More Mad Men thoughts

* Last night, during my stint enjoying the hospitality of the Long Island Rail Road, I finished the first disc of Mad Men Season Two. With a little more than a full season under my belt, I find that I still don’t really relate to it on a competence-fantasy level — but what I do relate to is what Don Draper is so competent at. He’s a writer! A copywriter at that! I’ve now read and watched so many stories about people who murder other people for a living that watching people spend time trying to figure out the right turn of phrase for a headline feels bizarre. Bizarre, but good.

* The best part is that Mad Men nails the main pleasure of copywriting: Using creativity to solve a puzzle. Case in point: Don, Sal, and Peggy try to figure out the right tagline for their Mohawk Airlines ad. Don rejects the initial sexual-adventure angle he’d helped develop in their previous meeting, instead focusing on Sal’s background illustration of the traveler’s little daughter. On the spot, Peggy suggests a series of taglines reflecting this new direction, and she and Don tweak and reject them until she arrives at the magical “What did you bring me, Daddy?” She knows it’s right, Don knows it’s right, Sal knows it’s right. I know that sensation! I’ve gotten it myself during my dayjob writing copy for a bookseller, and during freelance gigs writing jacket copy for graphic novels, and in meetings at my old magazine jobs, coming up with coverlines. The thrill of recognition was palpable.

* Which leads to a surprising insight: Don’s work life is actually pretty good! I expected him to be embroiled in cutthroat office politics the entire time, but at least up until this point, his work-related problems are actually personal problems in work drag: his problematic relationship with his client Rachel Mencken; an unexpected intel coup by his envious underling Pete Campbell; a quickly avenged and forgotten pass at his wife by Roger Sterling. Those events aside, Don has a creatively and financially fulfilling job. He has the full support of his superiors; even the one time that Cooper gainsays him by insisting they keep Campbell, Sterling immediately steps into the breach to safeguard Don’s authority in Campbell’s eyes. He has the nearly worshipful admiration of everyone at the office, from his bosses (who are also his friends) to his employees (including Pete, his own protestations to the contrary). He’s good enough at his job to actually deserve that admiration, moreover. He wants a raise, he gets it. He wants to make partner, he gets it. In fact, hiring Duck Phillips and discovering that he disagrees with the decisions Duck’s making in his old job is the first time Don goes up against anything resembling a structural problem with his job. No wonder he’s sacrificed or marginalized so much outside of the office.

* Peggy’s arc is a lot more disheartening than Don’s, because it entails her becoming a worse person as a function of getting better at her job. I’d be lying if I told you that my own recent experiences with miscarriage, premature birth, and fatherhood didn’t color my perception of her decision to reject her baby. Simply put, that scene made me cry at my desk. (It’s been tempered somewhat by the revelation that she handled her I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant moment badly enough to be classified as mentally ill and/or maternally unfit by the state.) But it’s not just what she’s done about her baby. I watched in something approaching horror as she dismantled the pretty young voice actress she cast in the commercial for the weight-loss vibrator thingamajig, thinking that she was harping on a perceived lack of confidence to compensate for her own — but this blossomed into full-blown horror when I realized she did this on purpose so that she could ingratiate herself with the unctuously macho Kenneth Cosgrove by providing him with easy pickings, breaking the actress apart so he could sweep in and reassemble her around his dick. Peggy appears to have learned what it seems a lot of viewers don’t learn from Don and company’s behavior, which is that you can’t separate the competence fantasy from the competence nightmare.

* Don’s most profound violation of Betty’s trust was neither his many affairs, nor his lies about his name and background. It was his collusion with her psychotherapist. I’m not really sure if what I’m about to say truly squares with the reality of these situations, but I can’t help but feel that both his adultery and his identity are matters of withholding himself from Betty. These are areas of his life he has chosen not to share with her. But by violating her privacy in therapy, he’s actively invading those areas she chooses to keep from him in turn — socially sanctioned areas at that, unlike his own. It’s vile. And when I realized that his purloined phone bill would reveal not phone calls to mistresses (he was always pretty careful about that) but phone calls to the doctor, I gasped.

