I took a break last week out of respect for David Lynch and it is, as he would say, cosmically fitting that the first episode I cover after his passing is the most influenced by his work.
Lynch co-created the groundbreaking TV show Twin Peaks (1990-1991) which surreally explored the murder of a small-town homecoming queen. It was a one-of-a-kind work of art that showed what the future of television could be by exploring the soap opera tropes of the past.
All groundbreaking TV since has been produced in its shadow.
“Mystery Date” pulls us into that shadow, showing us images in the dark we feel we were never meant to see.
This episode is a massive swing. It is as surreal and perhaps as dark as Mad Men ever gets, building its story around the infamous 1966 Chicago nurse murders and then climaxing with a fever dream murder of Twin Peaks actress Mädchen Amick.
Some of Mad Men’s most memorable episodes make me sit in silence not because I was shocked by what I saw but because A LOT happened.
My memories of this episode were of Don’s dream murder and Sally’s traumatic response to the real murders. She woke up long ago to the realities of the 1960s and people still shield her from how bad the world can get. A desperate and futile attempt to let a child in a cruel world remain a child.
Twin Peaks found some of its most compelling stories by following David Lynch’s quote “In a town like Twin Peaks, no one is innocent.” The same is true of “Mystery Date.” Don, who for once is being faithful to his wife, dreams up an affair while suffering in bed from a fever. This nightmare morphs into a murder and Don becomes his worst fears.
A coward. A liar. A killer.
Which in truth, he has been since the Korean War. He isn’t sure if he can stop being those horrible things and his sickness is as much of a reckoning with himself as it is a case of the flu.
Just because your worst fears are there does not mean you have to become them or be destroyed by them.
This point is made rather awkwardly in Dawn’s first major plotline. Peggy ruins a girls' night between them by drunkenly glancing at her purse and fearing that Dawn may steal money. She didn’t mean to offend her new friend but could not take back the clear implication that a white woman does not trust a black woman.
Whatever kindness Peggy had extended to Dawn is now poisoned because of fear. This is fear that Dawn is all too used to.
What the episode says about fear is that when it is out in the open it can and should be addressed but when it is hidden, it festers and becomes a blight upon anything good that was built in its shadow.
Joan finally leaves her horrible husband after he chooses to return to Vietnam rather than to her. He attempts to conceal this from her as if the choice was not his. There’s always a choice: to get better, apologize for something you did not mean, and build a connection with others who may share your same fears.
The horror of the world we live in may make it seem as if choices are meaningless, that you only survive because the killer lost count of his carnage. Choices always have meaning because they can make a fearful present into a hopeful future.
Described by Matthew Weiner as Mad Men’s horror movie episode, “Mystery Date” is unforgettable but also a bit much for some fans who were shocked to see a nude Don Draper strangling Shelly from Twin Peaks. We have murder, race relations, Vietnam, and office politics.
