Mad Men: Brave New World

Holy shit. I am so sad that I've had to wait this long before covering the rest of Mad Men's third season. The episode "Wee Small Hours" aired right after my last post in October, and when the episode aired, I had a really good analysis for the episode. It aired on October 11, 2009, which was the date of a large gay rights march on Washington. In the episode, numerous references were made to the Civil Rights movement, including the August, 1963 march on Washington. My favorite line regarding civil rights was when Betty told Carla that, even though she believes in equality, maybe the world isn't ready yet (a total cop-out that I hear too often today about gay rights). In addition, Sal was fired from Sterling Cooper because of his sexuality. Matthew Weiner and co. couldn't have picked a better date to air the episode. However, it didn't go down quite the way we'd expect; when the son of the owner of the tobacco company that owns Lucky Strike (SC's biggest account) tried to put the moves on Sal, he refused. In response, the client told Harry Crane to fire Sal, something Harry had no authority to do. Unfortunately, Harry didn't say anything, and things got out of hand, and Don was forced to fire Sal. Things were made all the more painful when Don accused Sal of being at fault because of the nature of gay men. Even sadder was that, after we saw Sal calling his wife from a phone booth in a seedy area of the city, we have not seen him since.

The next bomb was the Kennedy assassination. That was the event I had been waiting all season for, knowing that the season took place in 1963 and that Weiner couldn't avoid it because it had such an impact on the country. What I didn't notice was that, early in the season, Sterling's daughter made a passing reference to setting her wedding date on the weekend after the shooting (the only critic that I am aware of who did pick up on it was the AV Club's Keith Phipps). The season's penultimate episode showed how the various employees of SC and their families dealt with the death of Kennedy as well as the to the televised shooting of Oswald by Ruby. It was incredible, to say the least. Seeing people stay home from work, glued to their TVs reminded me of the days following 9/11 and how all people could do was watch the news, even though there were never any new developments.

But I wasn't prepared for what happened in "Shut the Door. Have a Seat," the season finale. After about 3/4 of the season under Putnam, Powell, and Lowell (or is it Lowe?), the British agency that bought out SC in Season 2, we learned that the Brits were putting SC back up for sale, despite sinking so many costs into to make it more "efficient." Lane Pryce, who had become used to his life in New York, learned that he was going to be shipped off to the next place PPL was looking to take over, while Don, Roger, and Bert wondered what would become of them. Don didn't like the prospect of having to restart his career, while Roger and Bert would be unlikely to do anything but retire. But, upon realizing that the four of them could make their own company if they were released from their contracts, and that Pryce had the power to fire all of them, they did just that. Pryce was later fired for his insolence (which is what he wanted), and they, along with Pete, Peggy, Joan, and Harry created Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce. After a good, old-fashioned office raid, of course.

So how will SCDP do? How will working in the same "office" affect the already shaky relationship between Pete and Peggy? Peggy is now sleeping with Duck Phillips, Don's nemesis, and I doubt that's going to go away any time soon. Where is Sal? And will Kinsey be on the show anymore? He and Cosgrove were left behind, and while I could care less about Cosgrove, I'm going to miss Kinsey's goofy pretentiousness if he's not around next year. I haven't even mentioned the Draper divorce; Betty is leaving Don after one indiscretion too many to go off with some jackass politician. That's going to end real well (but I have no sympathy for Betty any more). The tumultuousness of the 60s is just getting started, so how will that affect the already strained relationships between the members of this fledgling agency? Season 4 can't start soon enough.

Up next: Sectionals...

Mad Men: Changing Ways

Sorry for the lull between posts. I am a few weeks into my second year of law school and although the classwork is easier, I am busier than I thought possible. Anyway, I meant to write a Mad Men post after the first or second episode of the current season, but better late than never. So far, the third season has reminded us that Mad Men has some of the biggest balls on TV because of both the things the show gets away with due the period nature (three words: Roger in blackface) and the things it's willing to put its characters through. The end of Season 2 was full of changes and revelations, and it looks like Season 3 isn't going to let up any time soon.

The year is 1963 and the sale of Sterling-Cooper to the British ad agency isn't going well. Some of the mannerisms of British representatives clashes with certain people in the office, notably Joan, who finds John Hooker, the male "assistant" of the British leader, impossible to deal with. But even worse, the home office inexplicably denies S-C the opportunity to work with the committee building the new Madison Square Garden, an account that would earn the agency millions of dollars. Instead, they sign with a trust fund baby who wants to make jai alai the next American pasttime (he wants to create an organization like the MLB, with an acronym like AJAA, which Don hilariously pointed out that many Americans would "have trouble with that "J").

