Mad Men: Season 6 - Episode 3 "The Collaborators
Trudy Campbell UNLEASHED
Season 6: Episode 3
“The Collaborators”
Written by Jonathan Igla & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Jon Hamm
Setting: January to February 1968
We remember Season 6 as the “Looney Tunes” season of Mad Men, growing stranger and more ludicrous with each episode. There is an additional, devastating aspect.
The season’s opening two-parter, “The Doorway,” becomes sadder with each episode that follows.
The first shot we see in Hawaii is of Megan’s stomach on the beach. The viewer assumes nothing of this; Megan is in a swimsuit and relaxing on vacation.
This is heaven on Earth.
Episode 3, “The Collaborators,” dispels that myth. The image of Megan’s stomach was foreshadowing that she had become pregnant, a pregnancy that would not last.
The Hawaii vacation that Don has begun to destroy himself yearning for is the very reason why he and Megan will not be having a child together. Megan blames the miscarriage on the trip and finds herself relieved.
She never wanted Don’s child.
Had the pregnancy come to term, Don would have likely fixed himself temporarily and ended his affair with Sylvia, only to slip back into his old ways soon enough. Megan would have found herself quickly unhappy and overwhelmed, her acting career on hold as Don still slips away.
Some people have babies in an attempt to save their relationship. For Megan and Don, it would have only accelerated a doomed partnership. Their miscarriage allowed both to keep up the charade that this can last when they both know the best days are already over.
Mad Men’s characters are past the point of surprises, it’s just a matter of shattering the illusions they and others create to stay sane.
Megan sees herself as a serious actress and is hurt when anyone implies less.
She sees herself as a good and faithful wife who is guilt-ridden over not wanting a child with her husband.
She sees Don for all of his good and none of his bad. He cheated on Betty and was in a relationship when Megan met him. Why would he do that to her now? He loves her. She’s different.
These illusions are created by Megan but maintained by people like Don and Sylvia, who know better.
They are the collaborators.
They can judge as much as they want, but they will never be free of guilt. Sylvia looks down upon Megan, who was also raised Catholic, for even considering an abortion. At the same time, she is having an affair with Megan’s husband.
Everyone is expected to simply raise a finger over their lips. They tell themselves that they are only a bad person if all is revealed. By that point, they’re so deep into a lie that the truth becomes impossible to admit. Trudy, who has always known her husband was unfaithful, reaches a breaking point when he has an affair with a neighbor.
Allison Brie delivers one of the best scene performances of the show. Pete was destroyed by his coworkers in Season 5, now we get to see him be obliterated by his wife. Trudy chose the “lesser evil” by merely pretending that their marriage was without fault. Once it becomes impossible to ignore, Trudy is unleashed as who she always was:
A faithful spouse pushed to the edge by her unfaithful husband.
She refuses to be a collaborator to a world where this is okay. Trudy becomes one of the few who will not stick their head in the sand. The life she pretended was so good wasn’t anything at all.
Not if it had to be built on this lie.
We are losing the war.
Joan faces this same truth when the Jaguar dealer Herb, who only agreed to sign with SCDP after a night with her, comes to the office and tries to win her over again. She has nothing to gain but disgust from his presence and rejects him.
What was a great victory for the agency no longer feels that way. Maybe Jaguar was always a defeat.
We are losing the war.
Those who pull their heads out of the sand are punished for it. It is considered an insult to those who still have their heads down.
You can’t tell a wife her husband is cheating on her.
You can’t tell a client their idea is terrible.
You can’t tell America that we are losing the war.
No one is blind in this collaboration. Peggy is fully aware of the issue with going after Heinz as a client when Stan reveals that they are unhappy. She would be breaking a friend’s trust in favor of work.
Passion is absent from the decision. Her agency is chasing after Heinz because they want to one-up SCDP. Heinz is unhappy because the man in charge of beans wants to one-up the man in charge of ketchup.
It’s a ridiculous charade that no one puts a stop to because everyone pretends this kind of behavior is okay. “The Collaborators” is about what is under the surface, but only skin deep. Everyone knows what is happening.
What is happening is that America is losing the war.
The Viet Cong have launched the Tet Offensive. The conflict in Vietnam that was supposed to be ending rages on. Worse than that for America, there is actually an end in sight.
An end where America loses.
War is war, nothing else comes close. Trudy refuses to see her life as a conflict that will continue without end. She just has to call reality for what it is.
When all is terrible, those who thrive in chaos say, “That’s how life is.”
That isn’t how life has to be.
Everyone knows the truth, they just refuse to admit it. If anyone else comes close to admitting it, others stop them.
Alone, the truth always comes out. There are no cameras to act for.
The truth is, the war is already over.