"Draper? Who knows anything about that guy. No-one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know."
- Young media buyer Harry Crane
to rising account exec Pete Campbell.
We know he has a Purple Heart in his desk. We know someone recognized him on the commuter train as a war buddy, but addressed him as Dick Whitman. We know he didn't have a nanny growing up, yet has somehow come out refined. We know he's no stranger to working with his hands. We know he is often the smartest guy in the room.
We also know that he's medicating himself to death with nicotine and alcohol, that he's serially cheating on his marriage, that he's emotionally unavailable to anyone in his family, that he doesn't want to talk about his past.
We also know that he feels epic unrest with his perfect and enviable 1960 affluent ad exec/suburban husband & father life, that he's not so sure he wants what he's attained, that he is watching his life pass him by.
Same as it ever was.
You may ask yourself, how did Don get here?
AMC's Mad Men is the best dramatic hour show since The Sopranos, and creator/exec prod Matthew Weiner was on the staff of that show. It's amazing how quickly it's hit the air after that earth-shattering blast of black that ended Tony's reign, but it's again the most innovative drama going, not even bothering to toy with our affections towards the main character as much as David Chase did with his neurotically unsatisfied married professional.
Draper's counterpart, his ingenue secretary, Peggy Olson, who's maybe not quite from the same pool as the others, more easily elicits sympathy, but no one gets away clean. This is John Cheever, the series. This could be Blue Velvet-land, just shed that paranormal Lynchian vibe. This is Douglas Sirk on Benzedrine looking ahead to Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, self-repressed truths and scandalous stolen moments.
While getting praised for bulls-eye period art direction, costuming and hair, and getting suspect for actually portraying a credible vision of period sexism, anti-Semitism and racism, it turns out that Mad Men is, even more than The Sopranos, a gilded vision of hell, and for each of us a hell of our own making.
"Advertising is based on one thing--happiness. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams the reassurance that whatever you're doing, it's OK. You're OK."- Don Draper
So Don isn't happy. So maybe Don isn't Don. Maybe something happened in the war. Maybe he was once Dick. Maybe he's half-Jewish, on his mother's side, and that's why he's drawn to department store heiress and owner Rachel Menken. Maybe he was poor and went big-time for the American dream, and actually achieved it, and now he's contemplating suicide by the side of a bridge.
Will Don discover beatniks before he divorces his family and strands his wife circa 1961-62? Will Peggy start going to readings and run into copywriter Paul Kinsey and end up in the sexual/cultural revolution together? Will sec pool queen bee Joan Holloway land a steady man before The Beatles are on Ed Sullivan?
Is Don Draper actually J.R. "Bob" Dobbs?
David Chase gave us the gift of dread, he ended that way and people acted surprised, but Weiner, with topnotch HBO staple director Alan Taylor setting the tone with the first two episodes, is giving us a brand new version, and it is crazy compelling. You can read great analysis of the most current episode, "The Marriage of Figaro" (like Chase's titles, the meanings are loaded), from Alan Sepinwall and Andrew Johnston. These critics are re-watching their screeners up to four times, and it's because like with Chase's show, so much of it is unspoken, so unlike typical TV that ,upon restudy, dangerous layers and threatening revelations of meaning emerge. A deeper plan than might appear on the smooth, stylish, nasty surface.
I desperately don't want to give out spoilers on the episode endings, but they've been uniformally devastating and I've only seen the first three. Just start watching, catch the back ones later, or get them on iTunes. Supposedly the fourth episode is a big one, and I just can't wait.
Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.- David Ogilvy
Yeah, but what's it doing to Don's (Dick's?) soul?
1 comment:
"Maybe he's half-Jewish, on his mother's side, and that's why he's drawn to department store heiress and owner Rachel Menken."
Why would Don Draper have to be Jewish or half-Jewish in order to be attracted to Rachel Menken, who is actually Jewish?
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