'Mad Men' Polishes Off Another Satisfying Season
Photo courtesy of AMC
Oh, Don Draper, even when you're being a drunken, physically hostile lout, you're impossibly badass.
So ends the third season of "Mad Men," with Don calling his wife, Betty, "a whore" when he finds out why she's on her way out of their marriage, with the formation of a new ad agency -- Sterling, Cooper, Draper, and Pryce -- from the wreckage of Conrad Hilton and a bunch of fussy British prigs and with a return to the limelight of my two favorite characters, Roger and Joan.
I had mixed feelings about Season 3 midway through its run. The bizarre and unwieldy dream sequence-heavy episode about midway through really left a sour taste in my mouth. The show's writers also spent much of the season disassembling the relationships that pop the most on-screen. This season was Roger Sterling-light (John Slattery is awesome), but this only made his appearances all the more pleasurable (his best moment came when he made fun of the British guy who got his foot cut off by an out-of-control lawnmower at the office party). And Joan Halloway, aka "Red," (played by Christina Hendricks), vanished for most of the season.
Similarly, Betty's non-affair with Rockefeller politico Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) was unconvincing, to put it charitably. No, I didn't mind that she left Don -- and probably that needed to happen as the "Betty takes Don back" storyline was becoming played -- but for the bland, graying and thoroughly uninteresting Francis? The entire role was pretty much dead on arrival.
However, these are minor complaints. "Mad Men" remains one of the best dramas around, and not just because the sex, booze and office parrying ethos is taut, amusing and inspired, while leading man Jon Hamm as Don Draper makes every episode worth watching by himself.
Over three seasons, "Mad Men" has morphed from a commentary on sexual politics and gender roles at the dawn of a new era into a meditation on the intersection of history and family.
It is no mistake that Season 2 ended with the Cuban Missile Crisis (and Betty's betrayal in the back office of a bar) and Season 3 saw the penultimate episode depict the Kennedy assassination simultaneously with the wedding of Roger Sterling's daughter.
The best example of the show's relationship with the tumultuous decade it depicts, however, was a single scene from the episode where Betty's father, Gene, dies.
As the adults sit at the kitchen table, tensely arguing with their eyes, the Drapers' oldest child, Sally, screams at them that they don't care. After Betty tells Sally to stop being hysterical, Sally storms off into the living room, slumping onto the carpet in a very child-like collapse. She lies on the floor in this awkward, immature position, eyes fixed on the television as the news changes to a story of Thich Quang Duc self-immolating in Vietnam. Sally watches this man peacefully burn alive, and the connection between the historical and the personal thickens. It's a moment that's novelistic, and you can almost see the show as a child's memory -- Sally, age 50 or so, talking about the first time she saw the world beginning to catch fire being the same night her grandfather died.
As "Mad Men" continues to progress through the 60s, it will have to avoid falling into the trap of overwrought, overplayed, overdone 60s clichés (for an excellent example of this, go see the truly dreadful film "Bobby"). For now, though, I'll be content to know that next season Don Draper will be working in close quarters with Roger Sterling out of hotel room, drinking too much and single.
My guess is only good things can ensue from such a scenario.
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3 Comments
Ash said:
I agree, I thought it was one of the better episodes in a while. But it made me dislike Betty even more. She wasn't willing to leave Don until she found a boring new sugar-daddy to take care of her. At least Don made things interesting. Can't she be passionate about anything?
Stephen Markley said:
I like Betty as a character because during the first two seasons you mostly feel bad for her, but then it kinda comes out over time that she's a WASP bitch. And the gray sugar daddy? C'mon how does he even come close to sexy school teacher? or sexy comedian's wife? or sexy department store heiress?
Ash said:
I don't think she cares so much about the "sexiness" as she does the "senator-ness". It was way more fun to watch when she was cheating on Don with the hot random in the bar. Great show.
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