Shoot (1x09)
"Shoot", perhaps more so than any episode yet, is centralized on the women of the show. There is a particular focus on Betty, but to varying degrees, Joan, Peggy, Sally and, through stock footage, Jackie Kennedy, are featured as touchstones. The matters of perception, both of self and of others, and physical worth are always at play in the world of Mad Men, but "Shoot" is really the first episode to dive into the subject headlong.
The episode opens with Betty in the yard, gardening. The kids are playing. The neighbor lets out a whole bunch of pigeons. This seems like a non-sequitor, especially for Mad Men, but we'll come back to it.
Later, at the Opera, Don runs into Jim Hobart, from McCann Erickson. They got the Israeli tourism contract. He makes an attempt to recruit Don to join M.E, but has little success. When his wife, Adele, and Don go to get drinks, he tries to use Betty as leverage - "Anybody ever tell you you're a dead ringer for Grace Kelly?" he asks her. "They used to," Betty responds tiredly. He tells her to come in for a Coca-Cola ad campaign. After the opera, Don and Betty head home rather than go to dinner with Jim and Adele. "Am I that wrong for Coca-Cola?" Betty asks. "You're not wrong for anything," Don tells her.
The next day, Betty tells Francine about the exchange. "Don said the man was trying to sleep with one of us, and he's not comfortable with either," she says. Meanwhile, at Sterling Cooper, Hobart's courtship of Don continues - a membership to New York Athletic Club, complete with towel. Over the phone, Hobart offers Don 3 years at $35K - 5,000 more than he makes at SC.
Betty visits Dr. Wayne. She reveals that Don was a young copy writer for a fur company when they met. She was modeling the fur, and as models do, she had to give the fur back when the shoot was done. Don made a move then, but she didn't bite. A few days later, the fur arrived at her door. Such a smooth operator, that Don Draper. We also learn that, though her mother instilled a strong sense of style over substance, and the importance of personal appearance, she hated the fact that her daughter was a model, and compared it to prostitution. Dr. Wayne tells Betty that old trope - "You're angry at your mother," which arouses perhaps the strongest emotional response we ever really see from Betty - one of outright indignation.
Jackie Kennedy is shown on TV, for the first time in the series, doing a Spanish-language campaign ad, something that was unheard of until the Kennedy campaign.
At the office, Peggy is experiencing some... difficulties. Her skirt rips at the waist, which she dutifully tries to cover by tying a sweater around her midsection. That fails, and Joan lends her an outlandish outfit, and chastises her - "You're hiding a very pretty girl with too much lunch." The boys around the office view her as a piece of fruit going bad in a hurry. Ken says she's like a lobster - "All the meat's in the tail", which causes Pete to clock him right in the face. As mentioned above, I think Pete is only drawn to Peggy when she's at her lowest points. When she's riding tall, he wants nothing to do with her. I'm not sure why, though - is it a power thing?
[continued]
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Cokes as The Green Lantern, by fr0q
http://img.imgcake.com/greencokespngsa.png