A scene that captured a bygone attitude

There was something on Mad Men this week that really captured the feel of the age - at least when it applies to spanking. Not that there was any spanking; it was established in session that the main character (Don) doesn't believe in spanking. And that's part of the reason the scene captured the mood so well.

Don is divorced with a new (younger) wife while his ex and the kids (who he sees every other weekend) live in a suburb of New York. His daughter Sally (who is 14) and a girl in her class are on a class trip to New York and Don's ex-wife doesn't trust them alone at a hotel (at least not when the teacher acting chaperon is only 25 and the rest of the students are boys) so the two are staying at Don's place before taking part in a student UN at the UN Building. The two girls are treating it like a sleepover and having a giggle fest about a boy when the young stepmother enters and says:
"You girls have a big day tomorrow and I can tell you RIGHT NOW that the next time this door opens it won't be me. Lights out."
- and both girls settle down. Practically immediately.

No, there's no open threat of a spanking in that scene, but there is an implied one. Sally knows that her father had never spanked her and the friend knows how unlikely it would be for him to spank either of them, but they settle down because in the back of their minds is the knowledge that maybe it might happen. That maybe if they keep giggling then just maybe Don would change his mind about spanking, at least for that night.

And that was the Age that disappeared sometime around the mid 80s. An Age when you knew that if you pushed your parents too far then they might spank. Not that they would but that they might. They could be non-spanking parents for years, but that option was always there.

Goodgulf

That scene was certainly reminiscent of a bygone era and Sally occasionally strikes me as a young lady who could use a spanking from time to time, not that she's a real brat or anything. She's pretty good at caring for her little brothers, for instance.

I imagine she's not going to have to worry about her Daddy spanking her anymore since SPOILER ALERT! she caught him having sex with the neighbor. There are some things that cannot be unseen...

Actually, given the choice between seeing that and having her father spank her, I'm sure she would have rather been spanked. Even in front of her friend. A spanking would have shaken her world but much less so than seeing what she saw.

That poor kid has a talent for walking in on adults having illicit sex. A season or two ago she spotted her stepmother's mother (who isn't maternal enough to be a step-grandmother) giving head at a party and now this.

The other girl, she almost deserved a spanking.
SPOILER ALERT!
The visiting girl makes a point to call the young stepmother (who is on a first name basis with Sally) Mrs. Draper because she knows the woman hates being called that. Then she takes a "what I like about the hot boy" letter they both worked on, signs Sally's name on it, and slips it under the boy's backdoor, causing Sally to run home from the student UN, break into the boy's apartment, and see her father and the boy's mother having sex.
Then, when Sally has a "I hate you" moment with her father (for some reason she thinks he's a big phony) and runs off, the girl tells everyone that Sally has a crush on the boy. And she thinks that if she acts stupid she can get a boy.
Yes, she was much more the teen brat than Sally was.

And yes, the plots on the show do get weird. While there are twisting plotlines in Mad Men, the show captures the era (with its attitudes) better than any of the 60s shows it spawned. There were about half a dozen of them and most of them had too much of the modern world mixed in with the era. Which is why (in my opinion) they were cancelled.

Goodgulf

There are lots of things about Mad Men that seem to stimulate my imagination too. The 60's were a time of cultural transition. In the early 60's before say, Woodstock, there were certain things that were culturally normal like spanking for disobedient children. Not everyone did it, but it wasn't automatically labelled as child abuse. Same with wife spanking--it was usually treated as something humorously titillating when it came to light. Sexual harassment in the work place? In the 60's no one had ever heard of it. Bosses hit on secretaries all the time without fear of lawsuits. And if you recall that scenario launched a zillion spanking stories in which a secretary or shoplifter or other miscreant faced a choice. We still write these today but unless set up properly they are not believable. Set in the world of Mad Men they are very believable.

My nieces husband worked the sound boom on a Madmen Episode.

In hindsight, I'm sure Sally would rather get spanked than see what she saw and I'm sure Don would rather she'd not seen him with Sylvia. I think it basically ruined their relationship, such as it was, changing it for the worse. It's not that he's father of the year but she had some degree of respect for him, if not admiration and now that's gone. When she saw her "Uncle Roger" getting a Lewinsky from Megan's mother, I don't think it had the same effect. She liked Roger because he kind of treated her like an adult, to a point, and I don't think she was as disillusioned as she was seeing her Dad with his pants around his ankles "comforting" Mrs. Rosen.

Sally "frenemy", on the other hand, deserves a trip over somone's lap, an extended one, with a hairbrush...

What was worse was seeing him being thanked by the woman's husband and son. To know him as a phony then to see how he can fool everyone...

But he in a way he wasn't. My take was that he was trying to make up for not being there for his brother, to salve his conscious about the soldier in Hawaii and his own cowardliness, that he wasn't even thinking about getting back with his ex-lover when he did it. He did a nice thing, was unexpectedly rewarded, then paid a huge price for accepting the reward.

And the Frenemy - she is a mirror of all the possible things that can be wrong with a girl that age. She needles adults in a polite "you can't say I'm not being polite" way, accuses her friend of having a bathroom that smells like pee, feels that playing dumb is a good way to get boys, is too young to go to second base (twice), and betrays Sally repeatedly (sending that letter, revealing Sally's crush). It would be nice to think that her manipulating ways will catch up with her, but I doubt it. She's the sort that cruises through life until she either crashes or becomes a suburban housewife.

But Mad Men is so well written (and the sound is good too) that it captures to the Age to the point that if she did end up over a lap then it would be plausible for the setting.

Goodgulf

Mad Men is exceedingly well-written and the sound tracks chosen for each episode are wonderfully evocative of the era (I remember the late 60's well, apparently being one of the few at the time who didn't do drugs ).

I think Don is finding out that no good deed goes unpunished...