Television Review: Maidenform (Mad Men, S2x06, 2008)

Maidenform (S2x06)

Airdate: 31 August 2008

Written by: Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Phil Abraham

Running Time: 48 minutes

When a television series establishes itself as a paragon of consistent quality, each instalment is held to an almost impossibly high standard. A singular episode that fails to reach this elevated bar stands out as a conspicuous blemish. This is the peculiar curse of Maidenform, the sixth episode of Mad Men’s second season. Taken in isolation, it is a competently acted, handsomely produced piece of drama. Yet, measured against the series’ own sterling pedigree it emerges as a frustratingly diffuse and occasionally clumsy endeavour. It is the season’s first significant stumble, a piece that prioritises aesthetic provocation and crammed narrative over the disciplined focus that made the show great.

Written by series creator Matthew Weiner, the episode takes its title from the real-life American lingerie manufacturer, the chief competitor to Playtex. The latter is, within the fiction, a client of Sterling Cooper, thus setting the stage for a narrative ostensibly about the brassiere wars of 1962. The plot is situated in the late May heat around Memorial Day, a contrivance that functions primarily as a flimsy excuse to parade the female cast in various states of undress. This agenda is announced with unsubtle clarity in the opening sequence, which cross-cuts between Betty Draper, Joan Holloway, and Peggy Olson dressing in their underwear. While visually striking, the scene feels less like organic character revelation and more like a deliberate, somewhat cynical calculation to engage the viewer’s gaze—a theme the episode will awkwardly attempt to critique within its own diegesis.

The professional catalyst arrives when Duck Phillips informs Don Draper that Playtex, threatened by Maidenform’s advertising, demands a campaign of equal potency. The creative process that follows yields the episode’s central, and most problematic, conceit. Paul Kinsey, ever the pretentious intellectual, posits that all American women desire to be either the refined, patrician Jackie Kennedy or the voluptuous, sensual Marilyn Monroe. The proposed campaign promises that with the right Playtex bra, a woman can embody both archetypes. This is, of course, a blatant dramatisation of the Madonna-Whore complex, presented with a startling lack of the series’ usual subtlety. The concept reduces the nuanced exploration of female identity that the show often championed into a crude, binary marketing pitch. The subsequent casting call leads to one of the episode’s more gratuitous subplots: Pete Campbell engaging in a joyless tryst with a model (Susie Wright) in a room she shares with her mother. The scene’s conclusion, where their coupling is intercut with a televised documentary of US fighter jets accompanied by solemn religious narration, aims for a resonant irony but lands with a thud of pretentious ‘artiness’, feeling like an unnecessary filler that contributes little to Pete’s arc or the episode’s core themes.

Parallel to this, Peggy’s ongoing struggle for recognition within the masculine fortress of Sterling Cooper reaches a new peak of frustration. Cut out of the Playtex campaign by the ‘boys’, she is advised by Joan to shed her girlish attire and adopt the armour of a woman—to infiltrate their circle through socialisation. The episode’s most effective commentary on gender performance arrives when the Playtex executives, though impressed by the dual-identity ad, decide to pass on the campaign. In a desperate move to salvage the account, the Sterling Cooper men take them to an upscale strip club. In a moment of shocking, calculated audacity, Peggy arrives, transformed in a sultry gown, and boldly plants herself in the lap of a Playtex executive. It’s a powerful, desperate act of assimilation, highlighting the extreme lengths to which a woman must go to be considered ‘one of the guys’ in this world. This storyline succeeds precisely because it engages with the series’ strengths: the quiet agony of professional ambition constrained by gender, and the brutal cost of swapping expected roles.

Elsewhere, the narrative sprawls uncontrollably. Roger Sterling) forces a perfunctory lunch between Don and Duck to mend fences after the American Airlines debacle—a subplot that resolves with predictable, hollow cordiality. More weight is given to Duck’s personal unraveling. A visit from his ex-wife and children leaves him custodial of his son’s dog, Chauncey. The beagle’s sad, loyal eyes become a temporary bulwark against Duck’s overwhelming thirst for alcohol. In a moment of quiet tragedy, he leads the dog out of the office and abandons it on the street, presumably returning to succumb to his addiction. It’s a well-acted vignette, but it feels emotionally and narratively disconnected from the episode’s other threads, a symptom of the instalment’s lack of focus.

This lack of discipline is most glaring in Don Draper’s storyline. Attending a Memorial Day party at the country club with Betty, he departs early to continue his affair with the brash, older Bobbie Barrett. The power dynamics here are intriguing: Don learns Bobbie has adult children, shattering his perception of her, and later, during a sexual encounter, she casually mentions that his prowess is legendary in her social circles. In an instant, Don is revolted. He sees himself reduced to a sexual object, a mirror image of his own predatory behaviour. His response—tying her to the bed under the pretence of kink before coldly departing—is a brutal act of reasserting control by weaponising her expectation of his desire. It’s a compelling idea, but it feels rushed, sandwiched between the party scenes and Betty’s own chaste rejection of an advance from Arthur Case. The episode concludes with Don shaving, staring into the mirror with self-loathing—a potent image, but one that resonates less because the emotional journey to that point has been fragmented.

Matthew Weiner has cited Maidenform as a personal favourite, which may explain certain indulgent details. The name ‘Franklin Reeve’, the man Duck’s ex-wife plans to marry, is a direct homage to Weiner’s college mentor. While a charming insider nod, it underscores an episode that occasionally feels like a creator’s playground rather than a cohesive chapter. Furthermore, the episode’s much-criticised anachronism—the use of The Decemberists’ 2005 song ‘The Infanta’ over the opening montage—is a rare but significant misstep for a series famed for its fastidious period authenticity. It momentarily shatters the carefully constructed illusion of 1962, a year being viewed through rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia and a pivotal moment before the coming storm of social change.

The year was more eventful than 1960, leading to a Season 2 inferior to Season 1 partly because it must engage with iconic images, words and events that define that era. ‘Maidenform’ suffers from this burden, feeling obligated to insert references to Marilyn Monroe’s infamous JFK birthday performance and the Bay of Pigs invasion, the latter via a conversation with the CIA-connected Crab Colson (Matt McKenzie). These feel less like organic historical texture and more like obligatory checkboxes, further contributing to the narrative clutter.

Where the episode truly succeeds is in its visual boldness and its moments of meta-commentary. The Memorial Day party features a fashion show of swimwear; when Betty buys a suit and wishes to swim in it, Don is visibly aghast at the thought of other men seeing his wife. This hypocrisy—the adman who sells desire but cannot stomach his wife being its object—is sharp. It can also be read as the episode’s defensive retort to accusations of its own exploitative content: Look, it seems to say, we are aware of the predatory male gaze, and here is a character who is hypocritically consumed by it. It’s a clever, if somewhat transparent, manoeuvre.

In the end of the day, Maidenform is not a failure. The performances remain superb, and individual scenes crackle with the series’ trademark intelligence. However, it is an episode at war with itself. It tries to be a critique of sexual objectification while luxuriating in imagery that facilitates it; it wants to explore the Jackie/Marilyn dichotomy but does so with uncharacteristic heavy-handedness; it introduces compelling personal crises for Don and Duck but fails to give them the narrative room to breathe. The result is a scattered, often unsatisfying instalment that stands as a testament to what happens when a great show’ ambition outpaces its focus. In a season already grappling with the challenge of following a near-perfect first year, Maidenform is the point where the seams of Mad Men’s impeccable suit become visibly, and disappointingly, frayed.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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