| Half-Ass TV Review: Mad Men, Season 1 (Jul 25) |
| Written by EJ Feddes |
| Friday, 25 July 2008 09:00 |
 How good was Season One of AMC’s Mad Men? So good that Don actually learned the names of some of the characters! Of course, one of those characters is a guy named Don, but still, that’s an impressive accomplishment.I, like many viewers, was expecting the finale to focus on the battle between Don Draper and Pete Campbell. I thought that shotgun was going to go off, or somebody would fall out of a window, opening credits-style. Those things didn’t happen. Creator Matthew Weiner learned from his old boss over at The Sopranos, and followed Stan Lee’s oft-stated dictum, “Never give the audience what they think they want”. Instead, it was an hour of emotional devastation and actual surprises. Ayn Rand was evoked yet again on the finale. Putting aside any discussion of Objectivism, Atlas Shrugged opens with the question, repeated throughout the book, “Who is John Galt?” That’s really the central question of Mad Men. Who is Don Draper? As we learned, Don Draper was not actually Don Draper. But every character is hiding something. It may not be a change of identity like Don, but for each of them, their own secret is just as devastating. Salvatore is homosexual. Harry is living in his office after a falling out with his wife. (And was this a result of his election night hook-up with Hilda, or a pre-existing condition? We don’t know. Who is Harry?) Joan is secretly having an affair with Roger and unable to emotionally connect to other human beings. Who is Peggy Olsen? Well, she’s a woman so out of touch with herself that she doesn’t even realize that she’s pregnant until she starts having contractions. (Sidebar One: Without spending too much time on Randian philosophy, one of its major flaws is that everybody is the John Galt of their own story. Rand’s standards for measuring the intrinsic value of any human being can not actually be applied in any real world situation. And in Mad Men, every single character views the season as being their own story. Nobody cares as much about Don’s secrets as they do about keeping their own.) (Sidebar Two: Nine months have passed since the beginning of the season, as evidenced by the long shot of the ‘February’ calendar page in the premiere. So, you know, the season’s been just long enough to make a baby. I’ve mentioned Chekhov’s Pistol before, the rule that if a gun is shown in Act One, it must be fired in Act Three. Pete’s shotgun wasn’t the pistol in question, after all. Time itself was the pistol. The calendar was introduced in Act One, and was fired in Act Three.) As much as I want to see Pete get what’s coming to him, I can’t deny that his entire life is structured to do just that. Every single thing in Pete’s life contributes to his ongoing misery. And yet, the audience feels no sympathy toward him. He’s miserable and he deserves it. His relationship with Don is one of the most interesting on television. Pete is desperate for Don’s approval, at the same time he seeks to destroy him. I can’t tell which he’d prefer, and I’m not sure that Pete does either. On the other hand, Pete spent most of the season beneath Don’s notice. Don felt, at most, mild contempt for Pete. Once Pete uncovered Don’s secrets, Don had to take notice. And yet, it didn’t really change their interaction. Don treats him the same way, but now takes pleasure in his misery. And who could have predicted that the season would end with Don alone? More importantly, who would have thought that it would bother him? Don spent most of the season with people surrounding him to exactly the extent that he allowed it. Everybody always wanted a little more of Don, and he could pick and choose from among them. And in the end, none of it mattered. His desperate need to make a connection pushed away Rachel. His confusing a financial transaction for emotion pulled him away from his mistress. Adam killed himself after losing his brother for a second time. And as for his wife, oh, poor Betty. So focused on really knowing her husband, even though everything she learned created a greater wedge. Clearly, Betty has emotional problems, but I can’t help but feel like Don created them. For that matter, I’d really like to see some flashbacks dealing with their courtship. What attracted them to one another? Did Betty fall in love with Don in spite of his cold distance, or because of it? But in the end, when Don realized the one thing he didn’t want was to be alone, that’s all he had left. They left us with a lot to think about. And personally, I think Don’s presentation to the Kodak executives in the finale was the most beautiful, emotionally affecting scene that I’ve watched all year. If you haven’t watched Mad Men this season, you owe it to yourself to track down the reruns, or check out the inevitable DVD’s. *** This review courtesy of spunkybean's EJ Feddes and his A Nickel for the Swear Jar blog ***
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