Mad Men 1.01: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

Hello fellow TV watchers! This is the inaugural post on what I hope to be a slightly more focused attempt at blogging than my previous efforts – with a steady schedule and constant topic and everything! For those that have never read recaps, TV reviews, or your standard TV blogger, I would like to point to Alan Sepinwall at Hitfix.com – previously of the New Jersey Star Ledger – as a primary inspiration. I read his blog steadily, along with a few others like Myles McNutt and the great crew at the AV Club, who combine two of my favorite activities: TV and snark.

The aim of this specific entry though is to begin my re-watch of one of the all-time great series. As it stands, I would put Mad Men among fantastic dramas like The Wire, Breaking Bad, Lost, West Wing, and Deadwood. I first watched it about two years ago before enrolling in grad school. At that point, only two seasons had aired, and I could not get the DVDs from Netflix fast enough as I raced against the premiere of that third season.

Since then, the fourth season has wrapped, with tense negotiations at AMC and the fifth season set to debut next March. In that interest, I’ll be trying to review two episodes a week to get through the first four seasons and be ready for the new episodes come Spring. Some weeks depending on my schedule, I may cut it back to one, but I’ll try to let people know via Twitter (Josh2blond) when that’s the case. Without further ado, grab your whiskey neat and let’s dive into the 1960’s and the world of Don Draper.

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“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness.”

Let’s start with that opening sequence. Much has been said on it, including academic reviews like the piece here. It’s widely known as “The Falling Man” and people have suspected the silhouetted character to be many people over the show’s history, including Don, Roger, and Pete. I’ve always figured it was less foreshadowing and more metaphor, a man falling into all these carefully manufactured images supposed to represent the new modern world. To that end, it plays well into my overarching theory about the theme of the show, which is the desperation of the 1960’s.

Next we have that epigraph: “Mad Men – a term coined in the late 1950’s to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue. They coined it.” To my knowledge, this is the only epigraph to appear in Mad Men. This show really is about the self-made man, literally. The world of marketing and advertising is a clever one to parallel with the re-making of people’s very images. Many of these characters don’t just develop over the course of the show – they reinvent themselves, lying both to themselves and the world. All three characters are intriguing studies in desperation.

First we have our “hero.” As a friend put it, Don Draper looks like he stepped out of the golden age of Hollywood. Or as Conan O’Brien put it to Jon Hamm, he’s “a very pretty man.” He’s also deeply divided against himself. But well, what do we know so far as of episode one? Don is a Creative at Sterling Cooper. He’s a war veteran, likely of the Korean War. He lives a double life – one in the city as a ladies’ man whose conquests include a recurring artist in a dingy studio apartment and one in a house in Ossining (about an hour’s train ride from Manhattan) with a gorgeous wife and two young children. He’s a man who believes “What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.” And yet, when a woman starts to question his confidence and – of all things – pity him as Rachel Menken does, his walls start to crack and he looks downright unnerved.

Then there’s Pete Campbell. Vincent Kartheiser (AKA Angel’s freaky son Connor!) plays him pitch perfectly as the entitled douchebag that he is. But what’s funny  about Pete is that while he seems to have everything – money, youth, a great job in a growing business, a beautiful fiancee – it’s never enough. You can see the desperation in his eyes when he croaks to Don, “There’s plenty of room at the top!” Don’t worry, you’re not supposed to like Pete right now. If anything, we pity Pete. Oh, and just a note, but I find it funny how “not good with people” he admits himself to be, given what’s coming for Pete over the course of the show.

Our third main character is Peggy Olsen in a role Elisabeth Moss (boy, Zoey Bartlet grew up!) just owns. Peggy is our entry point to this world even more than Don is. It’s not quite clear what she wants just yet other than to be part of this glamorous world even if it means demeaning herself in the process. Notice just how many people – the ad guys, Joan, Pete, Don, the operator girls, the doctor – try to give her a picture of “what kind of girl to be” as Ken so delicately puts it. There’s really no weak link in this show, but among them all, I’d say Peggy is the character to watch most closely.

But hey, not everyone’s here for the in-depth character study. Some just come for the atmosphere – and man, what an atmosphere! It’s there from the first minute of the pilot. SMOKING! RACISM! SEXISM! LOTS OF ALCOHOL! IT’S ALL HERE FOLKS! That first scene is very much an establishing shot, and while I remember my first reaction was mostly drooling, now it seems a bit too on-the-nose. Look, PEOPLE LOVE SMOKING, OK! Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great scene, and Matt Weiner’s impeccable writing and luxurious dialogue are already on display in that little chat between Don and Old Sam.

Next up, Don’s over at Midge’s studio apartment. Midge is a beatnik, and you can tell she plays by her own rules. To tell the truth, Midge is a character I’ve never really warmed to. Rosemarie DeWitt does a great job in the role (and she sounds a LOT like Mary Louise Parker), and it serves a purpose as another facet of who Don is or who he wants to be given the slightly offbeat personality he adopts around her. Plus, she lets us know they’ve “invented” Grandmother’s Day. Hey, Happy Grandmother’s Day in about a week, Mawmaw! Oh, and also she reminds us we’re on cable by giving us some butt-glimpse. So, there you go. Go, go, cable network dramas!

