Mad Men: THE JET SET Was About Unwanted Children
My favourite stories across media bring me new insights into myself and human life. I’m a purist in text but being not that attached to film, I’ll take a good story even with lower production values. Mad Men hits that sweet spot of great storytelling as well as superb film-making techniques.
Mad Men is purportedly the tale of the mystery man, creative genius, exemplary adman, and debonair heartbreaker Don Draper. It is also the story of advertising in its American golden age of the 1950s-60s. Advertising is the apt medium to tap into the pulse of this capitalist society. This is the generation that is fresh off two world wars and producing a generation that will later be known as the baby boom. There are so many of them, they come from wounded people and they carry the unsurmountable pressure of building a new world.
THE JET SET was an ad for the Mad Men life
‘The Jet Set’ Season 2 Episode 11 of Mad Men is an odd standalone episode, much removed from the main show. It moves from ambitious Manhattan money-chasing to the sun-soaked opulence of California. Don Draper and Pete Campbell are meeting astronauts (a nice transition from the post-WWW II 1950s to the space race 1960s). Everyone looks good, the weather is lovely, there is sunshine and colour everywhere.
If you came into the show at this point, you might view this episode as Don’s dream vacation. An advertisement for the great life. The show reveals how hollow and haunting that is.
‘The Jet Set’ comes on the heels of Betty throwing Don out for cheating with Bobbie Barrett. She is at her final breaking point. She has already hinted to her psychiatrist in S1 E13 ‘The Wheel’ that she is aware of Don’s infidelities.
In his typical fashion, Don escapes, using the pretext of the California new business visit.
The other Mad Men
Elsewhere in the episode, copywriter Paul Kinsey is unceremoniously left behind, his boss Don having highjacked his ticket. So this tortured artist on the verge of a breakup with his black girlfriend convinces her that he chose to stay back to support her. And he hops on a bus, the only white face in a sea of black, to an anti-racism protest. The saviour complex looks good, the ‘ethnic’ girlfriend suits Paul’s carefully constructed persona. The term wokebro wouldn’t come into existence till 50 years later. At the time, it’s all about the appearance.
In California, Don ditches the space meeting to take off with a bunch of strangers. This sets the stage for a fortunate turn of events for fervent accounts man Pete Campbell. Just an episode earlier, he has outed Don’s secret identity to Bert Cooper who paid him no heed with the all-time favourite line – “Mr.Campbell, who cares?”. Pete however unwittingly gets to take the lead that he’s tried so hard for. He’s a man who doesn’t drive and he’s stranded alone in a city with no public transport. Later when he throws a fit, Don replies with maddening calm,
“I left you there because I knew you could handle it.”
Whether Don believes that or not (we know his reasons for taking off were not quite so altruistic), this incident becomes the turning point of Pete’s relationship with Don, a second vanguard of Man Men after Peggy/Don.
Don’s journey with THE JET SET
Don is picked up by a youthful beauty named Joy. He finds himself in a group of ‘nomads’ with plenty of wealth and no seeming attachments. Only after sleeping with Joy, does he discover that Willy (one of the others in the rich nomads) is her father. Their free sex and lavish lives feel bizarre even to Don, the cheating adman who hocks luxury. There are various other characters with befuddling interactions with each other.
One always feels slightly uneasy and like one doesn’t belong in this perfect world. Imposter syndrome is never stronger than when they invite Don to join their excesses. In earlier watches, I didn’t understand why Don returned to his old life when he was being offered the ultimate dream. Luxury, unfettered sex, validation and no questions asked.
The ‘other side of the coin’ scene
Don has just discovered that Joy is the daughter of Willy, the man who approached him in the California hotel. Joy invites him to join them in Nassau and beyond promising that her father will take care of everything as
“He likes you. You are beautiful and don’t talk much.”
When he doesn’t reply, she adds (almost pleading) that,
“I’m not possessive. You can be with whoever you like.”
She is interrupted by the entry of Christian. A late arrival to the party, he appears carrying a sleeping girl and a small boy standing behind him. Christian complains to the party people in the pool about his divorce (and they look on mostly disinterested). As Joy and Christian talk, Don focuses on the little boy who has no dialogues or actions. He looks confused and scared.
r/Mad Men perspective
An earlier comment on the subreddit framed Mad Men‘s recurring theme as unwanted children. Without the context of the fandom analyses, this view might seem off. Most of the show takes place in conference rooms, pitch meetings, client discussions and bedrooms. Like love, childhood is a concept romanticised or capitalised on, to sell more products. How interesting that the episode just before THE JET SET closes with a showreel of Don’s family pictures to sell a Kodak product! Something clicked into place when I watched THE JET SET with this perspective.
After Christian leaves, Don turns to look at Willy at the far end of the pool, making out with a woman. It contextualises the consequences of this lifestyle for him. Joy is an unwanted child. Rich, young, beautiful but unwanted by her father. That would explain her fascination for an older man and why she’s so desperate for Don’s attention.
Immediately after this, Don meets Anna and confesses to her,
“I ruined everything. My family, my children.”
The unwanted children of Mad Men
We rarely see the side of Don that dwells in despair or regret, in his confident boardroom settings. What a marvellous depiction to show his happiest self in the dark confines of capitalism while his rawest emotions take place in the unpolluted sunshine! Don is realising he has been making his children feel unwanted. In the episode, he confesses to Anna about his brother Adam coming to meet him. Another unwanted child. Of course, they are reflections of his self – the first unwanted child. He underlines this by switching the subject to saying that he has shared things with Anna that he has never told Betty.
This made me realise how the show is strewn with other unwanted children. Gene Hofstader tells Betty,
“You are a household cat. You are very important and you have nothing to do.”
Megan Calvet is born to an indifferent father and a cruel mother. Glen Bishop runs away from home when his parents divorce. Peggy Olsen’s baby. Rachel Menken’s father wanted a boy instead.
How their lives play out with their respective struggles, their coping mechanisms and the ways they love and wound each other! THE JET SET is the crucible that shows us the innate forces that drive us all.
The community sentiment of fandoms
LizzyBeth reminded me of my favourite thing about online fandoms. It’s that you can be who you want to be regardless of your identity intersections and personality parameters in real life. An online fandom is a fresh opportunity to invent a voice, a set of viewpoints and thus a personality among similarly interested identities. Capitalist internet companies have commodified ‘community’. But the original fandoms gave members a safe space to explore parts of themselves that found no place in their regular lives.
If you’re a Mad Men fan, drop a comment! And do check out my upcoming Mad Men posts here.
I’m watching Mad Men at 3AM in my timezone and just finished this episode. I found myself a bit baffled by the dazzling scenes and the mysterious family of Joy. On the Chinese internet there’s very little discussion about the character Joy so I turned to Google for insights. Thank you for your film review; your article feels like a piece of literature to me. The concept of unwanted children resonates deeply, and I would say the appreciation of art does have a threshold. Reading your blog seems to lead me to a brand new perceptual world. It’s true what they say: “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” I’m glad to see this blog is in 2024 and not from a decade ago, making my feeling now even more ineffable.
@Lian Yiming: Hi and welcome to my blog! It is so great to find someone who enjoys thinking about Mad Men in 2024! The Mad Men subreddit is very active but the platform has its limitations. I have a couple of more Mad Men posts coming up and a few older ones too that you can check here. I’d love to hear your thoughts!