Mad Men – Recap: Don-ward Spiral via Rickey.org Recap video and review of Mad Men – Season 6 Episode 8 – The Crash:
“The Crash” has to rank as one of the strangest episodes in the history of Mad Men, if for ...
Mad Men – Recap: Don-ward Spiral via Rickey.org Recap video and review of Mad Men – Season 6 Episode 8 – The Crash:
“The Crash” has to rank as one of the strangest episodes in the history of Mad Men, if for no other reason than I can’t seem to pinpoint exactly what it was trying to say. There’s a certain desperation at the heart of the narrative this week, as Don (Jon Hamm) tries to win back Sylvia (Linda Cardellini) and, in the process, ends up getting strung out on drugs with the rest of his staff, culminating in a three day weekend in which nothing really gets accomplished. The episode rivals Roger’s (John Slattery) similar drug-fueled haze in “Far Away Places,” yet I’d argue that the story here is far more jarring in how it dislodges figures both high and low. It’s not just bigwigs like Don getting “energy serum” injections, it’s the men in the middle like Stan (Jay R. Ferguson) and Ken (Aaron Staton), and even some of the newbies from CGC who are a bit lower on the hierarchy. What results is office-wide chaos, and what is likely to be the most divisive episode of the season: you’re either going to love this for its wackiness and subtextual narrative, or you’re going to loathe it for that wackiness and for how it offers subtext in lieu of an actual story. I’m leaning a bit closer towards loving it, if only because it’s rare for us to get an episode that’s as completely off-the-rails as this (I’m not sure Aaron Staton is going to get another opportunity to tap dance while monologuing, for instance). The subtext-heavy narrative is also in service of illustrating the lasting implications of Don’s breakup with Sylvia, and how procuring a car account can both legitimize a firm and turn it into a “whorehouse,” in a manner of speaking. There’s also likely to be considerable fallout as a result of how everyone acted in their altered states, and that should be an interesting route for the narrative to explore, going forward.
Credit: AMC
So Frank Gleason is dead. Granted, he hasn’t been someone with whom we’ve been all that close (or even all that familiar, beyond the last two or three episodes), yet his death hits the CGC side of the firm pretty hard, particularly Ted (Kevin Rahm), who takes the weekend off following Frank’s funeral. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time, since the Chevy account has thrown the firm into disarray. Ken is being subjected to all manner of unpleasantries as a result of his job as the point man for the account: he has to chaffeur the Chevy execs around town for drinks, after which they fire guns out of his car while forcing him to accelerate, before covering his eyes so he can’t even see where he’s driving. This results in an accident that injures Ken’s leg and causes him to limp into office the next day, where he announces that Chevy hates everything the firm has come up with, and is giving them the weekend to come up with something new. And so Jim Cutler calls in a physician to give out injections of his special “energy serum” (probably speed) to the employees to help usher them through the grueling 72 hour period. Don, Ken, Stan and several others take injections, and just like that, we’re off to the races…
Credit: AMC/Yahoo! TV
Don loses it when Sylvia calls to give him the third degree over stalking her. Apparently, he’s been staking out her apartment, and her husband has discovered Don’s pile of cigarette butts. Apparently, Arnold thinks Sylvia has taken up smoking again, and she fears it’s only a matter of time before he discovers the truth. In essence, Sylvia is terrified that Don is going to ruin the good thing she has going with Arnold, saying that if he keeps this up, he’s going to learn about the affair and then murder her. While she was merely being