Finally the action zips across town to Madison Avenue, and I love love LOVE that downward shot of the Mad Av sidewalk. It pairs well with the intro credits for one, but it’s just a fantastic shot. We’re then swiftly introduced to most of the supporting characters at Sterling Cooper. Don’t worry about the guys’ names just yet. They’re important, and alternately just as sad and hilarious as anyone else on the show, but they’re not given much to do just yet besides help to establish the world by sexually harassing Peggy and basically being a bunch of frat boys.

It is interesting how Joan is portrayed in the pilot, claiming not to know the difference between account and creative executives. We’ll learn just how clever and competent she is, so for now this might be an example of the masks these people put on to play their perceived role in society... or it might just be an example of a character having a slightly different role in the pilot then she does later in the season. Still, we can already tell that Joan Holloway is a woman who knows what she’s got to offer and isn’t afraid to use that to her advantage. In many ways, Joan is one of the strongest female roles in television. Yes, I just said that about an office manager in the 1960’s.

Also, Joan Holloway is really, really hot. It had to be said.

Boy, Don’s first meeting on this show does not go well, does it? That said, I love the snafu with the mail room clerk Roger shoves into the meeting with Rachel Menken to make her feel comfortable. I loved after the meeting went south even more when he reached to pour himself some of the fruity drink they laid out and then uncomfortably set it back down under Roger’s disapproving gaze. Roger is such a lovable cad.

Rachel Menken meanwhile, is nothing like what the Sterling Cooper execs expected. She came to Sterling Cooper precisely to get something different. And the idea that she wants to position herself as expensive, as an aspirational store as it’s put in business, is alien to these men who just wanted a quick, easy coupon for just-another-Jewish-department-store. Much like the A-plot – smoking – this is another prominent example of drastic societal change.

Speaking of the A-plot, Don spent the whole episode agonizing about his pitch to Lucky Strike – a very real cigarette company originally from Richmond, Virginia. The meeting with Lucky Strike is arguably what the pilot revolves around, and if the eventual pitch hadn’t worked I think we can say with confidence that this show might not have made it past the pilot. But even with the tension, the show manages to be disarmingly funny. The whole table coughing after dismissing the danger of smoking always makes me chuckle. BUT REALLY THOUGH, SMOKING IS SAFE. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS GOVERNMENT! Lee Garner, Jr. is right. We might as well be living in Russia. My goodness.

I did not remember Don being so incredibly lost here, but it sets up the wonderful turn-around where he pulls the answer from thin air, albeit in a slightly over-directed scene. And I bet making Pete look bad surely helped get the gears going in his brain. Don has to be the smartest man in the room. He’s a lot like some of TV’s best anti-heroes in that respect: (See McNulty, Jimmy or White, Walter.) But say what you want, that solution is elegant, and watching Don work his magic is spellbinding.

Finally, mischievous music jingles away as Don leaves his enigmatic dinner with Rachel Menken, rides the train, hops in his car, and walks into his oh-so-perfect house in the suburbs. The pilot closes on a tableau in direct contrast to the entire rest of the pilot. The father putting his children to bed as his wife looks on. It’s almost a Norman Rockwell painting.

At the end of each of these reviews, I’ll try to bullet some little thoughts and notes I had, as well as some quotes from what is a HIGHLY quotable show.

• So that picture Pete holds up is NOT of the beautiful and talented Alison Brie, who you can look forward to seeing in this show. She’s nothing like Annie on Community, and that’s ok, cause I’ll take Trudy too.

• Weiner’s dialogue is golden, but he loves his silent shots of Don thinking, Don remembering, and Don not knowing what to do. Granted, if I had Jon Hamm to frame in a shot, I’d let people just stare at him acting silently a bit too.

• By the way, Sal is really, really gay. I hope I didn’t spoil that for anybody.

• I love Dr. Guttman. Can’t remember if she shows up again.

• The operator-girls: yes, that was Kristen Schaal (of the Daily Show and a LOT of stuff) with the distinctive nasal voice so often used in films from the period – see ANY musical from the 40s through the early 60s for that-girl-with-the-annoying-nasal-voice – and yep, that was Flo of the Progressive commercials in the gaudy horn-rimmed glasses.

• So, honestly, how many of you thought Roger was talking about Kennedy before he flipped and said Nixon? File that bit of information away for the future.

Today's Mad Men quotes:

• “Let’s just say tomorrow, a tobacco weevil comes and eats every last Old Gold on the planet-“ “That’s a sad story.” “It’s a tragedy.” – Don and Sam

• “He may act like he wants a secretary, but most of the time they’re looking for something between a mother and a waitress. And the rest of the time, well...” – Joan

• “Freud, you say? What agency is he with?” – Don

• “So, we’re supposed to believe that people are living one way, and secretly thinking the exact opposite. That's ridiculous.” – Subtlety, thy name is Sal.

•  “I bet the whole world looks like one great big brassiere strap just waiting to be snapped.” – Don, to Pete

• “What the hell are you talking about? Are you insane? I’m not selling rifles here. I’m in the tobacco business. We’re selling America. The Indians gave it to us for shit’s sake!” – Lee Garner

• “Gentlemen, before you leave, could I just say something?” “I don’t know, Don. Can you?” – Don and Roger

• “You’re a whore.” – Don, to Roger

• “It’s not like there’s some magical machine that makes identical copies of things.” – Don

• “Let’s live here!” – Paul. Yes, let’s. Please.

I promise in the future these reviews won’t be quite so long, but it does take a little extra bit to establish the world and these characters. See you next time in “Ladies’ Room.” But not literally.