There's a question most parents will ask themselves a thousand times before the baby is born, and a thousand thousand times after: How am I going to get this kid ready to live out in the world when I'm not around to take care of everything? Parenthood is one of the dominant themes of "Mad Men," and in "The Arrangements," we see how several parents have answered that question - and how several of them realize they may have answered incorrectly.
Gene knows his days on this Earth are coming to an end sooner rather than later, and so he wants to make arrangements not only for his own funeral, but for his family's future. Realizing that he didn't do right by his daughter by sheltering her from most of life's problems - turning her into an arrested development case who neglects her own children's needs and views Gene's impending death only as a burden for herself - he decides it's not too late for something to be done with Sally and Bobby. You could read his decision to let Sally drive his beloved Lincoln as a sign of Gene's dementia, but he was more on than off this season, as if he'd been mustering his mental strength to pass some wisdom (like how to drive a car, and also the bravery to try it) to his grandkids while he still could.
Peggy decides it's time to move into Manhattan and discovers that her mother only wants Peggy to go so far in the world and no farther, and the demarcation point is roughly the East River. Mrs. Olson lays a vicious guilt trip on her daughter, and when that doesn't work, she warns her, "You'll get raped, you know that?" And she turns away from Peggy's attempt to kiss her goodbye; if the Olsons were Jewish instead of Catholic, she might have rended her garments, "Jazz Singer"-style, and declared "I have no daughter!"
At work, Pete (whose own father's idea of child-rearing seemed to revolve around belittlement) introduces Don to Horace "Ho-Ho" Cook Jr., an old college buddy with money to burn and a pathological need for someone to loan him a match. For all of Don's misdeeds, he has more of a moral center than most of his colleagues and feels uncomfortable about taking a million dollars of Horace's money for his misguided quest to turn jai alai into our new national pasttime. But a meeting with Horace Sr. doesn't go how anyone expects. Horace Sr., like Gene, realizes he sheltered his child too much - "We didn't know what kind of person we were making" - and has decided the best thing for the boy is to have his bubble burst, over and over, until Ho-Ho recognizes how the world really works, as opposed to how he wants it to work.
Flanked by Gene at home and the jai alai situation at Sterling Cooper, Don has cause to think back on his own upbringing - by a set of parents who didn't want him at all, and certainly didn't want him to do better in life than them - and to ponder what kind of father he is to his kids. He's automatically a better dad than Archie by virtue of not hitting Bobby and Sally, and he's good with them on those rare occasions when he's home and willing to engage with them. But he's also afraid to take the lead in terms of discipline and moral instruction - probably because he thinks it would make him a hypocrite and/or an awful role model - and therefore hangs back too long even when he sees other people treating his children differently than he would like. You can see that he's uncomfortable with Gene showing Bobby his WWI souvenirs, but it takes him a while to work up the nerve to vocally disagree with his father-in-law. And when Sally is upset to hear the adults laughing after Gene's death, you can see Don wants to comfort her, but he can't bring himself to undermine Betty when she scolds her. At episode's end, Don is caught in the middle, standing between the bed of the man who just died and the crib of the baby about to be born, not sure what kind of father he's going to be to this new addition.
And Sally? After having a month and a half or so to live and bond with her grandfather, she's again being ignored by parents who don't know what to do with her or how to respond to her needs. At the start of the episode, she's beaming as Grandpa Gene lets her drive the Lincoln and showers her with attention; at the end, she's left crying on the living room floor, with the TV as her only companion (and even the TV is showing grown-up things).
My one issue with the episode was Sally's outburst in the kitchen. I think the emotion of it was fine, but the presentation wasn't. Her rant seemed too articulate and/or on the nose, or maybe it's just that Kiernan Shipka is good with expressions but still learning how to handle a lot of dialogue (particularly dialogue that has to be delivered through angry tears).
And speaking of Shipka, I wonder how the show will deal with her in the coming seasons. They've already recast Bobby twice, but Shipka has been much more prominent as Sally. Matt Weiner has talked about how Sally is representative of the kids who are going to plunge into the counter-culture to rebel against neglectful parents. But to get to that point -- and to get to the 1970 endpoint Weiner has said he'd like to hit if he can -- we're going to have to start taking bigger jumps forward in time soon, and Shipka doesn't age that fast. Unless she has a major growth spurt between seasons, is she going to be left behind just like Sally?
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Recap courtesy of What's Alan Watching at http://sepinwall.blogspot.com
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