Mad Men Review: "The Better Half"

image But it is Peggy who seems to be the equilibrium of two sides. Professionally, she is the connective tissue between the two halves that now make up Sterling Cooper Draper Price Cutler Gleason Shaw, balancing the demands and shrewdness of her old boss Don with her higher strung, if not somewhat conniving, new boss Ted, at work. And at home, balancing the ideological half of a peaceful urban cohabitation with the practical half of the reality on the ground, comes to a violent and bloody end when she mistakes Abe for an intruder. The episode finds Peggy unable to move beyond her role as balancing beam at home and work, caught between two closing doors, shutting her out from bettering either half. Perhaps the most telling line of the episode came when Don, back with his ex-wife in their old familiar embrace exchanging pillow talk contemplating the meaning of love, tells Betty that sex to him is meaningless and that he would be just as happy laying there in quiet moments with his wife, holding her. Sex to Don Draper is meaningless? I don't know who Don was trying to convince: Betty, or himself. Which brings us to a question that never seems to find an answer: What does Don Draper want? For a man who always seems to be searching for a physical connection to women, it is quite a bold and seemingly contradictory statement to make. For when Don is not longingly putting out his cigarette butts in Sylvia's hallway, or hugging her door frame to catch her fleeting scent, he's staring longingly at his former wife the day-after their reconnection, now sitting with her current hubby. Don can look, but cannot touch. What does Don want? Circling back to the opening dialogue of "The Better Half", in debating the merits of butter over the savings in margarine: is Don in search of the best taste (butter) or is he always in pursuit of what is most available (margarine)? In their private moment alone, Betty stops Don's sexual advancement and asks, "are you sure you don't want to just hold me?". To which Don pauses, before continuing his conquest, no matter how "meaningless".
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