Recently, after some delay, the fifth season of “Mad Men” started up. I have yet to see an episode of that season, but I did finally finish watching the prior four seasons. It’s grown on me after a few months. Here’s the deal.
Madison Avenue, New York City, 1959-65. A fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper, competes for various corporate (and non-profit) accounts, even competing with real life agencies whose names I recognize. Of course, all the partners are male, and it’s with some difficulty and controversy that one worker, Peggy Olson, becomes a copywriter as opposed to simply a secretary.
Don Draper (Jon Hamm). The main character; he eventually makes partner. Draper is the creative genius at Sterling Cooper and inevitably the go-to guy for their ad campaigns. The firm would be nothing without him. Unfortunately for his wife Betty (January Jones) he can’t seem to keep his pants on. Every season we have to see which skirt he’s chasing into bed. Eventually the couple breaks up. From flashbacks we learn that his childhood was extremely unhappy (banjo playing Great Depression farm scene), though how that justifies his current behavior is not really explained (“I was an unhappy kid. Let me have my fun now.”).
He’s also hiding a secret past – and a completely different identity stemming from a mishap in the Korean War. How he kept that secret all this time is one of the biggest plot holes in the series. I’d have made him some “Manchurian Candidate” after being captured by the Chinese, but they went with this story instead.
I find him only borderline sympathetic. His talent at the office is offset by his personal life. The stupid thing about it is his wife is fairly attractive and not very bothersome. She does a fair job (by no means perfect) of raising their two children Sally and Bobby, and is neither greedy, dishonest, nor difficult. She compares favorably with most of the women Don cheats with, possibly excepting the real Draper’s wife (and that relationship appears to be platonic). My favorite was the Jewish woman, Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff).
Like most of the men on this show, he likes to drink. If “vodka martini, shaken, not stirred” is James Bond’s signature cocktail, the Old Fashioned is Draper’s. It seems the first thing anyone does when he walks into an office – particularly Draper and Sterling, especially together – is pour a drink.
Bert Cooper (Robert Morse). He’s the senior partner; he worked with Sterling’s father to create the agency and is more a source of down-to-earth wisdom and overall strategy than any creative input. He tends to favor Asian and abstract art, so he’s a bit of an enigma who the lesser lights (particularly Kinsey) try to impress.
Roger Sterling (John Slattery). Competing neck-and-neck with Draper for cynical infidelity, but at least Draper actually contributes substantially to the firm’s output. Sterling doesn’t seem to think up anything, so much as wine, dine, and schmooze the various clients to persuade them to stay or switch firms; he’s more of a rainmaker than an ad guy. His (ex) wife is older and his kids are close to grown up.
Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser). Next tier down is “Mr. Campbell”, who owns one bright blue suit. He’s an aggressive, up-and-coming ad guy who wants to be account manager. This puts him in competition with Cosgrove. He has a cute wife, Trudi (played by Alison Brie, the cute brunette on “Community”) who’s been trying to get pregnant, without much success. However, he does get along with her parents (even better than he does with his own), and she’s very supportive of his career.
Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton). Cosgrove is fairly normal: his big thing is that he got some fiction published, much to the envy of the other copywriters (all frustrated novelists, it seems). Besides that, nothing remarkable.
Harry Crane (Rich Sommer). Crane is a bit of a nerd, but he works hard and carves an important niche for himself by single-handedly developing Sterling Cooper’s TV ad section. I like how he figured it out himself and threw himself into it.
Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis). Pipe smoking, black-girl dating, pot toking, semi-beatnik anti-establishment guy, very pretentious, but still a worthwhile contributor to Sterling Cooper.
Sal Romano (Bryan Batt). The artistic director, a tall Italian guy, set off my gaydar fairly early and sure enough proves to be deep in the closet. Ultimately he’s cast aside when the Lucky Strikes guy makes a pass at him and he declines.
Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks). 110 octane of DD cup woman; she’s the head secretary and briefly has an affair with Roger. She marries a doctor (Rex’s love child from “DH”) but still has some feelings for Roger. Inevitably all the girls at Sterling Cooper have to answer to her.
Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss). She’s not particularly attractive, but she is smart, and makes some inroads into this heavily male-dominated industry. But she’s not an angel. In fact, she managed to go through nine months of pregnancy without even realizing it until the baby popped out. Maybe not so bright….
Lane Pryce (Jared Harris). When Sterling Cooper are bought out by a British company, Pryce comes in to manage things, mainly to veto expenses and make unpopular decisions, but eventually he becomes a far more sympathetic character.
The characters smoke nonstop even knowing (thanks to Lucky Strike’s scientific research) that smoking is bad for them. Later on, Kinsey introduces Peggy to marijuana, which she enjoys. There are NO black, Jewish, or Hispanic members; the firm shows not the slightest interest in hiring anyone who isn’t a WASP; and Peggy had her work cut out for her getting her own position, thanks to Draper’s intervention. The top two men, Draper and Sterling, can’t keep their pants on. I see a modest amount of recognition of the world outside the office: the Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960 (they all favor Nixon), the Johnson-Goldwater election in 1964 (they all favor Goldwater), not much mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a few mentions of the growing unpleasantness in Vietnam, and one brief mention of the Beatles. The biggest invasion of the outside world into the show's consciousness is the Kennedy Assassination in November 1963.
Obviously, what goes on after hours – or even during hours, for that matter (Draper makes his own schedule) with this “men [and Peggy] behaving badly” business is part of what gives “Mad Men” its flavor, though I’d say that this ingredient is not particularly unique to the show. It wouldn’t be “Mad Men” if Don Draper only nailed Betty. But it’s the less prurient elements of the show which specifically distinguish “Mad Men” from similar competing dramas. Fortunately, at least 60% of the show is really the work environment: how they land clients, how they steal clients, how they lose clients, what they do to keep the clients happy, and how they develop their ad campaigns. That is the part of the show I like best. For all their infidelity and problems, these people genuinely have to be creative and come up with things out of thin air. We haven’t reached January 1967, so it’s too early to tell if they get any Super Bowl accounts. We’ll have to wait and see…
