Mad Men Recap: Need for Speed
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That the electrifying opening — a dark, tight, frantic shot of Ken Cosgrove; a speeding carful of drunken, jowly old men; and a gun — was not even the strangest moment in last night’s “Mad Men” episode tells you just how bizarre it was.
In “The Crash,” drugs, sex and late 60s psycho-spiritual mumbo-jumbo dominate, and not just as historical decorations. These themes actually wend their way into the agency’s work. Time and place are out of whack and the characters are rambling, their lines both elusive and allusive, a lot of sound and fury signifying very little and certainly not a new ad campaign for Chevy.
Here’s the set-up: The new, lucrative car account is weighing heavy on the agency. Even as General Motors rejects the agency’s ideas, it’s supplying an onerous-sounding calendar — three years of monthly deadlines, strategy statements, copy testing and Byzantine approval processes. Cosgrove, the agency’s ambassador to Detroit, has a cane and a limp from the drunken joyride. Meanwhile, the creative leadership is stressed and sleep-deprived, with Don coughing like a howitzer into his handkerchief.
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