Season 4: Episode 9 - "The Beautiful Girls"
Sally Draper takes centerstage
Season 4: Episode 9
“The Beautiful Girls”
Written by: Dahvi Waller and Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Michael Uppendahl
Setting: July, 1965
For over a year, this Substack has been a way to process current events through the lens of Mad Men. The past offers guidance for what you or the world may be going through, just don’t get so lost in it that there’s no thought of the future.
Since Tuesday night, a personal debate lingered about how to write this post. Do I get so caught up in a major world event that it overshadows an episode many consider one of the show’s best?
I found the answers not in the show or in America’s present state. The answer was in turning inward, there is no answer that a show, news anchor, or opinion piece can give that offers understanding. That’s been the response of many people. Eight years ago felt like the beginning of an era we were never left unbothered by. I am not saying you should put your head in the sand but there is no life to be lived when it is only spent looking at screens and wondering what comes next.
What comes next for you? That is where your thoughts and actions need to be.
That is where Sally Draper’s thoughts and actions are in “The Beautiful Girls.”
What’s incredible to witness here is something that Mad Men could not have planned. There’s a rough idea from the show’s beginning for what is in store over the next decade but they could not have possibly planned on one aspect.
Just how good Kiernan Shipka would be as Sally Draper.
She’s a very talented child actress in Seasons 1-3 and especially shines following Grandpa Gene’s death. This episode is a key change in the series because you can tell the Mad Men team realized just how great of an actress she was.
They needed to give her a centerstage episode.
This episode is about Sally Draper trying to build a perfect world with her father, even if it lasts only a moment.
But “The Beautiful Girls” isn’t just one girl.
It’s Peggy trailblazing ahead and still feeling miles behind.
It’s Joan feeling lonelier and yet more surrounded than ever before.
It’s Dr. Faye worrying that her new relationship will fail because of her and nothing else.
It’s Betty seeing her daughter prefer a man who lies, cheats, and destroys.
It’s Megan, a simple secretary who refuses to feel lost in a world that always seems as if it wants to eat her whole.
And yes, it’s Ida Blankenship who was born in a barn and died in a skyscraper.
She was an astronaut.
The world is always horrible and the fight to do better shall never end, nor should it. These “beautiful girls” are given every reason to become distracted by the year 1965.
There’s a fine line. You don’t want to be ignorant to horror as Peggy is when she discovers that a client supports segregation but you also don’t want the suffering of the world to define you. A potential new flame, Abe Drexler, both intrigues and then completely loses Peggy when he only talks about politics and world events giving her his extremist essay “Nuremberg on Madison Avenue.”
One should not be blind and deaf to the world turning but that also includes your heart beating. The world doesn’t start beyond the walls of your home, you are in it always.
Each woman is going through a challenge and even if you consider their response a mistake, it shows their heart and mistakes are there for us to learn from.
I’ve done this before but I find myself struck by my own comment that no show, reporter, or essay is going to answer things for me.
By that logic, I cannot answer for you.
This is a rare Mad Men analysis where I encourage you to seek a full understanding of yourself the moment the credits roll.
Who do you relate to?
Do you see someone you love in another character?
Would you help any of these women?
My feelings are that writing and reading, creating and celebrating, are necessary in all moments of life. This week I am sure you have all felt that you read too much from just one day.
I won’t hold you longer but I will encourage you to spend time with “The Beautiful Girls.”
A great and yet still painful comfort in a world we shun from view is that you are not alone even with no thought of tomorrow. So many others do not think of what is to come for they see only its pain.
What is to come is that we will be together, all of us. Understand yourself and use that strength when understanding others.
You’re beautiful, but I don’t have to tell you that. You’ll know it if you look inside and understand.