* Betty handled it differently than I thought she might, by the way. I think I expected a “press a button and she falls apart” physical collapse akin to — well, I won’t say, but another prominent drama involving a husband who cheated on his wife, when the wife was finally confronted with this in a way she couldn’t avoid. Instead, in true Draper fashion, she shrewdly uses her knowledge to voice her concerns and suspicions about Don’s infidelity, knowing that either a) the doctor wouldn’t dare tell Don about this, thus preserving her privacy, or b) the doctor would tell Don about this, thus starting a conversation she couldn’t bring herself to start on her own.

* But first she breaks down and cries and confides to a nine-year-old boy. I found her two interactions with her divorced neighbor’s sad little kid enormously affecting. The first, in which the kid busts in on her while she’s peeing and she subsequently gives him a lock of her hair, was like the fulfillment of every young boy’s first pre-sexual kindling of the erotic impulse. That’s a topic I don’t think I’ve ever seen addressed, except in cheesy Franco-Italian sexual-awakening movies about sultry brunettes who turn their little villages upside-down. But it was also enormously revealing of how desperate Betty was for sexual and romantic validation, and how little emotional sustenance her friends, husband, and work as a homemaker and mother were providing her. That second parking-lot interaction was all of that writ large, with the bonus violation of the era’s rigid insistence on the sacredness of childhood. She forced the kid to be an adult — in a tender and sad and empathetic way, so much so that even the kid realized this person needed taking care of, but yeah, that’s what she did. It was brilliantly written, and frankly January Jones, whatever her faults elsewhere, couldn’t be more ideal as this porcelain-doll wifebot who occasionally cracks in profound and dangerous ways.

* Back to Don for a moment: My favorite part of the slow-burning Dick Whitman reveal came before you even knew it was a reveal. It was the first time we ever heard the name “Dick Whitman,” when a fellow commuter bumped into Don on the train and used this unfamiliar name. For the entire conversation, I thought that this guy simply had it wrong, that it was a case of mistaken identity, that Don was rolling with it because doing so was easier than correcting him, that a point was being made about Don as an unperson, a meticulously constructed generic man-shaped void. And I think those last couple of points still stand, regardless. What an eerie, haunting little scene.

* Another detail I enjoyed: Don and Pete’s on-again, off-again, bonafide camaraderie — the camaraderie of enemies. In the course of my life, from grade school till now, I’ve had, I dunno, half a dozen dudes (always dudes) who’ve actively sought to hurt me and/or were out to get me in some way. In all cases this weird affinity develops with them in a way that doesn’t exist with more run-of-the-mill critics or unpleasant acquaintances. You get to know someone you hate, and when you get to know them, a closeness develops whether you want it to or not. In one case in my own life, a guy I almost came to blows with once in high school (unbeknownst to me — our mutual friends kept him away from me) literally did the look-back-on-it-and-laugh thing a year later, when we became friends in college. We wouldn’t have gotten there if we hadn’t started someplace else. So I totally buy the seemingly genuine concern, respect, and pleasantness that breaks out between Don and Pete every now and then. As Bert Cooper told Don, one never knows how loyalty is born.

* A couple of quick notes on two key supporting players. You’ll note that when I did a quick list of actors on this show who are easy on the eyes, I didn’t mention John Slattery as Roger Sterling. I dunno, there was something slightly avian and predatory in his sharp gray features. But Jesus can that guy talk. Hand me a mic and a phonebook, for real. What great casting, to make him the guy for whom bon mots are a way of life. He’s a juggernaut of verbal charm. The most troubling thing about his move on Betty Draper or his attempted twincest threeway on the night of his heart attack wasn’t the morality of the deeds, but how clumsy he was in suggesting them. That’s how you knew something was wrong. That’s sharp writing.

