That Bloom of Youth

There is a wonderful bar scene in Mad Men with Don Draper, who is about 32 and his boss, who is in his early fifties.

They spot two young women further down the bar, looking in their direction, playing eye games with them.

The boss says they've got that bloom of youth which you can only see in the young, must be no older than 30, these ladies.

Draper says they would be lucky to have 30 years between the two of them. The boss continues rhapsodically, about that ineffable quality they have, of youth, which women lose when they get much past thirty and Draper gets up to make a call leaving the older man smiling at the two nubile young things, who are still looking in his direction, but their eyes follow Don Draper and their heads turn away from the boss, as they follow Draper move toward the phone.

And you can see the fade in the boss's smile, as he realizes their interest was not in him; they were not toying with the idea of becoming a foursome; they were simply looking at his younger colleague. They were interested in the same things the boss was interested in, and those did not include him. He was old now, at least in comparison.

In that scene, the most important parts conveyed not by dialogue but by the visual exchange of looks and where eyes go, is encapsulated the boss's dilemma. He is having an affair with a young woman in the office and he is ogling young women in the bar and he is being left behind by life.

It's the perfect expression of Mimi Beardsley and JFK and all of that.

Of course, there was something a little bit more bizarre in JFK, a man who seemed to enjoy watching his friends and brothers being afforded the pleasures of oral sex at his command. That gets beyond a desire to cling to youth by having affairs with younger women.

But Mad Men has a lot of touches like this, deftly done, and there if you notice them, but not all that critical if you miss them.