“He was conceived out of desperation and born into a mess,” Don Draper narrates from his own therapeutic diary. He’s referring to his youngest son, Gene, born from a fleeting moment of passion in Don’s decaying marriage to Betty — but clearly this sentence describes his own bleak, sordid origins.
Mad Men is one of the most spoiled shows ever so this will have spoilers. Don’s moment of zen became a meme seconds after the show wrapped. What’s strange is that the meme doesn’t seem to have an opinion on this ending of this series. The end of Mad Men isn’t beloved like Six Feet Under, polarizing like The Sopranos, or reviled like Dexter. It simply is an ending.
Much like Mad Men’s ostensible parent series, The Sopranos, there is some ambiguity. I guess you could interpret that the smirk followed by the “Buy the World a Coke” advertisement means that Don made a triumphant return and penned a masterpiece ad for his dream client. But does the smirk mean that Don has let such things go? Has his mentality changed to regard these conquests as trivialities? After his disappearance nothing indicates that McCann Erickson would continue to placate Don let alone give him creative carte blanche on their largest account. Don’s career, for all intents and purposes, appears over in 1970. He is a very rich man and McCann Erickson is a very unhappy workplace.
Mad Men is a hulking 92 episodes, a long show in today’s era of shows doing 8-10 episode seasons every two years; and sags heavily after season 5. The first half of Season Six is nigh unwatchable and the show got bogged down in constant business intrigue with multiple mergers and new names for Sterling Cooper. We’re saddled with pointless characters like Ted Chaough and Lou Adler who are one-dimensional and the show spins its wheels hard including a very poor creative decision to mostly pull the show out of New York and thrust it into Los Angeles to make Don “bi-coastal” — a move that was pretty clearly designed to accomodate outside film projects, not to bolster the quality of Mad Men itself.
Harry Hamlin, who had been mostly missing from TV since major stardom in the 1980s in L.A. Law does add to the proceedings as soft spoken and self-serving weasel, Jim Cutler. I never felt like Mad Men needed an antagonist character, but he was the most worthy one and had a unique presence and delivery. Don is his own worst enemy. Dick Whitman is the hero. The contradictions of Don, and Dick, who I think are primarily distinct (Hamm makes it very clear which he is playing) are the conflict.
Much has also been made of Jessica Pare. She performs a notorious burlesque at Don’s birthday party that embodied “cringe” before that was an ubiquitous word. By the time they had developed any chemistry together the show started ripping them apart by her acting career causing conflict about where they should live; and cooled tensions between Betty and Don reminded audiences of their superior chemistry and more fascinating relationship.
I skipped locating all my discs and watched Mad Men on IMDB TV which gave the series, appropriately, advertisements. Some were loud, garish, and artless; but there were some like a sexy beach themed ad for Calvin Klein “Eternity” set to a sultry lounge cover of “Unchained Melody” - I could imagine Don Draper flashing a whisky soaked grin of approval at the spot. This is a good way to watch the show; monitor your volume button as some ads are much louder than the show volume and horribly obnoxious.
Mad Men is a long, uneven, and imperfect show but its grace notes are incomparable. The “Carousel” sequence from Season One is one of the most perfect bits of TV drama ever. Jon Hamm’s performance as Don Draper and Dick Whitman, what little we see of the latter, are fascinating television characters portrayed to perfection. His work in The Town shows that he has presence in film and I’m baffled at how such a versatile talent has had a tepid career in the six years since the show signed off. Elisabeth Moss has launched into the stratosphere and I sure would like to see more of John Slattery, Christina Hendricks, and Vince Kartheiser (making Pete relatable and somewhat likable is a small miracle of the writing and performances on this series.)
Mad Men isn’t as good as The Sopranos, it isn’t as marketable as Breaking Bad, and it certainly could have told a more compact story; yet I loved spending time in its beautiful dream of the turbulent 1960s. I do not believe we’d have masterworks like “Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood” that were made in its wake without it.
My time with the show was much like Don’s relationships; thrilling highs and plunging lows - yet I can’t wait to hop on that carousel and revisit the series again soon. It truly is a time machine.
