After watching tonight’s episode of “Mad Men,” I decided to wander about the Internet to see what fans had to say about it. While perusing a discussion thread about “Far Away Places” on Reddit, the top comment, which came from user “ConspiracyMomma,” simply said, “This is the weirdest fucking episode ever.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself. Roger takes LSD and ends his marriage! Peggy smokes a stranger’s weed then gives him a hand job in a theater! And Don fights with Megan and loses her while on a road trip!
Yes, “Far Away Places” certainly was odd in all the right ways. The episode included plenty of random flashbacks about which the audience was given no warning. But all of this contributed to a completely disorienting mood throughout the episode, a smart move from director Scott Hornbacher.
The episode’s three plots are loosely intertwined. I’ll address them in the order in which they appeared in the episode.
First, Peggy’s plot. Peggy wakes up with her journalist boyfriend, Abe, and immediately begins fighting with him. He complains that she spends too much time at the office and never makes time for her. Peggy agrees, all but saying her job is more important than her boyfriend.
In the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce offices, Don announces he and Megan are leaving for the weekend. This leaves Peggy, her artist Stan, and Ken Cosgrove to sell Heinz on an ad campaign for beans.
Peggy does her best impression of Don to try and sell the Heinz representative on the campaign, but he doesn’t like it. This is the guy who previously complained about Peggy’s hilarious “Bean Ballet” idea in this season’s premiere. Seeing that there’s no pleasing him, Peggy begins telling the client that he’s wrong and that her campaign idea is great. The Heinz rep gets offended and leaves the room, telling them to keep working on another campaign.
Peggy then goes to her office, pours herself a glass of whiskey and downs it all in one shot. She then cuts out of work early to see a movie that her boyfriend wanted to see together. It’s here that a stranger offers her a joint, which they pass back and forth. He attempts to put his hand up Peggy’s skirt, but she declines, instead unzipping his pants and, well, you know.
Peggy’s behavior here is completely reflective of Don, or at least the old Don. Yelling at a difficult client until he accepts your idea? Check. Having a drink after a tough meeting? Check. Sexual encounters with strangers in odd places? Check and check. It seems Peggy, much like Pete, is trying to be the next Don.
After returning to work and falling asleep, Peggy is working late with her other artist, Ginsberg. She asks about his upbringing, to which he replies he’s from Mars. Peggy asks for a serious answer. But Ginsberg again says he’s from Mars. He knows she doesn’t believe him and he doesn’t care. But after further conversation, Ginsberg reveals he was born in a concentration camp, which, given that we’re only in 1966 here, is quite likely.
Ginsberg is quickly becoming the most interesting new character on the show. At their core, everyone in “Mad Men” is trying to cover up who they really are. Ginsberg, as different as he’d like to think he is, is just covering up the truth about himself and where he’s from. He’d rather feed someone a lie than tell them he was born in a concentration camp. I’m looking forward to more development of this character, as he could become a great addition to the cast.
Next up was Roger’s plot. After speaking with Don moments before he and Megan took off for the weekend, we see Roger preparing to go to dinner with his young wife, Jane, and her friends. Roger and Jane hate each other. The only thing they have in common is that they’re good-looking and that’s exactly what their relationship is based off of.
Following a pretentious dinner, Roger and Jane drop acid with the other partygoers. The effects take a while to hit Roger, but when they do, the audience starts seeing things from his point of view. Not only in terms of cinematography, but we hear Roger’s thoughts inside his head about the party and his life.
This sequence felt like it was straight out of a Fellini movie. It was full of hilariously weird moments, but also had some terrific insight into Roger’s character. There’s an advertisement in a magazine that features a man who is equal parts Roger and Don. Roger lingers on this picture before walking over to a mirror, which someone discourages him from doing. But Roger continues, seeing Don, instead of a party guest, standing behind him.
Roger and Jane then go home and take a bath together. They talk openly about how awful their marriage is. They both acknowledge that they’ve cheated, though Jane has only kissed a man once. At the end of their LSD-induced conversation, they agree that parting ways would be best. In the morning, Jane has forgotten that she agreed to a divorce, but Roger reminds her. Jane looks upset about it, but Roger looks like he couldn’t be happier.
