Warning: SPOILERS for The Crown Season 4, Episode 9 - "Avalanche"
The Crown season 4 portrayed how much Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) loathed when Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) publicly danced to Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". This moment harkened back to an identical scene in the season 5 premiere of Mad Men and it marked the Prince of Wales' turn as into a true villain in The Crown. Up until that point, Charles was conflicted about Diana but he finally showed his true colors after his wife's birthday surprise backfired.
"Avalanche", the penultimate episode of The Crown season 4, opens with the Prince and Princess of Wales arriving at the Royal Opera House on Charles' birthday. Diana slips away during the opera, which Charles was enjoying, and she emerged on stage with her friend, ballet dancer Wayne Sleep, and together, they performed a dance set to "Uptown Girl". The seething Charles could barely contain his displeasure as the audience lavished Diana with applause. On the ride home, the Prince gave Diana a tongue lashing, calling her present to him "a grotesque, mortifying display". In real-life, Diana did indeed attempt to please Charles with her Billy Joel-themed performance, and he hated it. The Crown portrayed this moment the line was crossed where Charles no longer wanted to try to make his marriage work.
There are eerie parallels between Charles and Diana's "Uptown Girl" debacle and what happened in the Mad Men season 5 premiere, "A Little Kiss" when Don Draper (Jon Hamm) received a similar present on his birthday. Don's new, young French-Canadian wife Megan (Jessica Pare) threw him a surprise party (against his wishes) and she serenaded him with a performance of "Zou Bisou Bisou". Don watched helplessly as Megan put on a seductive show not just for him but for all of their party guests, who were mostly the Drapers' co-workers at Sterling Cooper, Draper, Pryce, and their significant others. And, just like Prince Charles, Don despised Megan's performance, although he put on a facade for their party guests from Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce. Megan was confused about Don's negative reaction and it was the mistake that marked the beginning of the end of what she thought was their fairytale marriage. The parallel brings together one established villain in Draper and a newly emerging villain, in Charles, whose reaction to Diana speaks to a marked change in his character, when the mask slips fully.
Don and Charles' identical reactions are at least partly down to the age gaps between them and their younger wives. Diana was 13 years Charles' junior and Megan was 15 years younger than Don. Both Diana and Megan were vivacious, beautiful, but deeply insecure, and desperately craved approval from their powerful husbands. Megan and Diana also rushed into marriages with their dashing beaus and came to regret it later because of their many differences and basic incompatibilities, while Charles and Don used the marriages to solve problems - Charles' duty to find a suitable wife and Don's mid-life crisis. Meanwhile, Draper and the Prince of Wales were both old fashioned, careful about outward appearances, and deeply fearful of appearing foolish. They also craved control over their willful younger partners.
For Draper and Prince Charles, each of their younger wives represented a similar ideal. Megan was the opposite of Don's frosty ex-wife Betty (January Jones) and she was someone who adored his children but was also something of a child herself that Don thought he could mold to reflect his perfect partner. Meanwhile, Diana was, on paper, the perfect bride for Prince Charles - a virgin from a proper aristocratic family who had no past indiscretions that could come back to haunt the Royal Family. While both Diana and Megan genuinely loved their husbands (at first), at the very least, Don actually did want Megan for a while, which is something that Charles can't truly claim about Diana. In the moment that Charles allows every wretched, spoiled instinct in him to rail against Diana attempting to show him a complete reflection of her love, his rejection of it and how it is written as the catalyst for him demanding a divorce as their marriage falls apart paints him squarely as the villain.
Although he is Mad Men's main character, Don was a clear villain by the time he married Megan and he was incapable of fidelity or a genuine emotional commitment. Megan's "Zou Bisou Bisou" inadvertently broke the magic between them and she was disappointed to see Don for who he really was. In The Crown, Prince Charles made himself (and Diana) miserable by trying to "do his duty" as her husband while he maintained an emotional (and later physical) affair with his true love, Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell). But Charles was at least trying to be a husband (for a while) until Diana's "Uptown Girl" performance turned him into the villain. Ultimately, it's sad that in both Mad Men and The Crown, neither Princess Diana nor Megan Calvet-Draper married the Prince Charmings they thought they did.
The Crown Season 4 is streaming on Netflix.
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