* Watching these DVDs was my first-ever glimpse of Christina Hendricks in a noncleavagecentric capacity. If you’ve only ever known of her in the context of your suspicion that Tumblr was developed as a slightly inefficient Christina Hendricks photo delivery mechanism, watching her act — specifically, watching her play Joan Holloway, who is herself a ruthlessly efficient Joan Holloway delivery mechanism — is a revelation. That’s a part that could be very one-note and very dull in someone else’s hands, but Hendricks brings the character to her own tenaciously curated form of life. Always you see the effort behind the effortlessness, but just a little of it, just enough to prevent her from lapsing into caricature on either side of the line. Hendricks makes “making ‘making it look easy’ look hard” look easy.

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9 Responses to More Mad Men thoughts

  1. DerikB says:

    Enjoying the Mad Men thoughts, Sean. I hope you keep them up as you continue watching.

  2. Great round of thoughts. I’m also a (less interesting than copywriter) corporate writer, so I also enjoy how Mad Men glamorizes that kind of job. I hadn’t thought about how Don’s collusion with the psychotherapist was a bigger violation, but that’s an excellent point. But within the show they make it seem like that’s how it worked in the 60’s – if your wife is seeing a therapist, the therapist calls you to keep you informed. Which is really awful.

  3. Dimetri W says:

    Really enjoyed this, Sean. Great writing.

  4. Thank you, everyone! Much appreciated today.

    Mark: Yeah, that was very much a “Your whole freakin’ SYSTEM’S ‘out of order’!” moment.

  5. Ben Morse says:

    More of this, please.

  6. Alan says:

    I enjoy reading your reviews and agree with them a surprising amount, so I was delighted to see you had started watching “Mad Men”. In your first post about the show you mention how great the casting is because of the visual aesthetics involved. I agree and I’d like to add that acting-wise this show is cast unbelievably well. Better than almost anything else I’ve seen.

    It may be because I got a degree in acting (learning the expensive way to never, ever put yourself in shit-ton of debt for an acting degree) and taught it for a while but I am surprised people don’t talk more about the different styles of acting that are used as tools to tell the story.

    My favorite example is January Jones as Betty. Personally, I am more of a fan of a slightly theatrical, slightly at-arms-length style that Jon Hamm and, to a larger extent, John Slattery use. They both come from a live performance, thinking-on-your-feet background and it shows in their performances. They are cast very well as on-your-feet performing is also a large part of their characters—of their characters’ stories. How they “act” is similar to how they act, how they are. Very important in a story about identity.

    Not until Betty Draper did I understood how effective a much smaller, naturalistic style could be. A good example is the end of “Shoot” (episode 9 of the first season). That final close-up of Betty, gun in hand, after those last few scenes of seeming resignation into domestic bliss, is the only thing that tells you that Betty’s story is far from over. That she is not happy. That she will find a way to fight. And it’s going to be weird and surprising—to her and us. Here’s a link to that scene: http://youtu.be/ltl0EQ9O7Gg

    It’s an amazing storytelling moment that happens all from her face. Without that close-up it’s just a sit-com moment of passive-aggressiveness—a punch-line to the whole episode. January’s whole mode of performing is so simple, so barely there—especially in comparison to her castmates—that at times we are not sure she knows what she’s doing or thinking. And then come moments like that close-up where her inner self reveals itself and genuinely surprises—which, I’d argue, is very much Betty’s arc through “Mad Men”.

    I finally saw “X-men: First Class” and January is dull in it. I would argue that only a part of the blame lies with her. She was utterly miscast. Who saw Betty Draper and thought, “There’s our White Queen”? I am not saying that January Jones is a brilliant versatile performer. I am saying that she is cast brilliantly as a tool to tell the very particular story that Matthew Weiner wants to tell. So often acting styles are ignored and a director/producer just wants everybody to “act” the same. Not with “Mad Men”. A while ago, a friend was called in to read for a bit part on an episode—only four or five lines, and she was stunned/terrified when Matthew Weiner himself was at her audition. “The big boss is never there for casting these tiny parts,” she told me. “It’s usually the casting director who’s in charge at these things.” That’s the kind of attention to detail/anal-retentiveness that shows in the final product.

    Sorry to go on and on. I love this stuff. Hope you don’t mind. And, like others have said: Thanks for taking the time to write and post.

