Season 1: Episode 6 - Babylon
A Past Gone By Remembers a Past Gone By
Season 1: Episode 6
“Babylon”
Written by Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton
Directed by Andrew Bernstein
Setting: May 1960
Babylon is one of the best episodes of the show.
The characters have finally found their footing and the multiple storylines are working off of each other to deliver a single gut-punch message in the end. Joan’s caged bird she is given as a gift by Roger is just as necessary to the episode as a whole as it is to her storyline.
The other aspect that makes this episode so outstanding is its ability to use the past to be relevant to the present. Let’s start with one of the most startling images ever shown on the show.
While discussing the Israeli tourism account, Salvatore throws down a magazine picture of a beautiful woman obscuring the horrific images of the Holocaust Don was looking at.
I was shocked by just how much of the conversation in this 2007-produced, 1960-set episode of Mad Men is similar to conversations I’ve heard today:
Don turns to the only Jewish person he knows to ask about Israel. American Jews are constantly expected to answer for Israel when someone like Rachel Menken makes clear that her home is New York City.
Don dislikes religion as a justification for actions and for this reason, has an obvious distaste for the Zionists whom he takes a meeting with.
Don specifically says he wants to hear information that did not “come out of some ministry of propaganda.”
Salvatore throwing down that image of the beautiful woman while the horrific past still lingers is how Americans saw and still see Israel. It cuts deep into the theme of the show itself, what are you focusing on in the past?
I believe that Don finds himself so enamored by the book Exodus not because it is actually a good book but because it is a work of advertising. Exodus sold Israel to Americans and it was a great success.
I’ll talk more about Mad Men’s historical stance on Israel as it was viewed in the 1960s in Sunday’s subscriber post. Before we jump into the episode, I think Rachel Menken sums this up with her description of the word “Utopia.”
Rachel: “The Greeks had two meanings for it: 'eu-topos', meaning the good place, and 'u-topos' meaning the place that cannot be.”
One line stands for everything.
Don and Rachel cannot be.
Joan and Roger cannot be.
The 1960s, one day, can no longer be.
All of these cannot be and at the same time, they are.
For most, eu-topos or u-topos is in the past.
For Don Draper, neither exists. He is in Babylon’s fall, asking for an old-fashioned and looking for a place to hang his coat.
Another element that makes this episode one of my favorites is that it is the first where Don HALLUCINATES after bumping his head from a Looney Tunes trip down the stairs.
Don is haunted by his past and this is the first surreal moment of the show where he flashes back to the birth of his brother Adam. The family stresses the Biblical importance of Adam’s name, showing us our first look at Don’s religious upbringing.
While we finally get a glimpse of Don’s past, we also see Betty’s future.
Betty and Don discuss the Joan Crawford film The Best of Everything (1959) which Betty did not enjoy in part because Crawford looked so old. Don goes on to defend Crawford’s eyebrows and says “Salvatore couldn’t stop talking about her” which… does he know?
Utopia and perfection do not exist for Betty Draper because age and Joan Crawford do. Her entire world is a reminder that it may one day leave her behind.
Betty’s great fear is that she might become Joan Crawford. No, not a terrible mother but an older woman. Her thoughts are still on her own mother who died earlier in the year.
Don: “Mourning is just extended self-pity.”
This is basically the evil version of the “What is grief if not love persevering” line from WandaVision.
One of the other major plots of the episode finally gives Roger and Joan some room to play, mainly with each other. The two are revealed to be having an affair and through their sensual love scenes, we see how this “freedom” can be a cage.
At the end of the night, these are still two people waiting for separate taxis and pretending that they do not know each other.
Don is haunted by the past he hates.
Roger and Joan are enjoying the present they sadly know cannot last.
And Peggy is the only one with an eye on the future, even if she doesn’t realize it. Peggy shows her skill as a future copywriter when she is called in to test lipsticks with the other girls and offers taglines far better than anything Freddy Rumsen could have come up with on his own.
There’s nothing in the past for Peggy to become lost in so the opportunity to create a good future is perfect for her. She’s creating herself above all else.
These three main storylines work together to form “Babylon,” the most heavily plotted episode so far where everyone gets a moment in the spotlight. Episodes in the past have clearly belonged to Pete or Don in order to fully set them up but Babylon is about the 1960s as a whole.
Joan even jokes that the “‘61 models” are coming out soon meaning that in a year’s time, Roger will move on from her.
For the time being, he can’t look away from utopia.
What does each character want?
The same thing, really.
Everyone wants something they can’t have. Roger wants Joan, Don wants Rachel, and Peggy wants to be part of a man’s world rather than behind a desk. The thing that cannot be almost always is, that was the 1960s. There was no perfect America but you still yearn to become lost in that everchanging past.
Maybe you can learn something from it.
I encourage you to rewatch “Babylon” if you’re going to return to any episode from Season 1.
A perfect world isn’t possible but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe in a place that cannot be. Many people from the 1960s would tell you so much of what makes our lives wonderful today could not be and yet here we are.
The past lingers but does not decide your present.
This is also a great episode to explore early-60s Beatnik culture. Our next Mad Men Night here in Chicago is going to be a show of Beatnik performances and we’re all very excited to see some wonderful people sing folk songs and read the ingredients off a can of soup!
