The first season of Mad Men strikes me as being an artificial creation. This isn't a detriment to the series-- if anything, it enhances it. The characters seldom say what's on their mind, and when they do, they do so in an intimate setting without any real implications or consequences. "Marriage of Figaro" is an episode of dichotomy. It's almost equally split between the office and Don's home. In both scenarios, people repress what they want for what's expected of them, but their desires can't help but slip out, and when they're honest, the architecture of their lives collapses bit by bit.
A clever Voltswagen campaign has the office spinning. Is it simply a good ad, or will it sell cars? The debate on how to sell a laxative results in terrible puns and an angry Don. He's pissed about something, and the meeting comes to a standstill. Any jokes are shot down with a vengeance-- this is Don's world, and anything that he doesn't approve of is not welcome. The tone shifts as Don meets with Rachel Menken. He's charming beyond belief, and even Pete Campbell is surprised at his charisma (despite his sycophancy, he still knows nothing about Don). Don's fury is probably incited by an enigmatic encounter on the train. Why the hell does he say that he's Dick Whitman? Was Don in the war under a different name? Don lost his cool on the train, and it takes him a while to gain his composure again. His idyllic life has honest moments that reveal that he's not the paradigm of a perfect man that he pretends to be. As he said to Rachel after kissing her, "I knew what I wanted." The conflict between what he wants and what he needs to do is so quiet that it's sometimes invisible, but when his moral conundrum affects him (as it does at the birthday party), Mad Men reaches its most subtle and devastating.
Rachel is by far the most interesting woman character besides Peggy at this point. She's determined to the point where societal barriers almost don't exist for her. She's one of the few people who can go toe to toe with Don and still come out fighting. In the vicious system of 1960's business, however, she never loses a beautiful feminine grace that plays out wonderfully in a rooftop scene in which she shows how she's always been motivated, even as a child. The mutual lust between Don and Rachel is tragic, but the baser part of ourselves wants romance to play out between them. Don clearly isn't challenged or equaled in his marriage (from what we've seen up until now) and Rachel has one gaping hole in her life: a fulfilling relationship. They'd be perfect together, we think. Why is Don already tied down in a relationship that hasn't shown that it's fulfilling for him or his wife?
Sally's birthday party lets the domestic aspect of Don's life play out, and it's not pretty. Betty invites Helen Bishop, a divorcee, and the other housewives are not happy about it. Helen is an intelligent woman who says what's on her mind while conforming ever so lightly to the norms of the times, and it's a joy to watch her subvert the passive-aggressive criticism of the other women. The husbands are everything that Don doesn't want to be: crude, loud, and self-indulged. The regret of his actions comes upon him, and he feels the need to capture all of the innocence of the party through a video camera. It's only through that filter that the truth comes out: couples fighting and flirting, kids being kids, and adults not acting all that differently. When another one of the attendees says "We got it all!" Don's hesitation is more palpable than anything else there. He doesn't know what any of this is. It's fulfilling for a minute, but it can't last. When he goes to pick up the cake, the falsity of the situation overcomes him, and he goes to stare at trains in a scene that's as beautiful and haunting as anything as I've seen. He brings home a dog, and while Betty stares with disdain, the birthday girl is happy, and in that moment, that's all he wants.
This is where the casual viewer isn't rewarded. Nothing wraps up in one episode. Stories start in one episode and continue for episodes, disappear, and reappear without warning. Mad Men is more a collection of short stories than a novel, and the almost two-part feel of this episode encapsulates this perfectly. Every episode is an embarrassment of riches: I could talk about Peggy's failure to attract Pete, or the images scattered throughout that seem to be important, or the Junior Account Boys acting as Don's foil, but at its core, Mad Men is a mystery, and in this episode, unraveling it is as satisfying as it's ever been.
Final Grade: A
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