‘Mad Men’ recap: The High Life

It was Derby Day on the island, which meant the creatives were stuck working in the city and the muckety mucks trotted off to the country club to watch Roger serenade his new bride in black face. And what a prize, that girl. I like, or at least feel real tremendous affection and sympathy, for all of the characters on this show. All except silly, self-entitled Jane. The bird returned to the Sterling Coop earlier in the episode and we were treated to a killer reunion between Jane and Joan. Jane was dressed to the nines like a joker from a stack of cards. After Joan bathed her in a plume of cigarette smoke, Jane’s neck chords tightened ever so slightly before she sing-songed back ”Roger had my rings resized. I keep losing weight.” She played a cruel ace by giving Joan a mundane task before she turned and swished off to meet her sugar daddy. Joan stared stoney-eyed after her and I was reminded that nobody gives better frozen face than Christina Hendricks.

It was an evening of warring impulses, people either grasping at outdated traditions or finding freedom in experimentation. Somewhere in the middle were those who aren’t after power but rather a little dignity in their modest lives. Joan came to the sad realization that her marriage wasn’t some fantasy endzone. Readying her apartment for a dinner party, she lectured her husband, whose triangular torso in that tight white tee and belted khakis made him look like Brando’s understudy in Streetcar, on the expectations of Emily Post. It was no surprise that Joan was as smooth playing host at home as she is in the office, and the doctors’ wives were impressed. ”The fact that Greg can get a woman like you makes me feel good about his future,” one told her. Joan, glancing up from the roast she was preparing for men who laughed at fart jokes, looked uncharacteristically vulnerable. But what of her future?

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