Oddly enough, Roger’s plot was probably the one where the least amount of anything happened. I won’t lie, I was a little bored by it from time to time, but the tripping sequence was both funny and eye opening. Roger’s personal and professional lives are slowly going downward, but he doesn’t seem to care one bit.
I’m anxious to see where Roger goes from here. He’s probably the show’s most unpredictable character, so who knows where Matt Weiner will take him? All we know is that it probably won’t be somewhere good.
Lastly, Don and Megan’s plot. After Roger tries to entice Don into a boy’s weekend at a Howard Johnson’s resort, Don says they should invite their wives. Roger declines, so Don and Megan take off by themselves and go to the resort in upstate New York. Don gives Megan almost no choice in the matter, something she makes clear once they get to the resort. Megan wanted to stay with her team and present the pitch to Heinz, but as she says Don always does, he took her away from everyone else.
It’s easy to understand where Megan’s frustration is coming from here, even if she expresses it in a pretty childish way. If it were Betty, she wouldn’t argue about leaving and she certainly wouldn’t express her discontent. After Megan and Don disrupt the restaurant at the resort, they head for the car. Don tells Megan to get in, but she’s done following his orders. So, Don drives away and leaves here there.
After driving for a while, Don realizes he’s made a mistake and goes back to get her. Except Megan’s nowhere to be found. Don frantically searches for her, but the only trace left of her is her sunglasses. A waitress tells Don Megan was last seen speaking with a group of men. It’s then that both Don and the audience start to fear the worst. What if Megan was kidnapped or killed?
Don’s disorientation here doesn’t come from drugs like Peggy or Roger, but from his panic over his lost wife. It’s here that we see how much power Megan has over him. If Don and Betty were in this situation, Don wouldn’t be frantically looking for her, he’d be angrily searching to reprimand her for leaving.
During the long and somewhat tedious sequence in which Don looks and waits for Megan, we see him in a phone booth calling the office and Megan’s mother. It’s here that a main underlying theme of “Far Away Places” comes out.
Each character has a scene in which they see a reflection of themselves. Roger and Peggy’s are in mirrors. Don and Ginsberg’s are in glass. Regardless of the surface, we find the real message of the episode – the fragility of each character’s identity.
It’s a simple enough concept. No one, not even Don, wants to be who he or she is. Even Roger sees a younger version of himself in the magazine ad, but it’s clear, at least to the audience, that he’s not the same person. Ultimately, each of these characters wants to look in a mirror and see someone different from himself or herself.
Don then returns home and finds Megan has locked the door. He kicks it open and grabs her, yelling at her for leaving the resort. She’s angry at him and crying because he left her. After a short chase around the apartment, Don essentially tackles Megan. After she stands up, he remains on the floor, hugging her around her stomach. He almost begins to cry, saying he was just afraid he had lost her.
Hornbacher frames this scene very well. Megan, who’s standing, is shot only from low angles. She stands while Don is crumbling beneath her, never bending down to help him up. She has complete control in this relationship and that’s why she lets the fight go so quickly.
Much like the other episodes, the last scene was my favorite. Mainly because we got a scene with Bert Cooper, the oldest member of the firm, a man who’s a complete badass that we’ve hardly seen this season.
Cooper calls Don into the conference room where he (finally!) addresses Don’s absence from work. He tells Don the quality of the firm’s work has suffered and to stop putting his new wife above his job, something Don doesn’t like to hear.
“It’s none of your business,” Don tells him, to which Cooper responds with what is arguably one of the best lines of the series. “Actually, it is my business.” And with that, Cooper exits the room, leaving Don to think about his future.
Though it scores points for experimentation, “Far Away Places” was this season’s weakest episode. A couple of moments in each character’s plot fell flat, but I enjoyed the sense of cohesion amongst the storylines. This was an episode where not a lot actually happened, but we still learned more about our main characters. I’d just prefer if we learned about them in more exciting ways.
Be sure to check back next week for my review and recap of episode seven, “At the Codfish Ball.”
Joey Groner
Entertainment Writer
I recently got a hold of the book “Last Stop This Town” by David H. Steinberg, who was the screenwriter for several of the “American Pie” movies. For those fans of the series, you’ll find the first movie and this book to be quite similar.