SEASON 7, EPISODE 10.

Mathis is now my new favorite character, too bad he’s [SPOILER] fired. First of all, his inept use of Don’s line gave me my first belly laugh of the season. (His foul mouth, which Don also mentions when he fires him, is one of the tiny cracks starting the avalanche of obscenity that would be the 70s and ever after.) Second, Mathis got to something profoundly important about Don that no other male on the show has been willing to approach. (Which reminds me: Don’s supposed to be a genius but he’s nothing but glib; Ginsburg was supposed to be a genius but he was just nuts. Mathis the hack is the only “creative” on this show with any insight on actual human beings.)

Mathis gets to Don partly because he talks back to him, which is something Don never has to take from subordinates. But the lack of respect for his talent and position is nothing compared to the slap about him being nothing but handsome, and Mathis’ relay of the story that Lucky Strike scion Garner was in love with Don and wanted to jack him off. That hits Don where he lives; earlier, when Cutler called him out for his hyper-masculinity (“a bully and drunk… a football player in a suit”) it was just ridiculous, but hearing about how Don’s sexuality affects men really pisses him off. It suddenly lights up all the gay stories in the show, and also Don’s much-discussed history as a victim of sexual abuse. For a moment we and Don have to face that his behavior is compulsive, that his fetish for objectification comes from being objectified, a reaction to the real story of his past…

…which Sally brings up, come to think of it, at dinner later as a way of peeling Don off her nubile classmate. Here too both Don and we get the benefit of the insight: Sally sees the desire to please “just comes oozing out” of Don. She’s hip enough to get that, but too young to know what it comes from. She knows about the poverty (the last time she showed any admiration for her dad was when he finally shared that with her) and she knows (or says she knows) something about sex, but she doesn’t know how deep and twisted it can get. Don’s send-off is as honest as it can be and as hopelessly square as it has to be: “You’re a very beautiful girl,” he tells her – how many other girls has he told that? – “It’s up to you to be more than that.” That’s a pretty open brief. Hey, maybe she’ll join Baader-Meinhof! Or The Runaways!

The Joan-Rich Cracker story was cute, and gives more room to Christina Hendricks’ great Season 7b performance, but it’s inconsequential except as a counterpoint to Don’s alleged big question – “What do you see for the future?” – to which everyone at SCP has transparently bad, short-sighted answers. That kind of cable-zen garbage gives me the itch, but so does the hoary story of monsters of ambition reaching beyond their busy schedules to find true love. If this season ends with Joan having a baby with Rich Cracker in his penthouse, may the shade of Douglas Sirk strangle Matt Weiner with his ectoplasm.

I have to say I approve of all the kids on Mad Men behaving sort of like they’re in a Bresson movie; it really makes them seem a different species from the grown-ups. The funny thing is, Betty has always acted a little like that too. (It’s one of the reasons why she was so fearless with the East Village hippies – she regarded them as less successful child-adults.) But Betty is not really a child, and her handling of Glenn when he spills about his enlistment looks very gentle and correct till you remember she’s been emotionally manipulating him since he was a little boy and she doesn’t even have a clue that it’s fucked up to do that to minors (though maybe the psych classes will help). “Don’t tell me that” was a great preface to “you did this for me” because the thing Betty really wants is not to be told.

Sally’s understanding of Vietnam is on a par with her understanding of her father: she doesn’t know much except it stinks. How I wish we could have a Sally spin-off and follow her through the days of Johnny Rotten and Ronald Reagan.