Another step in Don's journey, exploring the idea of home and going back home. We were inundated with images and motifs of home and comfort.
I felt it began prior to this episode with Sylvia saying to Don about it's over and time to really go home.
Home is about many things, comfort and sometimes starting over being some of that. I think that's the key. You couple Sylvia's line earlier about going home and now this episode Don's experiancing emphasis of the idea of home.
We saw many instances of motherly comfort, everything from Aimee the house girl spoonfeeding him like a mom and listening for his cold, Abigail listening to his cold with a cup (?), even another quick one of the hippy chick holding the stethescope to Don and even Peggy comforting Chaugh as Don watched. Then the ad stating "because you know what he really needs".
I think this this is very important: he knows that Sylvia knows what he really needs even if he doesn't know it himself, you see this through some of her lines. That's why he won't just let it go with her like we have seen with most of his daliances. Very key. He's needing her and her direction like a boy needs a mom.
We also saw the consequences of an ill home experiance, the endagerment that occurred through the absence of both Don and Megan and the fake motherly robber, Don's not so great upbringing in his surrogate home. Another Mad Men theme of consequences exemplified here tonight.
The contradiction is that of comforting home vs a soiled home. We saw Abigail beat him, we know his father did and he's made a carreer adulthood of soiling the home. That surrogate childhood home was a soiled environment. This is what he knows. It's like he wants and needs to go back to home and motherly comfort, yet...there is none of that to even go home to in the first place. The contradiction is part of his whole internal struggle.
We saw his own current home, as he has this internal struggle to try to begin to escape his own current self, as one of his typical emotional soiling in Sally telling him the robber, the thief, the bad person "had an answer for everything". Remind you of anyone, or what a secretary would say about said anyone? Also her saying she doesn't know anything about him means the cycle of himself and what he does to people is about to continue. Can he win his own struggle to stop his own self or will it always go on like a wheel turning? (reference to The Wheel intended. Remember that was about going home, also about the idea of turning around and around; and the many things that can mean)
He's recognizing his lack of home yet his need to return to home, to start over perhaps. Start his whole self over. Erase it and start over. "This never happened". Mad Men circles intersecting again.
Sylvia earlier telling him it's over... and not just this, and telling him to really go home is underlying this whole episode and very well may be the whole key to the entire season.
Some of her brief lines seem to have more than one meaning, and sometimes it is analogous to the idea of a dying man meeting his angel yet has to still find his own way to peace. As if an angel can't take you there, but can help you, yet you have to do it yourself.
The 1st episode, when he says at the end he wants to stop doing this, she says, I know. That was interesting if you think about it.
Then we recently saw her telling him this has to end and not just this. That's about more than their affair, it means he has to stop being him, stop all of this. His life as he is and what he does and what he's built on etc has to stop. It's like she's trying to guide him toward the way of acceptance of some things.
She tells him has has to really go home. I think the line of the season so far. That's what an angel does, point you toward home. She can do it through words, but can only present those words with effect to him however given who he is through sex. That's her door into him. He even said this episode on the phone with her, I'm feeling a lot of emotions. Very un-like Don, but I think very poignant on what her character really is. Is it a question of do you have to break something down to build it back up? Her character is very interesting to me. Is she his angel and breaking him on purpose to build him back up, or is she his angel by breaking him without that being her motivation, but it's what's leading him toward where he needs to be so that makes her his angel?
Here this episode, we had an obscure bit where he tells her in their breakup argument, please I just want to talk to you about a few things. It's not something to take in any specific sense but more a symbollic line I think. Very important.
I think Sylvia is Don's angel. Not in the literal sense as in there's some fantasy element in play here, no, but I think he looks to her feeling she knows what he doesn't, and he can find the knowledge and direction he needs through her. He doesn't know what that is, but he knows she knows, and I think that's part of his flipping out on her; he's lashing out at her because it's a cry for help. He waits outside her door as a form of begging, which is another avenue for a cry from help from the damned. And he's losing his angel.
No one really ever thinks of that. We all think of dying and moving on with the angel coming to take our hand. What happens when you're dying, but, suddenly lose your angel though? Then what happens? Oh man. Does that make an already lost soul and even worse lost soul?
And I'll be the first one say this probably doesn't actually mean anything but just for point of interest she does often have that cross around her neck.
And I've wondered why does she do this since she seems at times reluctant yet at times into it. To me sometimes it looks like she also considers himself his angel. Almost like she's engaging in this because she knows he needs help and she can guide him yet can't take him there, wherever there is. But she will do for him what he needs, and do so by speaking his language. Having an affair. Get him in pillow talk. A lecture or a Sunday sermon won't do it. Bar talk won't do it.
Where and how do you get to Don? Sex. Where is every angel ultimately helping to get you? Home. Don comes from a sex home.
She's human after all and enjoys the sex, but she's often playing the role of angel as well in leaving him cues in her lines to him. There's that Mad Men exploration of dichotomy rearing it's head again in that she's both human and angel to him.
