Mad Men – The all singing, all dancing episode

This week’s episode of Mad Men was quite … enlightening. We saw a different side to many of the characters. In addition to seeing Peggy Olson get high, we learned that Don used to pee in the trunks of rich peoples’ cars. What amused me the most though, was how musically inclined the folks at Sterling Cooper are. Between Joan’s accordion, Pete’s dancing, and Roger and Paul’s singing, these folks could go on the road. Albeit, playing to a very specific crowd: one who enjoys French music and doesn’t mind, you know, super-awkward racism.

More than the performances, I found myself really interested in the story behind them. For instance, Pete and his wife have clearly been taking dancing lessons. Is this a life-long passion for them, or is it something she is using to fill the time that the baby she can’t have would be taking up? Do they dance instead of diaper?

Skip to 4:20 in the video to watch Pete and his wife get down.

Paul has always been the most pretentious member of Sterling Cooper, and we found out that apparently its been going on for a while. According to his “drug pusher” former college buddy, who looks disturbingly like a young Tom Cruise, Paul was straight-up Jersey when he entered Princeton as a freshman, and developed his manner of speaking — “what is that, an English accent?” — in the years that followed. However, let it be known that he was not kicked out of The Tiger Tones (the Princeton a capella group), but rather he left because he had mono. He can totally sing!

Paul Kinsey doesn’t want young Tom Cruise to go, at 2:30.

Now, nobody would call Roger Sterling the most sensitive man on the planet, but would you have guessed that he entertains his twenty-year-old wife by putting shoe polish on his face and serenading her with songs about “darkies?” How does that even come about? Was he sitting in Penn Station,  having his shoes shined one day and thought, “you know what would be funny?” But hey, when you have a much younger wife, I guess any way you can keep her interested is what you have to do.

You guys, not only does Joan play the accordion, but she knows French! At least, she knows a French song. Either way, I’m impressed. Would you have thought the way Joan has spent many nights was on the squeezebox? And that it wouldn’t be a euphemism for anything? This performance was the most fascinating of all for me, and the song is lovely. I sincerely hope it ends up on the soundtrack.

Joan’s accordion song, “C’est magnifique!”

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on Sep 02, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT