignores the hobo’s obvious hope of getting the quarter back. Dick runs to the front gate, and sees the symbol the hobo carved: a claw, for a dishonest man. Ouch. Back in the Draper home, Don has passed out, in his suit, in Bobby’s bed.

The next morning, in the office, Betty arrives early in hopes of spending more time on Pete’s couch, but no one is there but her. A few hours later, Pete arrives with the rest of the Mad Boys and goes into his office without looking at her. Don arrives a bit later, and the episode ends with a shot of Donald Draper’s name on his office door.