2 comments:
Another step in Don's journey, exploring the idea of home and going back home. We were inundated with images and motifs of home and comfort.
I felt it began prior to this episode with Sylvia saying to Don about it's over and time to really go home.
Home is about many things, comfort and sometimes starting over being some of that. I think that's the key. You couple Sylvia's line earlier about going home and now this episode Don's experiancing emphasis of the idea of home.
We saw many instances of motherly comfort, everything from Aimee the house girl spoonfeeding him like a mom and listening for his cold, Abigail listening to his cold with a cup (?), even another quick one of the hippy chick holding the stethescope to Don and even Peggy comforting Chaugh as Don watched. Then the ad stating "because you know what he really needs".
I think this this is very important: he knows that Sylvia knows what he really needs even if he doesn't know it himself, you see this through some of her lines. That's why he won't just let it go with her like we have seen with most of his daliances. Very key. He's needing her and her direction like a boy needs a mom.
We also saw the consequences of an ill home experiance, the endagerment that occurred through the absence of both Don and Megan and the fake motherly robber, Don's not so great upbringing in his surrogate home. Another Mad Men theme of consequences exemplified here tonight.
The contradiction is that of comforting home vs a soiled home. We saw Abigail beat him, we know his father did and he's made a carreer adulthood of soiling the home. That surrogate childhood home was a soiled environment. This is what he knows. It's like he wants and needs to go back to home and motherly comfort, yet...there is none of that to even go home to in the first place. The contradiction is part of his whole internal struggle.
We saw his own current home, as he has this internal struggle to try to begin to escape his own current self, as one of his typical emotional soiling in Sally telling him the robber, the thief, the bad person "had an answer for everything". Remind you of anyone, or what a secretary would say about said anyone? Also her saying she doesn't know anything about him means the cycle of himself and what he does to people is about to continue. Can he win his own struggle to stop his own self or will it always go on like a wheel turning? (reference to The Wheel intended. Remember that was about going home, also about the idea of turning around and around; and the many things that can mean)
He's recognizing his lack of home yet his need to return to home, to start over perhaps. Start his whole self over. Erase it and start over. "This never happened". Mad Men circles intersecting again.
Sylvia earlier telling him it's over... and not just this, and telling him to really go home is underlying this whole episode and very well may be the whole key to the entire season.
Some of her brief lines seem to have more than one meaning, and sometimes it is analogous to the idea of a dying man meeting his angel yet has to still find his own way to peace. As if an angel can't take you there, but can help you, yet you have to do it yourself.
The 1st episode, when he says at the end he wants to stop doing this, she says, I know. That was interesting if you think about it.
Then we recently saw her telling him this has to end and not just this. That's about more than their affair, it means he has to stop being him, stop all of this. His life as he is and what he does and what he's built on etc has to stop. It's like she's trying to guide him toward the way of acceptance of some things.
She tells him has has to really go home. I think the line of the season so far. That's what an angel does, point you toward home. She can do it through words, but can only present those words with effect to him however given who he is through sex. That's her door into him. He even said this episode on the phone with her, I'm feeling a lot of emotions. Very un-like Don, but I think very poignant on what her character really is. Is it a question of do you have to break something down to build it back up? Her character is very interesting to me. Is she his angel and breaking him on purpose to build him back up, or is she his angel by breaking him without that being her motivation, but it's what's leading him toward where he needs to be so that makes her his angel?
Here this episode, we had an obscure bit where he tells her in their breakup argument, please I just want to talk to you about a few things. It's not something to take in any specific sense but more a symbollic line I think. Very important.
I think Sylvia is Don's angel. Not in the literal sense as in there's some fantasy element in play here, no, but I think he looks to her feeling she knows what he doesn't, and he can find the knowledge and direction he needs through her. He doesn't know what that is, but he knows she knows, and I think that's part of his flipping out on her; he's lashing out at her because it's a cry for help. He waits outside her door as a form of begging, which is another avenue for a cry from help from the damned. And he's losing his angel.
No one really ever thinks of that. We all think of dying and moving on with the angel coming to take our hand. What happens when you're dying, but, suddenly lose your angel though? Then what happens? Oh man. Does that make an already lost soul and even worse lost soul?
And I'll be the first one say this probably doesn't actually mean anything but just for point of interest she does often have that cross around her neck.
And I've wondered why does she do this since she seems at times reluctant yet at times into it. To me sometimes it looks like she also considers himself his angel. Almost like she's engaging in this because she knows he needs help and she can guide him yet can't take him there, wherever there is. But she will do for him what he needs, and do so by speaking his language. Having an affair. Get him in pillow talk. A lecture or a Sunday sermon won't do it. Bar talk won't do it.
Where and how do you get to Don? Sex. Where is every angel ultimately helping to get you? Home. Don comes from a sex home.
She's human after all and enjoys the sex, but she's often playing the role of angel as well in leaving him cues in her lines to him. There's that Mad Men exploration of dichotomy rearing it's head again in that she's both human and angel to him.
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