The Ballad of Peggy and Pete

The fourth season of Mad Men has been maligned in some corners because it "merely" continues to be superb.  Such are the burdens of high expectations.  The final scenes of the most recent episode, "The Rejected," demonstrate that the series deserves those expectations by living up to them.  "The Rejected" is the first episode this season not to focus entirely on the perils of being single and Don Draper, instead concentrating on Peter Campbell's continued development into the person his wife thought she married and Peggy Olson's somewhat reluctant embrace of Beat ethics.  The closing scene—or scenes if you want to be technical—simultaneously links the two of them while showing the growing distance between.  It begins inside the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce with Campbell doing a man thing with other men:

This is the world Peggy can never enter.  It is medium long shot because business isn't personal, even when conducted with your father-in-law (who is square in the center of the frame).  Director John Slattery then cuts to a long shot of the Beatnik crowd Peggy now runs with:

They continue to approach until they walk into medium long shot, at which point they are stopped short by the glass doors of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  What follows is unsubtle but effective: as these people belong neither to the world of the firm nor the one it appeals to, they are denied entry.  Slattery shoots them through the material barrier separating them from that world, then cuts to a long shot of its smiling Cerberus:

Peggy quickly steps into the frame and—just in case you missed that worlds were on the verge of colliding here—Slattery cuts to a long shot behind the secretary in order to survey the scene:

Peggy is on the left, aligned with the Beatniks; Peter's on the right, doing man things with men; and they are separated by the guardian of one of the only professions that could keep a creative woman and an enterprising young businessman in the same orbit.  The secretary represents what binds these two together while simultaneously keeping the worlds the inhabit apart.  It is no accident that her stiff posture cuts a line through the frame that is continued by the joint of the glass wall and wood paneling.  Without pushing the windows-equal-freedom angle too strongly, there is no denying that in this scene the set works as representations of the respective worlds Peggy and Pete inhabit: a glass wall leading outside and wood paneling of the sort found in august boardrooms and Mason lodges.  As Peggy heads to the door, Slattery cuts to a medium shot that reiterates the fact that Peter runs in the exclusively male circles she never can:

Then he cuts to another long shot in which all the parties are visible:

Peggy is leaving Peter and his world behind, literally in the background, and is being escorted by a lesbian into one he is barred from.  Significantly, if your eyes follow Peggy out the door, you can't help but see Peter.  Even as she leaves the interstitial world in which someone like her can interact with someone like him, the camera can't help but connect them.  Slattery then swivels the camera around 180 degrees to shoot this group from inside the office:

But as they move toward the elevator—from a medium to a medium long to a long shot—he reveals that this shot has a human perspective:

Slattery is preparing the viewer for the transition from the perspective of an analytical and inhuman observer to a point of view shot:

The camera moves toward Peter's head and then inside it.  The viewer is looking at Peter looking at Peggy in the first medium close up in the scene.  (There is a slight unreality to this point of view shot: it zooms in on the pair in a way only cameras can.  The zooming seems to act as a cinematic proxy for attention or concentration.)  Slattery made sure the nearly invisible wall separating them remained visible, which creates a tension between the intimacy of the close up and the reality of the glass walls separating them.  That he chooses a more intimate when these two are in different rooms is, for obvious reasons, significant.  She sees him peering at her and, by its positioning, the camera acknowledges the bond that will remain despite the increasing distance between them: the baby they had together.  Just to hammer the point home, Slattery slips into Peggy's head:

Then back into Peter's:

Then back into Peggy's

Then back into Peter's:

The conversational rhythm of this silent exchange of glances is no more a coincidence than this sequence of shots occuring in the episode in which Peter learns his wife is pregnant.  They are forever bound to one another, but forever separated from each other too, and in the silence of their respective stares they acknowledge this with what almost seems like tenderness (but could easy be resigned fondness or the like).  As Peggy turns to leave, the camera exits her head, but not her perspective:

The camera moves through the wall of the agency in a seamlessly wipe to the dark hallway outside Don Draper's apartment, in which we witness an old woman enforce privacy in much the same way Draper once did.  More on that later this afternoon.

[A migraine made a liar out of me.  More tomorrow morning when I can open my eyes without seeing pain.]

Comments

[nm]

That's a beautiful analysis of the scene, but how can those kids be "proto-beatniks"? Beatniks were practically over by 1965.

[SEK]

Thanks for catching that. I'd written "proto-hippie," but forgot to delete the "proto-" when I decided to go with "Beatnik." Such are the perils of "Search and Replace."

[Professor Coldheart]

I like this analysis - hell, I like everything you write about Mad Men - but I thought this camerawork was a bit too on-the-nose. "Get it? Get it? Peggy and Pete are drifting into SEPARATE WORLDS! Get it?" Maybe two fewer cuts back and forth from Peggy to Pete; I dunno.

[SEK]

I thought this camerawork was a bit too on-the-nose.

Absolutely. I think the fact that we have an actor--Slattery plays Roger Sterling on the show--directing leads to a little overcompensation. That said, the scene following the wipe, which I'll finish working up today, migraine willing, is much more subtle. But yes, there's one too many reverse shots before the wipe. Were it up to me, I would've lingered on their faces a few beats more each instead of reversing ... but when we're discussing shot selection at this level of detail, we know we're talking about quality, so all's good.

[Holden Pattern]

As a separate but related matter, I'm finding the running critique of market fundamentalism in the show to be an interesting side benefit, especially the sly and silent background mockery of Objectivist Bert Cooper, who (a) is literally never seen to do any productive work whatsoever -- in the last episode, he was just sitting on the lobby couch with his feet on the coffee table, reading a magazine -- and (b) either inherited the money that he got to start the original firm, or had to get it from his sister, since she also had to vote to sell the original firm to the British.

[Wally]

I thought this camerawork was a bit too on-the-nose. "Get it? Get it? Peggy and Pete are drifting into SEPARATE WORLDS! Get it?"

What? If the point of the scene were the division symbolized by the closed office door then yes, the camerawork would be didactic, the scene schematic. But the (lemme coin some word business here) didachtimaticism is only the setup for the scene's main point. Those two worlds need one another (as the pretentious filmmaker couldn't accept but Peggy knows); there is no actual personal/business line (as Pete and his father-in-law got to reexperience in the apartment); the richest life these people can have is always gonna be ambiguous, in-progress, unsatisfied/unsatisfying...and built on mutual acknowledgement and acceptance (as Peggy's complex, beautifully-acted reaction to Pete's news reveals). Pete and Peggy have a genuine connection that none of this career/hangout stuff can actually sever, and as they both become actual grownups, they're finding grownup ways to relate to one another.

They smile at one another through the glass, for god's sake. It's not just the plot-device baby bonding them, it's that they're growing up together, and incidentally, they're living (complexly) with the fact that the baby will grow up without them.

The scene doesn't make a structural or political point, it makes an emotional one. Absolutely beautiful.

[Wally]

Or to put it more briefly: 'Different worlds' is one of the show's schematic premises, which the action of the show continually complicates and undermines. Peggy and Pete live in the same world, just like everybody else. This is the show's version of the puerile Lost finale - each character is afforded chances to experience, to be conscious of, the collapse of the illusion of different worlds. (Interesting counterpoint to the markedly more schematic Sopranos in that regard...)

[Professor Coldheart]

Wally: now that's a fair cop. I'll take it.

[Rezpect]

This scene brought tears to my eyes on Sunday, so well done.