  7. Chris Ward says:

    Yes. More of this. I have a few things to say. Rarely have I seen a Period Show that captures the mentality of the time in its writing like this one. I usually find myself feeling beside myself, yelling (in my head) at the screen when certain characters (usually women) act or react a certain way in this show. Except I have no frame of reference for this time period, but I trust the characters are reacting correctly to their frame of reference when it comes to this show. That’s good writing. Usually, in shows like this, you can feel the fingerprints of the present age all over the thing. Only during one snarky line in the Pilot (“And it’s not like there’s some magic machine that makes identical copies of things.”) did this happen. Other than that, it feels immersive. Almost every piece of TV/Movie we usually see in an old setting has a contemporary or stylized consciousness attached to it. This show doesn’t. It’s like you’re spying on something back in time, rather than watching something that’s been written and performed.

    And Don Draper…fuck. I wanna be this guy. And he’s abusive, misogynistic…you name it. His appeal is that he gets away with being the kind of man most men would like to get away with being today, thought they won’t admit it. “If I were only born in a different time,” they think. To anyone who judges Don Draper? Go kick rocks.

    My 50 year old dad and I don’t have a lot in common. What we share, is moments through watching the same show. I watched The Sopranos only because he did. He watches Mad Men, so I started. When I told him I was all caught up on the seasons he said “It’s the best show. Ever. I like seeing the clothes everybody wore, the cars…everyone smokes. I remember that everyone smoked when I was a kid.” I realized we were both watching totally different shows, but at the same time.

    Also, I don’t want to say why yet, but there is a call back to a shot in the Pilot in Season 2. When Peggy is at the gynecologist, she goes catatonic and stares at a calendar in the month of March. I didn’t notice this, and the correlating event, until my second go through of the series. It will color your view of one of the characters.

  8. Pingback: Mad Men thoughts index « Attentiondeficitdisorderly by Sean T. Collins

  9. Hob says:

    I finally started watching this & am now halfway through season two. Holy shit it’s good.

    I’m trying real hard not to read the rest of your posts before I finish the whole thing, so for all I know you’ve already discussed this, but: I think when Don comes up with a pitch about need and nostalgia and loneliness, and it parallels his personal life, it’s not just a writerly device; it’s central to what the character and the show is about, and it rhymes nicely with Tony Soprano’s therapy sessions. Don, like Tony, is much weirder than his colleagues suspect. Tony pours out his neurosis to Dr. Melfi, and she helps him control it and become a better gangster. Don can’t literally express his at all, but by pouring it out in a pitch, he reframes it as something outside himself that can be managed, encouraged in other people, and taken advantage of. During that amazing Carousel scene, as Don clicked through what was basically a commercial for his own life, I could just about see him yanking demons out of his own ear and sending them into the Gadarene consumers.

    Also, glad to see you dug this bit as much as I did:

    I watched in something approaching horror as she dismantled the pretty young voice actress she cast in the commercial for the weight-loss vibrator thingamajig, thinking that she was harping on a perceived lack of confidence to compensate for her own — but this blossomed into full-blown horror when I realized she did this on purpose so that she could ingratiate herself with the unctuously macho Kenneth Cosgrove by providing him with easy pickings, breaking the actress apart so he could sweep in and reassemble her around his dick.

    —although actually I read Peggy’s thought balloons more like this: Can’t decide. Think! Think like an asshole adman. [in Roger Sterling font] I like pretty girls. [back to normal font] I pick the pretty girl. Uh-oh, she’s not right. Why can’t she do it right! Fuck!! OK, that won’t work. I fucked up and they all know it! How can I get Ken to stop looking at me—and now that girl is crying and I can’t bear to face her. Hey, I’ll get Ken to go after her! He’ll totally do that, because he’d love to take advantage, so he’ll be glad I fucked up! Even better: maybe I can make him think I did it on purpose for his sake! I AM SO SMART but now I hate myself

    So I guess my way is like your way except I think she’s making it up as she goes along, because that fits with the character and with something in Moss’s performance: under pressure she gets very still and controlled, like she’s trying to speak naturally while thinking fast, and always just barely pulling it off. Beautifully acted, and the character is breaking my heart.

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