Late spring
2007. The buzz was about The Sopranos, one of the greatest shows in television
history, ending. Would Tony Soprano finally bring on his own destruction? Would
there be redemption?
It sounds archaic now, but I belonged to this AOL chat group dedicated to discussing The
Sopranos, to analyzing the hidden clues, meanings and symbols. One of the group
leaders was an English teacher at some community college, I think, in
California. Her user name was Greenlight – after The Great Gatsby, I surmised. Real
name was Jill. (Nobody ever knew my real name.)
“There’s this new show
coming out that’s supposed to be really good,” she wrote. “Mad Men about ad executives in the early ‘60s.”
I was skeptical. Did I
really trust television to get a period drama right the way a well crafted
movie would, say George Lucas’s American Graffiti or Richard Linklater’s Dazed
and Confused?
What was a TV period
drama for me? Not like I was watching Upstairs Downstairs when I was a kid. It
was Pinky Tuscadaro wearing bell bottoms on Happy
Days. Not exactly Eisenhower-era authenticity. Even my beloved That ‘70s Show looked less and less like
the ‘70s as the sitcom wore on.
I had to check this new
show out.
"One for the Road" -- Frank Sinatra
Now it’s the end. You
binge watch all seasons and the wild ride is like an acid trip. The cars,
fashions, architecture and music have all been historically accurate, but they
have unraveled so gradually you barely notice. Like life, like people, they
have changed so gradually over the seasons you’ve barely noticed.
I couldn’t take the
show seriously if it was blighted by anachronisms, but it’s the unraveling of
characters, more than the culture their stories coincide with, that has kept me
hypnotized by the story. We see all the characters struggle with demons, but no
one more than Sterling Cooper ad agency Creative Director Don Draper.
The house where you live
Over the episodes, the
plot unfolds like a book. We find out the man isn’t who he says he is. His character
is the closest television has ever come to a Jay Gatsby – someone who escapes a
poor background, assumes a new identity in a place where nobody knows him and
achieves the American Dream.
He thinks he can obliterate
the past as if it never existed. But does anyone honestly believe we can do
that? Can we live forever in denial? Never feeling conflicted and without
peace? Can we erase all the shame, guilt, pain and scars of our lives?
Completely change the story?
People do it every day.
Or try, at least.
Maybe you’ll cruise by
for awhile. Don has the perfect job, a beautiful wife, adoring children and a
nice house. “We have it all,” a neighbor tells him in an early episode. “Yep,
this is it,” Don answers, an undertone of dissatisfaction in his voice.
One of my favorite
moments in Mad Men is when he’s in bed with his lover (extramarital), Rachel Menken, and
reveals that his mother was a prostitute who died giving birth to him. His wife
and kids know nothing about his early life.
I love the way
prostitution is a recurring theme in Mad Men, how it parallels the advertising
business. Selling out one’s creativity, the beatniks – later hippies on the
show might say. But Don doesn't buy into that view. I guess I’m most fascinated
by the unique philosophy of life Don brings to his job.
You
are the product. You feeling something. That’s what sells. Not them. Not sex.
They can’t do what we do, and they hate us for it.
Advertising
is based one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the
smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the
road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.
(That quote was from
the first episode, set in 1960 when Don and Roger Sterling are nearing their
pinnacle. Think of this quote and think of the scene from the recent episode, “Time
and Life,” set in 1970. Both men are washed up. They’re in a hotel bar, drunk,
and Roger, pretty much Don’s father figure, kisses him on the cheek and says, “You’re
okay.”)
Don Draper is the most
existential character in television history, and I love it. He’s this guy who
dropped out of high school, stole a dead man’s life, went to night school at
city college (Pete Campbell went to Princeton) and he reads book’s like Dante’s
Inferno.
hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie, there is no system, the
universe is indifferent.
We’re
flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things
and wish for what we had.
People
tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want
them to be.
I love the complications
of this character. He was raised in a whorehouse by a woman who never let him
forget who his mother really was. He was verbally, emotionally and physically
abused. Is it not completely correct that writer Matthew Weiner made Don a guy
who cheats on his wives? Of course he does. You don’t come out of a background
like that without problems. It goes with the whole idea of a man who has
secrets and lives a double life. Yet, he has this moral code – loyalty to
clients, respect and compassion for people others ridicule, propriety when
other guys are talking crudely around women, manners.
As you can probably tell
it’s the writing that most intrigues me. Of course that’s the kind of thing
that’s going to give a guy like me a hard-on; what do you expect. Mad Men is
one of the key works marking the TV Renaissance. When I was a kid I’d watch The Brady Bunch or
My Three Sons and lie to myself about it being real life because I wished it
was, but Weiner – he cut his teeth writing for The Sopranos – has given us the
truth. To say he has influenced me would be an understatement.
Roger Sterling (don’t we all need a friend like him), Salvotore’s closeted life; Peggy Olson and the glass ceiling; birth, death and suicide; tripping on acid...
I could write some other damn thing later, but maybe this is all that there is.
