Mad Men 6:01& 6:02 The Doorway Rodger Sterling

I Heart John Slattery

Rodger Sterling has been one of the best characters of this show from the beginning.  He makes us laugh with his one-liners and cry when he lost Lucky Strike. Plus he did LSD more than once and is now in therapy (at least this is the first time we see him there). I know Matt Wiener got his TV feet wet on The Sopranos so it really brings me back to the therapy scenes that we got to see there; more so than the therapy scenes with Betty or even when Sally needed to talk to someone. When Rodger makes a joke and the shrink explains to him that he can’t laugh at everything Rodger says, I about died. Rodger gets through life with his charm and wit and when you take that away from him, who is he really? Is he silver fox that just lost his mother? A mother that only ever let him eat vanilla ice cream because chocolate stained? A mother that left all her fortune to the Zoo so she could make them name all the animals. A mother whom we find out used to say that her son was her sunshine.

When Caroline came into his office to deliver the bad news it reminded me how much I like Caroline.   She doesn't take Rodger’s shit (“no one is going to see your shoes”) and she’s good at her job. When she downed her drink it made me think that she could be my new favorite secretary, second only to the great Ida Blankenship.

At the funeral I loved that Cooper complemented Rodger on the decor of the room. I thought it was funny to see the differences between Jane and Mona. One of them is offering her support and even his mother’s ring back and the other bringing a date and making a scene. Not as big of a scene as Don made being drunk and loosing his liquid lunch in front of everyone. Seeing Rodger connect with his daughter and hopefully invest in her and her husband’s future. We now see that she has a son and that makes Rodger a grandfather. This may change the way he feels about the money he has made and the way he’s spending it. Or not, his character could really go either way and that’s why he’s so great to watch.

He says he feels nothing but when Georgieo the shoe shiner dies he finally breaks down and cries. Is this him really mourning his mother or is it his own mortally that saddens him so? Is it the heartbreaking fact that he was the only one who asked about him so his family passed his shining kit down to him that broke him? When he said that he feels nothing I don’t think this is what he was looking for. I think he’s looking for what a lot of people were looking for in the 60’s. The world must have felt so out of control and no matter how much money Rodger has, no matter how many coat check girls he sleeps with and no matter how many LSD trips he goes on he has no sense of control.