With the final run of “Mad Men” episodes just upon us, the entertainment media is doing a blitz of retrospectives, analyses and recaps. Of course, every mention of Megan Draper comes complete with a mention of her now famous Zu Bisou Bisou serenade tp Don a hist birthday party.
Tom and Lorenzo’s Mad Style review of the episode points out how the whole party scene was an example of the staider, 50’s sensibility of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce crew crashing into mid-60s mod youth-culture. But I’ve noticed from the write-ups and from some online chats about the show that Megan’s torch song rendition seems to be a bit polarizing among fans as well. People see it as either a huge f’aux-pas, or a crowning moment of awesome. (I tend to see it as the latter FTR.)
Let’s see, on the one hand I can get that Megan did invite pretty much the entire SCDP staff to a party where she intended to cavort around sexily. She probably should have anticipated Harry Crane making creepy catcalls at the office on Monday morning.
On the other, it was a party! And after all, the reason Don married her was because he wanted that youthful, spontaneous free-spirited energy in his life. He wanted a sexy wife who wasn’t as tightly wound up as Betty. So how could he get so pissed off about it?
It was an awkward moment. Don was squirming. It wasn’t classy.
'Twas a classic television moment, for sure, but her performance was oddly sexual for that situation, and she just opened herself and Don up to comments and behind-the-back ridicule.
As a viewer? I loved it, and then went and bought the single on iTunes.
As a (hypothetical) party-goer? It would have made me extremely uncomfortable, and my wife and I would definitely have been discussing it on the way home. If it had been just some party with friends and neighbors…maybe. But you just don’t bring that much sexy to what amounts to an office party.
I, myself, just cringed. I think the whole office was watching in amazement, not at the awesome sexxy talent, but the weird display of such. They were cringing, some, out of embarrassment for Megan, but they were also enjoying Don’s obvious discomfort even more so! I loved Lane’s decription of her ‘little burlesque’ and ‘Don’s soul left his body’ later on to Joan. He was the older square, a bit uptight. On the other hand, Harry Crane is the younger generation and had just drooled over it like the pig he is, yeah baby, shake it!
I think it was perfectly appropriate for a 1966 Manhattan office party. Unfortunately, as far as Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce was concerned, it was still 1959.
I thought it was a great scene precisely because it was so awkward and cringe-inducing. Megan obviously wanted to give a sexy performance but her singing and dancing were just awkward and try-too-hard.
I love the follow-up scene when Roger starts singing “Frere Jacques.”
Yes! It’s actually an embarassingly terrible performance. I didn’t even recognize the song at first and thought she was nonsensically singing “zoobie-zoo” LOL
Also, the very idea that Don would want her to show off how sexy she was… it’s like how could she think that if she ever met Don? Don is a super private person. He shows others only what he thinks he others need to know. “My wife is young and sexy” is something that some men would like to show off, but its something that would never fall in the need-to-know category for Don.
The partners were (rightly) amazed that she did not know this about him, which was interesting, because they did know it and considered it a fundamental part of his character.
I think you need to look at it from what it says about Don, not Megan.
When Don started in the 1950s, he was younger than most and ahead of them in being more in tune with the times. He was the Young Turk, the Boy Wonder. The first season of Mad Men, set in 1960, shows him at the apex of this phase. Everybody, in the office and in the industry, looked up to him.
The series operates in real time, unlike most series. Younger people kept joining the business. In an era of stagnancy, like the 1950s, that wouldn’t have mattered much. Don would simply turn into the Old Lion, the Greybeard, the font of wisdom and experience. The 1960s weren’t such an era. The times changed extremely rapidly and only the younger ones had any connection to the changes.
That’s what the whole series has been about, Don’s inability to change, to adapt to the present, to be relevant in a strange future. Megan’s dance was the symbolic break point. Megan is both the future that he wants and the young and glamorous past that he clings to. He can only have them if he changes. He can’t change. That season and the next depict Don’s descent. He loses everything: his wife, his family, his dignity, his place within the industry. The first half of season seven ends with him at a crux. In this second half, he’ll either accept change and become yet another new Don or shatter.
Megan’s dance was appropriate for Megan, inappropriate for Don. That duality is its purpose. If he can’t learn to accept things appropriate for others, no matter his own feelings about them, he has no place in his industry - and possibly not in his life. Seven season, part two should be exciting because we’ll learn that answer.
I only saw the clip on the link. That was an amazing scene. I thought the actress was wonderful with the material in the setting. Don appeared to be the only one a bit uncomfortable. His loss.
You also have to remember that Megan is French. Well, French Canadian, but judging by the behavior of her mother, pretty much “French”. You Americans, you are so much the prude!!