Mad Men: Moving Toward The Future

Holy crap, it's been a long time. There have been a few factors keeping me away for two weeks (most of them are law school-related, but eventually, I just decided to wait for the season to end and get caught up), but now I'm back, and I actually have another idea for another nostalgia world, which I will get into next. But I digress; the focus is still on Mad Men. Two seasons have been completed, and it is certainly still very much about how much different things were back in the 60s, but things are slowly starting to change around our characters, and not all of them are happy about that idea.

I'm pretty happy that I decided to wait until I had seen the end of Season 2 to do this post, because there are plenty of things that happened in the last four episodes that illustrate this point pretty well. Throughout the season, Paul Kinsey was dating a black woman, and he ended up spending some time in Mississippi with the Freedom Riders. Kinsey had to put up with a lot of ribbing from his coworkers about the futility of registering black voters, but it wasn't until after he had left the workers of Sterling-Cooper let the real barbs fly. The best remark came from Harry Crane, the new head of the television department, who complained that Kinsey's activities only stirred up trouble for the networks, which was bad for business (people don't want to watch the riots on TV). Elsewhere in Manhattan, Pete Campbell and his wife were trying to conceive a child, but Trudy turned out to be infertile. When Trudy suggested adoption, Pete couldn't fathom the idea (mainly because of how it would affect his standing in his uptight family). I had no idea about this, but apparently in the 60s, adoption was seen as a very disgusting thing, taking in someone's abandoned child. However, the attitude about it was clearly changing, because both Trudy and Pete's secretary saw it as a noble thing.

The second season also sees the beginning of the breakdown of certain sexual norms. Granted, most of the trailblazers in this area are Europeans. In Manhattan, one of the new employees at Sterling-Cooper publicly announced his homosexuality to a full break room. This prompted confused responses to his face and plenty of jokes behind his back. The best part though was the fact that Sal was present and could not find the courage to stick up for his brave colleague. Out in LA, Don met up with a group of international idle rich, who spend their time drinking, smoking, and fucking*; basically they do what all the other characters on the show do, but they don't work. It is also very likely that they experimented with other drugs, though the only evidence that I have for this is the giant needle they tried to inject Don with after he collapsed from heat exhaustion. When he asked what they were giving him, they only responded with, "Medicine". This wouldn't be the first time that Don has hung around with hippies-in-training, but his beatnik lover from Season 1 was not so financially stable. Creator Matthew Weiner has said that he wants to end the show into the 70s, so it will be interesting to watch the reactions of people like Roger Sterling and especially old-fashioned (but very awesome) Bert Cooper to these changing "values".

There are two other major changes that happened in the season finale that showed just how much things have changed since the series began, but I don't want to spoil anything. Needless to say, things will be very different for Don Draper when we see him again next year.

Up next: The more things change, the more they stay the same...


*There is a very funny site that has "truthful TV title cards", and I kind of, um, borrowed that line from the Mad Men card. I'm a big fan of the Heroes card (that show is dead to me).