Television Review: The Grown-Ups (Mad Men, S3x12, 2009)

The Grown-Ups (S3x12)

Airdate: 1 November 2009

Written by: Brett Johnson & Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Barbet Schroeder

Running Time: 48 minutes

No event depicted or referenced in Mad Men was less anticipated by its audience than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. For many Americans of that era, and particularly for the Baby Boomers who would come to dominate the cultural narrative, 22 November 1963 stands as the grand, irrevocable dividing line between ‘What Used To Be’ and ‘What Is Now’. By the end of its third season, set in that otherwise relatively uneventful year of 1963, it was a foregone conclusion that the series would eventually confront how its protagonists—people whose profession is the shaping of images and perceptions—would react to the momentous events in Dallas. The only remaining question was one of narrative placement: would this national catastrophe be reserved for the season finale, or, in keeping with the emerging practice of high-quality serialised television, would it occur in the penultimate episode, allowing the aftermath to resonate into the season’s close? The Grown-Ups, the twelfth episode of the third season, decisively answered that question, and in doing so delivered one of the series’ most masterful and devastating instalments.

Co-written by Brett Johnson and Matthew Weiner and directed with remarkable restraint by the Swiss-French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, the episode begins in deceptively banal fashion on Thursday, 21 November. The genius of this opening lies in its focus on the petty, everyday grievances that consume the Sterling Cooper office. Pete Campbell complains bitterly about a heating failure that has left him freezing; his physical discomfort is neatly paralleled by the professional chill of learning that Ken Cosgrove has been promoted over him, despite both men bringing in comparable accounts. Across the office, other trivial dramas unfold: Roger Sterling’s daughter, Margaret, frets about her Saturday wedding and the inevitable presence of Jane, Roger’s young wife, whom she cannot abide. Meanwhile, Peggy Olson discusses her ongoing liaison with the louche Duck Phillips with her roommate Karen Ericson, treating it as a mundane secret rather than a life-altering affair. This meticulous establishment of routine is crucial, for it constructs the placid surface that is about to be shattered.

Friday, 22 November dawns like any other day. The heating has been repaired, but now the office is oppressively hot—a minor irony that underscores the characters’ inability to achieve equilibrium. Peggy accepts a call from Duck, arranging a midday tryst. Don Draper argues with Lane Pryce over replacing the art director after the unjust firing of Sal Romano. Pete, seeking solace, discusses his stagnant future with Harry Crane in his office. As head of the television department, Harry has a set tuned to CBS to monitor advertisements; the soap opera As The World Turns plays in the background, ignored. This detail is a stroke of brilliant dramatic irony. The characters are so engrossed in their myopic personal and professional concerns that they literally ignore the world turning on its axis, as a special news bulletin interrupts the broadcast with the first fragments of news from Dallas.

The episode then meticulously dissects the varied, often self-absorbed, reactions of its ensemble. Duck Phillips, waiting for Peggy in his hotel suite, sees the bulletin but chooses to switch off the television, prioritising a sexual escapade over a national tragedy—a chillingly apt character note for a man defined by opportunism and escape. Back at Sterling Cooper, Don Draper’s world is invaded by the news more subtly; he notices the phones falling silent and the staff gathering anxiously around radios and television sets. It is only when colleagues burst into Harry Crane’s office that both Harry and Pete are ripped from their insular conversation and forced to comprehend the reality of the situation.

The collective shock and grief that permeate the office are portrayed with a realism that avoids melodrama. However, the episode’s sharpest critique is levelled at the characters’ capacity to refract even this seismic event through the prism of their own immediate desires. None is more blatantly affected in this regard than Margaret Sterling, who upon hearing the news declares her wedding to be “ruined.” Her petulance is not presented as mere villainy but as a tragic failure of perspective, emblematic of a privileged generation suddenly confronted with a history that refuses to accommodate their personal timelines. The following day, the invited executives grapple with the etiquette of the situation. Pete and Trudy Campbell, representing a newer, perhaps more morally cautious sensibility, decide not to attend. Don and Betty Draper, ever performing the role of the perfect couple, go. The wedding itself is a profoundly unhappy affair, a forced and brittle pantomime of celebration. Some guests, including Jane, retreat to the kitchen to watch the relentless television coverage, unable to maintain the façade. Don and Betty take to the dance floor in a grim imitation of marital bliss, but Betty’s attention is fractured by the arrival of Henry Francis, who, under the thin pretext of accompanying his daughter and Margaret’s friend Eleanor (Veronica Taylor), has come solely to see her. Here, the episode brilliantly juxtaposes the collapse of a national myth with the unravelling of a domestic one.

