Mad Men

There are a lot of decade-end articles in magazines and blogs these days, listing the best of this, that and the other. Emily Nussbaum wrote in New York that this decade in entertainment has been distinguished by a flowering of greatness in the arena of television, a tough thing to say in a crowd of aesthetes but one, as I am coming to learn, that is essentially correct.

While the Hollywood film has degenerated into a mindless pursuit of teenage dollars, TV is experiencing a renaissance unparalleled since the golden days of live TV in the fifties. Of course this is not true of broadcast television, where aside from Lost and some NBC sit-coms, the name of the game is reality TV and entertainment contests. But on cable TV there has been a giddy production of thoughtful, intelligent series that accomplish what a two-hour film can not: a more developed arc of characters and storylines.

Most believe that The Sopranos is the best example of this, along with The Wire. I've seen the first few seasons of the former and none of the latter, so I can't judge accordingly. There has also been highly acclaimed shows like Oz, Deadwood, Rome and The Tudors, which are all in my Netflix queue (I don't get HBO for financial reasons, and besides I don't like the idea of appointment TV any more--I like getting the DVDs and watching it them straight through).

HBO passed on Mad Men, which has been running on AMC for the past three years (I do get AMC, but I don't want to start a show in the middle). I'd heard a lot about it and just finished watching the 13-episode first season, and I must say it's equal to the hype. It's incredibly written, beautifully acted, and as good a realization of the zeitgeist of its era as one could hope for.

It is, of course, about advertising in the early sixties. As explained by the creator, Matt Weiner, in the supplementary documentary, advertising was a glamorous career then--high-paying, creative, and with a casual office culture. It attracted men (and some women) who were aspiring writers (Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 while he was an ad man) and they enjoyed living the high life in Manhattan. This is the world of Mad Men.

In watching this show, though, there were a few jarring things I had to adjust to. It is set in 1960, and that was a different world (I was born in 1961, which is closer in spirit to the 1940s than it is to the 1970s--just look at the cars and fashion of those days). To start with, everyone is smoking. The pilot episode concerns the agency of Sterling Cooper handling the Lucky Strike account, when health warnings were starting to pop up about tobacco use. The second is the attitude about women. There are two types of women on Mad Men: the housewives and the office staff. The former are treated like dolls, and they watch over the children like June Cleaver and are expected to have dinner on the table and be content with the suburban splendor their husbands provide. The office staff--secretaries, switchboard operators, etc. are supposed to be working in an office in order to snag a husband, and are like chum in the water for the circling sharks--the men.

Of course this is how it was in those days, before the surgeon general warning and The Feminine Mystique. Over the course of the first season the major female characters show that life was not so good for them in 1960, and it is readily apparent how the seeds of feminism were shown, particularly in the characterizations of Peggy Olsen and Betty Draper.

But when I start mentioning characters, I must begin with Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the hero of our story. He's got it all--he's handsome, talented, and rich. But he's also a sphinx, both to his co-workers and his wife. His best friend is his boss, partner of the firm Roger Sterling (John Slattery), and even he urges Don to open up a bit. But Don plays everything close to the vest, and the story progresses, we learn why--he's an advertising man who not only peddles lies to the American public, his entire life is a lie, as he is not who he says he is.

Draper is only one of many superbly-etched characters. His wife Betty, January Jones, is fascinating. She's a stay-at-home mother, a young woman who once modeled but now struggles to enjoy domesticity. As the season begins, she has unaccountable hand tremors and sees a psychiatrist, which was still something of a taboo in 1960. Jones is either a bad or a brilliant actress, as Betty is frequently stiff and bottled up, a woman just a hair-trigger away from a breakdown. I think the casting here is exquisite. Jones probably couldn't play Lady MacBeth, but she nails this character.

The office of Sterling Cooper is peopled by other great characters. There's the weaselly Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), who resents Draper's success and works to undermine him. He is newly wed, but like the other men he has affairs, including a brief encounter with Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss), the mousy, frumpy secretary to Draper. She's another enigma, who appears to be a doormat but harbors surprising talents and cruelties. The penultimate scene of the season, which I certainly won't spoil here, is a fantastic reveal about her character.

Then there's Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), the office manager, a va-va-voom redhead who cruises the office like a battleship. She's having an affair with Sterling, but after hitting thirty and still a party-girl, she's starting to have regrets (and tells Sterling he should go see The Apartment, a new movie at the time). A trio of account execs, played by Michael Gladis, Aaron Staton, and Rich Sommer, were somewhat indistinguishable as the season began, but slowly became ever more interesting, particularly Gladis as Paul Kinsey, a would-be novelist who smokes a pipe and is envious when Staton's character publishes a shorty-story in a literary magazine. The art director, Bryan Batt, is a closeted gay man, and in the first few episodes this is handled rather obviously, and he wasn't allowed to grow as much as the others, perhaps this occurs in seasons two or three. Finally, there is Robert Morse as the other partner, Bert Cooper. He is an eccentric, walking around the office in his stocking feet and recommending Ayn Rand to everyone. The casting is delicious--Morse made his reputation by playing an idealistic ad man in the Broadway show (and film version) of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

The greatest character of all is the time period. Mad Men's production design team is to be exalted to the heavens for recreating the distinct period, starting with the James Rosenquist-inspired title sequence, which combines advertising symbols with a stylized rendering of a suited man tumbling. The show begins in March and ends at Thanksgiving of 1960, which includes the presidential election (the staff are all Republicans, and the episode which has them partying while watching election returns is priceless). The sets and costumes are precisely rendered, but the spirit of the times is also deadly accurate. There are few black faces--they are the elevator operators, janitors and maids. Anti-Semitism is rife--one of Betty's friends didn't like Boca Raton because she felt "outnumbered." Don has affairs with two women during the season, one is a Jewish woman who runs a department store, and the other is a Bohemian artist who lives in Greenwich Village. His visits to her world are terrific, as she runs with a beatnik crowd who but heads with Don, who they say is "spreading the lie."

Eventually I'll get around to watching the next two seasons, and when season four starts I may actually watch in real time. The show is that good.