Perhaps to help keep Mad Men’s brand name alive during their long exile in television Siberia before its fifth season debut early next year, The Daily Beast interviews series creator Matthew Weiner and star Jon Hamm for “an oral history” of the fourth season episode “The Suitcase,” which the Website describes as the show’s “gut-wrenching, Emmy-nominated episode:”
Mad Men’s staggering fourth season featured more than a few memorable episodes, but perhaps none more so than the tour de force, “The Suitcase.” Written by creator Matthew Weiner and directed by Jennifer Getzinger, the episode finds Emmy nominees Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss’s Don Draper and Peggy Olson spending the night at the office, as Don avoids making a phone call that would confirm the death of Anna Draper (Melinda Page Hamilton), the one person who truly knew him.
Nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding writing, the episode—set against the backdrop of the Muhammad Ali/Sonny Liston fight—depicts Don and Peggy dancing a dangerous two-step with one another, as truths emerge, emotions pour out, and the two reaffirm their friendship in a silent and bittersweet moment.
I may be in the minority on this, but I thought this episode was in some ways the nadir of the show’s very shaky fourth season. Don’s rival, angry alcoholic Duck Phillips defecating onto Roger’s white leather chair? Duck and Don wrestling on the floor like Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Ken Russell’s Women in Love? (Thank God for basic cable requiring Duck and Don to keep their duds on.) And shortly afterwards, Don, in a drunken fog, sees the ghost of Anna Draper wandering off to the hereafter? As Woody Allen said when he was shooting Interiors, “It’s always been my fear. I think I’m writing Long Day’s Journey Into Night — and it turns into Edge of Night.” Similarly, this was the series’ collapse into soap opera land. It eventually recovered; the series finale was quite strong, but I didn’t find the motivations of the characters during their Fitzgerald-esque 3:00 AM crack-up in “The Suitcase” to be at all believable, nor was the over-the-top melodramatic (in the worst sense of the word) action.
Am I wrong? (I mean about this episode, not life in general.) Tell me how so in the comments below.
I think I can quote Don’s Kodak Carrousel pitch verbatim. That was 2007.
The out-of-town reveal of Salvatore’s homosexuality — and Don dismissing him for it to please a client — was just good, raw drama. 2008.
Conrad Hilton’s surprise appearance in 2009 was one of the best cameos ever, and it nicely developed into a small role.
These are just a very few of my favorite standout moments from the series.
But I’ll be damned if I can remember anything from Season Four.
The episode where Don and Pete tried to sign Honda and Roger lost it (and plenty of American businessman in real life shared those sentiments, even as late as 1989) was quite good, I thought. But it felt like a script leftover from the earlier seasons that they simply reworked to fit into the new office locale.
I’d agree that most of season four was pretty shaky and not too memorable. I didn’t have cable when season four started, so I watched it on DVD. My impression was that the first three episodes were pretty weak, the next three were better (second dvd), and the last 7 (the last two dvds) were getting back closer to the normal standards for the series. I remember the episode you’re describing, but I don’t recall whether it was on the first disc or the second. Needless to say, I don’t think I’d have singled it out for any special awards, either.
Polite disagreement here. I just finished watching the entire season on DVD and I enjoyed pretty much all of season 4. I loved the final episode but I think the most memorable episode is when Peggy Olsen tries to do some ad work naked and completely knocks her “back to nature” co-worker for a loop. I’ll agree it wasn’t as strong as the previous seasons, but that means it gets an A- instead of an A or A+.
Yes, that was a fun scene as well. And the entire episode where Don goes back to California only to get very bad news about Mrs. Draper #1 was quite good.
I also felt that at times, it descended into soap opera. Season 5 will be a key season. It will determine if the series has a point as opposed to a series of vignettes showing most of the characters behaving badly.
I think there were many memorable moments in Mad Men Season 4, but the most memorable is Miss Blankenship!!!
I respectfully disagree. While there was not a clearly-defined storyline last season, except maybe the ups and downs of a struggling (and later, collapsing) company’s lifeline, S4 was still the strongly-written, daring Mad Men. It began on such a low note, with few lighthearted moments, and things got worse afterwards; but there were still a lot of scenes worth a rewatch: Lane and Don drowning their sorrows together in a boy’s night out early in the season, which was very, very funny, like a Roald Dahl story; the Draper-Chaough rivalry starting with ‘The Chrysanthemum and the Sword’; Ken’s victorious return; Freddy’s not so victorious return; the brick joke involving Roger’s book and Dr Lyle Evans; the uncomfortable moments in SCDP’s Christmas party; Miss Blankenship’s death; Don’s slow disintegration in ‘Hands and Knees’; Midge and the New York Times letter she inspires, only to name a few. I can’t even recall a single moment I disliked in ‘The Suitcase’, to me with ‘Nixon vs Kennedy’ and ‘Shut the Door, Have a Seat’ it is one of the best episodes of the series. Don’s personal life, Peggy’s personal life, their professional lives together and the growing tension between them detonated hugely, and in such an understated performance that it was at times like watching an Arthur Miller play. It’s fair to say that S4 ended with a surprisingly harmless finale, but it was admittedly an antebellum. With the home in Ossinning gone, probably the only place left that will remind us of S1 is the Campbell apartment. I am excited for S5.
Hey, maybe I’m getting too old and losing it but I don’t remember seeing those electric blower hand dryers in public restrooms in the 1960s.
“those electric blower hand dryers in public restrooms in the 1960s.”
They were there by 1968 — Arthur C. Clarke said that while touring America promoting 2001, the best political joke he read back then was that somebody taped a sign on one saying, “Press here for five minute speech by LBJ.”