Mad Men -- S06E12 "The Quality of Mercy" Review
"Residuals. You can't let them sneak up on you." --Don Draper
For a show like Mad Men--a show defined and driven by questions of existential identity, perception, manipulation, and ruthless white-collar political maneuvering--nothing is ever quite what it seems. This is no great revelation; on the contrary, evidence of the illusory nature of the world Matthew Weiner's developed in his acclaimed, slow-burn advertising drama abounds on every level. Glossy surfaces and bright, fluorescent settings belie the essentially ugly truths hidden expertly by Madison Avenue executives whose job it is to sell people things they don't even know they want. Don Draper is one of these executives, and he's very, very good at his job. In the show's pilot, he dismisses a female friend's notions of transcendental storybook romance, telling her, "What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons." In Don's cynical, pragmatic worldview, there is no need for sincerity when the illusion of sincerity is more useful for getting what you want from people.
Every once in a while, one or more of the characters in Mad Men lose sight of this perspective and find themselves sucked into a situation in which their normally-reserved emotions start to get the better of them. They lose their composure; they lose control of their power to influence the desires of others. This happens to multiple characters in this week's episode, "The Quality of Mercy," and while Don isn't one of them, he's been there before (most recently at the end of last week's episode) and he can pretty easily recognize when others around him are beginning to slip. As he tells Ted Chaough in the boardroom this week, "You're not thinking with your head."
In that scene and in many others in this episode, there's a pretty clear division between characters who give in to their emotions, their instincts, or their personal desires, and those who force themselves to rise above all that and are consequently able to bend those weaker characters to their will. This is what Mad Men is about. It's what allows people like Don and Roger to stay on the top of the food chain even as their age is really beginning to show. And it's what keeps characters like Betty and Pete from becoming the people they've always dreamed of being.
But hey, at least Pete is learning, it seems. After his season-one mistake of trying to leverage incriminating evidence against a master manipulator with a false identity, he finds himself in basically the same position with the enigmatic Bob Benson, whose real backstory is finally revealed by way of Pete's prudent investigation. After learning that Bob was a closeted gay man last week, we now discover even more compromising tidbits about the man, and Pete wisely stops short of publicly uncovering the whole charade because he knows he'd probably just get played again. By holding on to Bob's secrets, Pete has just enough power to keep Bob at arm's length professionally, which is all he really wanted anyway.
Another character who's learning to flex her muscles of manipulation is
Meanwhile Ted, as Don points out, is on the other end of the spectrum. By using his creative power on blindly encouraging Peggy's great-but-overbudgeted ad ideas, Ted is unknowingly being led around the office by his dick, to the annoyance and exasperation of everyone else in the office. The Ted vs. Don arc has been one of the more compelling through-lines of this season, and with their personal war mostly being fought over the battleground of Peggy Olson's allegiance, this was a perfect opportunity for Don to cut them both down, and he capitalized on that chance with his customary gusto. It's not exactly a redemption or a return to form for Don--the opening and closing shots of the episode show him curled up in the fetal position, too beaten down by stress and self-loathing to stay upright--but as long as he continues to keep his emotions and personal hangups in check, he can rest comfortably knowing that his war with Ted has already been won.
Written by Modern Sin