In more personal stories, I'm guessing that certain people's lives are going to get pretty shaken up. Peggy is asserting herself more at the office; she's sporting a new haircut and objecting to the way the guys portray women and women's needs in ads. Roger is basically estranged from his daughter, who is getting married, because of his new wife (Jane, Don's manipulative secretary from last year) and his relationship with Don is deteriorating as well. Sally Draper is beginning to snap; her grandfather, who paid her a lot of attention and encouraged her, recently died, and she was none too pleased with the way her parents are dealing with his death (at least, the way she perceives them to be taking it). Her grandfather gave her support when Don was barely around and Betty snapped at her. I'm waiting for Betty to tell her to "Go watch TV" and have it finally be too much for the young woman. Finally, based on events in the season premiere, I'd be willing to guess that this is the year Don and Sal's secrets are revealed to the rest of the characters. The premiere opened with the introduction of Don's mother (in a flashback), a prostitute who likely gave Don his birthname of Dick based on a threat she made to Don's father. This was either to tell us that we'd be learning a bit more about Don this year, that his secrets would be revealed, or to give us insight into something that happened later in the episode (probably a mixture of all three). While on a business trip later that episode, Don caught Sal in the middle of a homosexual act. But instead of despising him or ratting him out, Don has (so far) kept his secret. Is it because Don is unusually progressive for his time (aspects of what we've seen of him so far offer competing answers to that question), or is it because he knows what it's like to live a lie?

Finally, this season will bring with it monumental world events that will shape the characters' lives in ways they can't imagine yet. In the most recent episode, Thích Quảng Đức, the Buddhist monk who protested the maltreatment of Buddhists in Vietnam by setting himself on fire, became an international news story, but no one yet knows the significance of this. And, come November (in the show's timeline), an event in Dallas will bring America to its knees.

So far, this season is shaping up to be another amazing year.

Up next: Neil in Hyrule...

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).

Mad Men: Culture Clash

Ah, the 60s, a time of sexual revolution, rebellion, and subversive rock and roll. Or at least, that is what the decade would become known for. At the beginning of the decade, the conformism and rigidity of the 50s still reigned. Mad Men begins in 1960, and follows the life of Don Draper, an ad man with a Madison Avenue firm. Unlike Pleasantville, which points out that much of the nostalgia we have for "better days" never actually occurred, Mad Men shows us that maybe the good ol' days weren't so good after all. In Draper's New York, it is a (white) man's world where women and minorities are barely second class citizens and money not only buys everything (except happiness), but people who can do so are idolized.

The series juxtaposes Draper's separate lives at home and work to show how both areas of life were vastly different only 48 years ago. At work, the men of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency spend almost as much time drinking and chasing women as they do working. Higher ups like Don and partner Roger Sterling take long lunches at expensive restaurants, and pay with the company's expense account. Everyone (err, every man) has a full bar in their office, and absolutely EVERYONE always has a cigarette in their hand. Oh, and the workplace banter would probably put the place out of business in modern times after litigating all the sexual harassment suits. But make no mistake, the men of Sterling Cooper are certainly good at what they do; if they weren't, they wouldn't be able to afford all the expensive whiskey, cars, and jewelry for their wives. The women at the office are basically waitresses and servants to the guys. A secretary at Sterling Cooper takes her man's coat and hat at the beginning of the day, gets ice for meetings, and "covers" for the men when they aren't where they are supposed to be. The only woman at the office with any actual power (at least at the beginning of the series) is office manager Joan Holloway, who knows how to use her sexuality to her advantage (that was pretty much all a woman would have as leverage in the workplace back then, because a woman's talent meant nothing).

At home, Don is the king of the castle. His two children worship him and his wife dutifully does what she is told. Betty Draper makes sure to have a hearty dinner ready every night when Don comes home, and doesn't ask questions when he doesn't come home. On the subject of the Draper children, to the unassuming (modern) observer, Don and Betty would seem to be the worst parents ever. At one point, Betty reprimands her daughter for running with a plastic bag over her head. The purpose of the reprimand is that Betty doesn't want Sally to run in the house (but the suffocation risk is fine). The kids mix gin and tonics for their parents, and corporal punishment is is routine. But that is how things were done back then.

After reading that, it may seem like the term "simpler times" would apply, even if the simplicity is derived from less than desirable aspects of society. There were a lot of things going on below the surface that certainly weren't simple, and society tried to keep them below, which created a spiral of complexity. Poor mental health was seen as a sign of weakness, something to be ashamed of. Therapy was for crazies, and if a family member needed to see a psychiatrist, that was guarded information (also, the doctor-patient relationship seems to be a little different back then). Furthermore, men were expected to be "men". It was expected that young guys would get drunk and chase girls; making a fool out of oneself was a badge of honor. This comes out very effectively in two very different ways in two very different characters. Pete Campbell (played by Vincent Kartheiser, who spent a little over a year playing Connor on Angel) is an up-and-coming junior account executive who actually overdoes the man's man bit. He doesn't know when to back off, and this has created a fair amount of emnity between him and his superiors at Sterling Cooper. Maybe my desire for any one from a Joss Whedon show to be likable is painting my interpretation of him, but when Campell sets aside his machismo, he shows that he is a remarkable employee who is struggling to fit in to a culture in the only way he knows how. On the other hand, there is Sal Romano, the head of Sterling Cooper's art department. Sal is very well-liked at the office by both the men and the women. What his coworkers don't know is that he's gay, and despite a few notable hints, none of them ever suspect (at one point, the girls operating the telephones gossip about how dreamy he is). Sadly for Sal, society would reject him if he were to come out, so he pretends to be something he is not and in a series of tragic characters, his story is one of the saddest.

As I said, money buys everything on this series except for happiness. Many of the characters seemingly have everything a person could want; Don, Pete, and Roger are all married to beautiful women, have promising careers, and all the booze they can drink. Their wives are provided for and can do anything they want. But absolutely no one is happy. The men always want more and the women want their men, not the gifts that come from their absence.

Up next: Progress...