How detailed is Mad Men‘s art direction? This detailed.
Take a closer look at the wrapping paper on the Barbie doll Pete brought “all the way from California” in “The Strategy” (S7, episode 6) — the Barbie chosen by the separated but still married man’s girlfriend, Bonnie*.
The pattern on that paper is a carousel, a reference to the first season finale in which Don Draper mourned the slow dissolution of his marriage, and turned that grief into a trademark pitch to Kodak.
This isn’t an isolated reference to Don’s carousel pitch. In “Field Trip” (S7 episode 3), during Don’s long, humiliating wait in the bull pen upon his return to SC&P, Ken Cosgrove detours from his meeting long enough to welcome him back, and to proudly show off snapshots of little Eddie Cosgrove on the Central Park carousel, a family outing that “always makes me think of you.”
The very next episode,”Monolith” (S7 episode 4), ends with a frustrated Don trying to clean up, buckle down, and — in the words of Freddie Rumsen — “do the work.” As he sits down and starts to type notes for Peggy’s Burger Chef campaign (on the typewriter he very nearly smashed through the window and down into the street in front of the Time-Life building), the strains of The Hollies’ “On A Carousel” begin to play: “Riding on a carousel, trying to catch up to you.”
*The outfit Bonnie’s chosen for their visit to the New York office is pure Malibu Barbie: pale blue chiffon, pale rounded sunglasses pushed up in her long blonde hair. The doll didn’t debut until the early ’70s, but if you didn’t know better, wouldn’t you bet a shiny nickel the doll inside that carousel wrapping paper is a Malibu Barbie?
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