A Tale of Two Cities (S6x10)
Airdate: 2 June 2013
Written by: Janet Leahy & Matthew Weiner Directed by: John Slattery
Running Time: 48 minutes
Television writers are architects of their own predicaments. They construct narrative edifices with deliberate gaps, creating tensions that demand resolution, and Mad Men's sixth season offers a textbook example of this creative gambit. The merger that fused Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce with Cutler Gleason Chaough injected fresh dramatic voltage into the series, yet it also bequeathed a cluster of unresolved practicalities—most notably, the question of what exactly to call this unwieldy new beast. A Tale of Two Cities, the tenth episode of Season 6, arrives as something of a clearing house for these accumulated concerns, delivering answers whilst navigating the treacherous cultural currents of late August 1968.
Written by Janet Leahy and series creator Matthew Weiner, the episode unfolds against the backdrop of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago—an event that metastasised into a televised bloodbath, exposing the deep fissures that Vietnam had carved through American society. The violence ripples through the characters' lives, affecting not merely their personal politics but their professional relationships with clients who find themselves on various sides of the ideological divide.
The episode opens with the partners wrestling with a problem that apparently nobody had contemplated during the merger's frantic negotiation: the firm's name, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Cutler Gleason Chaough, has become an unwieldy mouthful that practically demands abbreviation. Roger and Don, however, have little patience for such administrative niggles. They decamp to California alongside Harry Crane, ostensibly to tend to clients including the food producer Carnation. For Don, these West Coast sojourns have historically represented something approaching salvation—a sun-drenched, progressive alternative to New York's increasingly oppressive dysfunction. Yet this trip proves singularly ill-fated. Following their business obligations, the trio find themselves at a lavish Hollywood Hills party where they encounter Danny Sigel, a former employee reborn as an aspiring film producer and fully committed to the hippie lifestyle. The reunion curdles rapidly; Roger's characteristic arrogance manifests in a stream of insults directed at his former cousin-in-law, culminating in Sigel delivering a well-deserved punch to Roger's groin. Meanwhile, Don, seduced by an attractive partygoer, partakes of hashish and descends into hallucinatory visions—Megan appears as a pregnant hippie, and the one-armed Private Dinkins materialises to announce his death in Vietnam. Roger, displaying unexpected resourcefulness, fishes Don from the swimming pool into which he has stumbled, saving him from drowning. Don returns to New York nursing both a cold and a profound disillusionment; the golden land that once promised reinvention has revealed itself as merely another site of disappointment. The partners ultimately settle upon Sterling Cooper & Partners—a compromise that excises individual egos from the letterhead, including those of Pete Campbell and Joan Holloway, whose absence from the firm's nomenclature has seeded understandable anxiety about their long-term security.
This insecurity proves warranted. Unbeknownst to them, Jim Cutler attempts to exploit Don and Roger's absence, urging Ted Chaough to authorise a purge of SCDP loyalists from the staff. Ted's refusal represents a rare moment of moral steadiness amidst the shifting alliances. Joan, meanwhile, discovers opportunity in unexpected quarters. What begins as a blind date with a man named Andy Hayes (Spencer Garrett) reveals itself as a professional windfall when Hayes proves to be an Avon cosmetics executive tentatively exploring advertising possibilities. Joan's entrepreneurial instincts immediately engage; she recognises the account's potential and brings Peggy Olson to the subsequent meeting, deliberately bypassing Pete, who technically oversees new business development. Pete's fury upon discovering this circumvention is predictable, but Peggy's quick-witted fabrication—that Joan maintains a personal connection with Hayes—shields her colleague from repercussions.
The episode also traces the DNC's psychological fallout through Michael Ginsberg, whose agitation manifests in a confrontation with Cutler that threatens his employment. Bob Benson intervenes with characteristic smoothness, calming Ginsberg and preserving his position, only to find himself and Ginsberg dispatched to the Manischewitz wine account—a consolation prize that promptly evaporates when Benson returns with news that the client has suspended operations.
John Slattery, directing his third episode, clearly relishes the opportunity to portray Roger in his element—cocky, tanned, and insufferable—before the narrative administers its corrective humiliation. The California sequences possess a visual expansiveness that contrasts with the series' customary Manhattan claustrophobia, yet they lack the transformative potency that distinguished the location in earlier seasons.
The episode's most compelling thematic work emerges in its examination of generational and national responses to the Vietnam catastrophe. Megan, by simple virtue of her youth, registers the Convention's violence with a raw outrage that eludes her husband. Don, world-weary and cynical, correctly anticipates how political machinery and media manipulation will engineer the predetermined outcome. His reminder to Megan—that her Canadian citizenship renders her politically voiceless in this particular theatre—carries a cruel accuracy that underscores the episode's preoccupation with power and disenfranchisement.
Ultimately, A Tale of Two Cities delivers solid, workmanlike piece of television without achieving genuine distinction. The political turmoil and countercultural signifiers that once crackled with novelty have begun to feel somewhat routine, integrated into the series' vocabulary without generating fresh insight. The geographical dichotomy signalled in the title—an explicit nod to Dickens that recalls Season Two's magnificent The Jet Set—fails to resonate with comparable force. Where that earlier episode used California as a liminal space where identity might dissolve and reconstitute itself, this installment offers a more prosaic travelogue. The party scene's most telling detail lies not in its psychedelic excesses but in its costuming: Don, despite being Roger's junior by a generation, appears markedly less receptive to the "groovy" atmosphere, his business suit serving as sartorial armour against the surrounding permissiveness whilst Roger's casual attire signals his desperate, slightly pathetic attempt at relevance. It is a small observation, but in an episode that largely traffics in established patterns rather than bold invention, such nuances provide the most fertile material for contemplation.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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