The aftermath of the wedding offers further poignant vignettes. Roger, tending to his drunken wife Jane, uses the opportunity to call Joan Holloway (now Harris). Their conversation is one of the episode’s quieter, more profound moments. Joan speaks of her husband, a doctor working in the Emergency Room, trying to process the day’s events, thereby grounding the national tragedy in tangible, human-scale suffering. It is a rare instance of a character attempting to contextualise the horror, rather than being overwhelmed by it.

The episode’s final act moves the focus decisively to the disintegration of the Draper marriage. On Sunday, 24 November, Betty leaves her home for a drive “to clear her head”—a transparent euphemism for a rendezvous with Henry Francis. Their meeting in a parked car is charged with a desperate intimacy. Henry declares his intention to marry her, and they share a kiss that seals the fate of Betty’s current life. Upon returning home, Betty initiates the conversation she has avoided for years, telling Don with devastating simplicity, “I don’t love you anymore.” Parallel to this, in the Campbell household, Trudy attempts to galvanise a despondent Pete, urging him to gather his clients and strike out to form his own agency—a suggestion that plants the seed for the season’s finale. These parallel scenes underscore the episode’s central thesis: just as the nation is forced to confront a terrifying new future, so too are these individuals.

Monday morning presents a haunting tableau of aftermath. Betty and Don share a silent, icy breakfast before Don leaves, ostensibly for work but in reality to confront the desolate truth that his marriage is over. The world outside is in official mourning; bars are closed. The Sterling Cooper office, that temple of capitalist distraction, is one of the few places open. There, Don finds Peggy already at work, diligently altering a television advertisement because its visual composition now bears an unwelcome and traumatic resemblance to the Zapruder film’s imagery. This moment is a perfect, succinct metaphor for the show’s entire project: the advertising industry, tasked with crafting palatable fictions, must now hastily edit reality itself.

The Grown-Ups is arguably one of Mad Men’s finest achievements. Its genius lies in the deft juxtaposition of a national catastrophe with the personal cataclysms of its protagonists. Just as America—and the world—would never be the same after Dallas, neither would Don Draper, who is finally forced to contend with an unimaginable loss that no amount of professional ingenuity or personal reinvention can mitigate. The episode operates on multiple levels, weaving threads of dark humour and profound irony into its fabric. The irony of Margaret’s “ruined” wedding and the bleak comedy of Duck turning off the news for a tryst—all serve to highlight the fragile vanity of the characters’ pre-assassination concerns.

Schroeder’s direction is notably economical and realistic, refusing to sensationalise events that were already seared into the cultural memory of much of the audience. The episode trusts viewers to connect the dots, relying on the power of implication and reaction rather than graphic recreation. This restraint makes the emotional impact all the more potent. Furthermore, the cultural resonance is cemented by the impeccable choice of Skeeter Davis’s ‘The End of the World’ over the closing credits. The song’s plaintive, heartbroken refrain (“Why does the sun go on shining?”) perfectly captures the episode’s essence: the bewildering persistence of daily life in the face of world-shattering events, and the private apocalypses that unfold in quiet living rooms and empty marriages.

The Grown-Ups transcends being merely an ‘assassination episode’. It is a masterful study in contrast, a meticulous deconstruction of American self-absorption on the brink of historical upheaval, and the point at which Mad Men fully matured into the tragic, clear-eyed masterpiece of television history it is recognised as today. It demonstrates that sometimes, growing up is forced upon you by a single, terrible Friday in November.

RATING: 9/10 (++++)

==

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo
Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9