A couple of months ago, my wife walked into the
Apple store looking for a cable and walked out with Apple TV. Suddenly we were
all hooked up with Netflix just in time for my shoulder surgery. It was a few
days later that we discovered Mad Men. Last night we finished season four, so
now, a review.
First of all, MM has the coolest theme song ever
which features haunting cellos and an amazingly rockin’ drum line that practically
demands that you watch the show. So, there’s that. The show is a period piece,
set in the early sixties. It takes place on Madison Avenue, New York City back
in the days before Giuliani, back when the city was a festering dump of trash
and crime. The lead character is an advertising executive named Donald Draper
who works for a smallish, boutique firm called Sterling Cooper. Draper is the
brilliant, brash, boorish and mysterious creative director of the firm and the
character through which the entire show flows. There are an abundance of
fascinating characters from his smoking hot wife Betty, to the Rat Packish
rogue partner Roger Sterling, to the rich boy brat and insufferably entitled
Pete Campbell, all the way to the neophyte secretary/lost lamb in the wood
Peggy. All of these characters are essentially horrible human beings inasmuch
as each of them sets about doing horrible things to themselves or others. But
each of them have a barely there, yet vaguely discernible streak of decency
simmering under the surface. You find yourself watching, hoping to catch a
glimpse of humanity. Eventually you are rewarded and when you are, it is incredibly
satisfying.
But there is one character who is different somehow.
She is the statuesque red head who runs the office, Joan Harrison. She
overpowers every scene she is in partially because of her stunning hourglass
figure, and shocking red hair that shapes her face like a painting. When she
walks across the office, coming or going, she plays up her ample assets in a way
that stops traffic. But she isn’t just eye candy for the hoard of rude sexists
she works for, she brings with her an arrogance, a cool detachment. She is the
only true grown up in the room and she knows it. She has the air of self
confidence that comes with the knowledge that you are truly indispensable. Joan
isn’t much better than anyone else in the morals department, but she makes up
for it with the substance of her work and the one thing lacking at Sterling
Cooper…integrity. She quickly becomes the only character on the show who you
find yourself rooting for.
Donald Draper is another story. Handsome beyond
human understanding, and possessed of an artist’s creativity and imagination,
he is to advertising what Warren Buffet is to investing, a genius who people
tolerate because, well,..because they have to. He waltzes through the show
cheating on his wife, cavorting behind her back in ways large and small, all
the while running from a terrible secret that gradually reveals itself over the
first couple of seasons. He is riveting to watch. You know he’s a terrible
person, a real ass, and yet you can’t look away somehow. You can’t decide
whether you want him to find happiness and redemption or end up rotting in jail
for the rest of his life. And in this conflict lies the brilliance of Mad Men.
We will keep watching because, well…because we have
to!
