“The Runaways” has one striking stylistic point that kept nagging at me throughout the episode. Several scenes, including the ones in Peggy’s apartment, Megan’s home, the bar where Don and Harry Crane catch up and the lounge where Don meets with the Commander Cigarette people at the end, are all filmed with an overwhelmingly orange tint. Orange is the muddled midpoint between the sunny sheen of yellow and the hot red of desire, a dour spot that many of the characters likely feel in this episode. I am probably reading into the color choice too much, but its omnipresence has to mean something, right?
Coming back to the divide Mad Men has explored this season, several of the characters, especially Don, are stuck in limbo between happiness (the sunny yellow) and release (the sinful red). Don feels abandoned and wary of the sexual impulses of the time. Bobby and Sally are worried about the future of their family but are too hesitant to act out to their parents. Peggy has a position of power, but does not used this stance to her advantage. She is stern and smug without being satisfied.
At the end of this episode, Don takes on the corporate cigarette heads at a meeting he was not invited to. He is trying to stand up to the authority figures trying to snuff him out, by reclaiming his loyalty to a tobacco company after his infamous ad ran in the New York Times a couple of years back. Is Don trying to sell himself out hypocritically by trying to merge onto an account to keep his job? Alternatively, is he trying to show Cutler and Lou that he has value as a creative worker and should be given the credibility he yearns and deserves? It’s probably a bit of both that red rebellion with that yellow yearning for high power. So, once again, everything is orange.
As the seventh season of Mad Men currently stands, the heads of the mainstream culture and the counterculture keep ramming into each other. As essential as this theme is to the period, it seems that the writers are moving too slowly to give its major characters – many of whom are not even in this episode – something to react against. When they do react, though, as in Ginsberg’s outburst and nipple severing tonight, Peggy’s misery after perceiving Valentine’s Day flowers as a gift from Ted, or Roger falling in the mud at the end of last week’s hour, it feels silly. And silly is not a word anyone would usually use to describe Mad Men.