1. The Wheel (Season One, Episode Thirteen)
Written By: Matthew Weiner and Robin Veith
Directed By: Matthew Weiner
Plot-wise, Mad Men’s season one climax happened in the previous episode, “Nixon vs. Kennedy,” as Pete Campbell tried to blackmail Don by telling Bert Cooper about his creative director’s secret past. Character-wise, this entire season has been building toward Don’s poignant pitch to the fellows from Kodak.
“Nostalgia – it’s delicate but potent,” the ad man tells the executives, before launching into what may be one of the best scenes in television history. Don is trying to sell the titular wheel, a slide projector that Kodak is about to bring onto the market. Instead of focusing on the modernity of the technology, Don evokes nostalgia. He inserts photographs of his own family, as he speaks about how the true technological leap of the device is how it is a time machine – a way to relive old memories.
The thing is, Don is not a very nostalgic person. As we learned about him in the show’s first season, he tried to re-invent his life by taking another man’s identity. As he learns in this episode, his one link to the past (his brother Adam) recently hanged himself. As he watches the images of the Draper family flicker by on the screen, Don realizes just how distant he is from the “carousel” he speaks about – a circle that returns him to a place where he knows he is loved. At the episode’s end, he is alone, on the bottom of his home staircase, missing the family who glimmered so brightly in the photos.
While that climactic speech is one of the series’ dramatic high points, the rest of “The Wheel” is filled with melancholy, as well as masterful writing, acting and directing. All of the characters are feeling the literal translation of nostalgia, meaning the pain from an old wound. Harry has left his wife after revealing that he cheated on her. Rachel is off to sea. Betty, in what may be January Jones’ finest hour, tries to come to terms with her husband’s lies and infidelity. Peggy actually goes through literal pain and then realizes she has been pregnant for several months. (Elisabeth Moss is terrific here, moving from the glow of a new copywriter job to the shame of having a child she will not be able to support.)
Mad Men is one of television’s most fascinating period pieces. It is, in itself, a nostalgia piece, taking us back “to a place where we ache to go again.” The series has also centered on characters trying to replicate an image of power, confidence and success – a theme that comes up again this episode with the “Relaxicisor” recording that Peggy derails with her harsh direction. The entire show has been about characters hoping to board a carousel but then hopping on to find just how hollow they feel. For that, “The Wheel” is the AMC drama’s finest hour.
Best Scene: The Kodak pitch. No question about it.
Line of the Hour: And… here’s the pitch.
“Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in-house at a fur company, with this old pro copywriter. Greek, named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new.” Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of… calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It’s delicate… but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means, “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship. It’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the Wheel. It’s called a Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Around and around, and back home again… to a place where we know we are loved.”
