Season Premiere: Mad Men, "Public Relations"

 

When 99 called dibs on season finales in the spring, I did a tiny bit of silent brooding--I'm obsessed with questions of closure, you see, and especially with how the failures and successes of finales so often determine how we look back on a series years down the line. There's something exciting about being able to weigh in at the end--give what you hope might be the Last Word on the narrative.

But here's the thing--this emphasis on closure has also always struck me as perverse. We place so much power in the final episode of a season or series, forgetting the the real pleasure of long-form serials happens in the middle (and in the waiting between installments). So with that in mind, I'm officially claiming dominion over season/series premieres.

DOMINION!

I should say, too, that I'm not invested in doing recaps here. Instead, I'm seeing this as an opportunity to think through the season premiere as Event Television. As such, I'll talk not just about where I think the show might be going in the coming season, but about the experience of watching it more generally: the general level and tone of the hoopla around the episode, how it falls in the nightly lineup, what the fan community is like, etc.

So, now that we've got that taken care of, I watched Mad Men on Sunday after getting fully on board with all the preseason hoopla. As such, I'd voraciously read all the online reviews and thus knew that the season would be starting almost a year after the surprise formation of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce that closed out season three. This will be the first season of Mad Men I will have watched live, and thus the first time that I will be free of spoilers (and that's even more certain now that Matthew Weiner has refused to offer prescreeners to critics!).

The question of spoilers seems more loaded with regard to Mad Men than other serials, since its historical setting means that we're rarely surprised by the larger machinations of the plot (I'm thinking of Roger's wedding on the day of the Kennedy assassination, for instance, or Don's date's mention of the ACLU members lynched in Mississippi). One of the things that distinguishes my experience of watching Mad Men from other serials is the sense of dread that suffuses the series. As much as the show is about making the present look better in comparison to the past, it's also about idealizing that past, as all the fetishization of the drinks and style can attest. As such, even though I hardly see the 1950s as some antediluvian paradise, the casual mentions of unavoidable change make me brace for the uneasy future for these characters.

One of the weirdest things about watching the show (and one that no one seems to have mentioned), is the effect of its back-to-back pairing with True Blood. Is the delicious and tacky excess of the coming vampire/werewolf war in Bon Temps part of the future I'm bracing myself against while watching Mad Men? As gruesome and explicit as things can get on Mad Men (lawnmower mishaps or hallway fingering, anyone?), it's missing the sense of glee that characterizes True Blood. As much as I think it would be good for all of them (especially Sally Draper) to cut loose, I'm afraid of whatever upheaval would make the move from the world of Mad Men to the world of True Blood possible.

This dread is the funny thing about Mad Men, and why I think it might, for all its focus on the pains of patriarchy, be fundamentally a pretty conservative show. The structure of the show, thus far, has made us fear change. This season holds the promise of something different, though--at least I hope so. The characters who seem in the best shape are Peggy and Pete, and they're the ones whose lives have changed most fundamentally in the nine months that have elapsed between seasons. Betty is the only one who's still hanging on to her old life, and that doesn't seem to be working too well for her, as her petulant-girl routine no longer gains much audience sympathy when she isn't being actively victimized. Even Don is at his most beleaguered when he's trying to hold onto his old life (see the incredibly depressing decor of his "bachelor pad"). 

So I'm wondering--are we headed into a new kind of Mad Men? One that won't be characterized by dread? Or will the dread just keep ratcheting up? Thoughts?

Comments

[Kristina]

This is really interesting... I feel like it's quite different from my experience of the show. I mean, yes, I definitely feel dread when watching the show, I worry about what is going to happen, but it's nothing compared to the almost unwatchable oppression I felt during the first and second seasons.

I mean, I definitely think change will be hard for these characters, and one of the things I love about the show is how often certain characters fall back into old patterns. But I don't think the fear or dread of change alone makes the show conservative, because there is at least as strong a sense of oppression in the past of the show. The sense of change is strongest in this season opener, but I think it's been there all along, and certainly was building all through the last season. What I think is really sophisticated, rather than conservative, about the show is that the show doesn't entirely make change and stasis binaries in terms of emotion. Just because I prefer change doesn't mean I don't see there are sacrifices to be made (for instance, the loss of Sal was a huge sacrifice that I still can't wrap my head around). These characters will drown, will die, if they don't change -- not just because they need to "keep up with the times," but because the deadening oppression of the "old" times would KILL them. That doesn't mean that change won't hurt too. Change is confusing, and some of these characters will be hit hard by that confusion, while others (PEGGY -- who is better than I ever could have imagined!) will embrace it.

The show is about THE decade of change, at least in terms of our country's mythology. And that decade has only just kicked in -- even though the show began in 1961, in many ways we were still in the 1950s until the Kennedy assassination. (This is another thing that's so interesting about the show -- it's in many ways a show about a decade, and that decade did not really define itself until a few years in, which means that the first few seasons were setup, a gradual movement, toward this defined moment. That's gutsy in terms of narrative!)

There were really painful things about the civil rights movement and the feminist movement and even the peace movement -- and I'm not talking about the damage it did to society or whatever, I'm talking about the fact that individual people were killed or beaten or lost their jobs because of their beliefs. So I feel like, no matter how much you want change, no matter how radical you are politically, there's a certain sense of fear and dread and uncertainty about it, no?

[Anne Moore]

This is so smart, Kristina, and I really appreciate your calling out the need for a nuanced reading of the relationship between statis and change. Change is always painful, and one of the casualties of a binary understanding of the emotional effects of change is that we lose sight of the way that it is almost always accompanied by grief. No matter how awful something is, it is often really, really hard to let go of.
I think part of why I was so struck by the show's conservative elements was where we are in the season. Honestly, the hoopla around the show makes me way crazier than the show itself ever does. It reminds me of the popular response to The Sopranos in that people idealize a person and lifestyle that the show is actually pushing us to view quite critically. I'm seduced by an A-line skirt and fancy cocktail as much as the next person, but you're absolutely right that the overall feeling (ESPECIALLY in the first two seasons) is oppression.
Put more simply--I don't think the show actually glorifies the early sixties, but the Banana Republic clothing line sure does, and at the beginning of the season I find myself paying more attention to how people talk about the show than to the show itself. Once things get going, and I'm back in the rhythm of the narrative, I'm wondering how my affective reaction will change.

[Kristina]

I COMPLETELY agree about the way the show is hyped. There is a bizarre disconnect between the way the show is advertised and consumed and what it is actually about. I cannot resist the fetishization of those clothes and hats and shoes that match the hats and, omg, those sofas, those cars -- it's all so gorgeous. And there are a lot of people who only watch the show for those reasons, which irritates me to no end. And many of the main advertisers/sponsors of the show don't seem to actually watch it either (oh my god those clorox commercials and print ads last year made me want to throw the tv out the window!).

Of course, the brilliant thing is, the show is about an advertising agency, and also about how people want to be sold a fantasy. It's SO complicated on a meta level!

[cgeye]

The only company who has got it right, so far -- not the misogynist throwbacks selling cars and vodka -- are the nuanced folks at Dove, who 1) had a product that existed back then (one-quarter cup of cold cream!) and 2) got the irony that women should be involved in marketing products for them. Yeah, like for blacks, it's the mercantile theory of civil rights, but Dove made a mini-episode, just like the Glo Coat ad was a mini-movie -- with their swank, arrogant ad men and their most wise redheaded secretary. It got my attention, it truly worked -- and it smoothly transitioned to their body wash, and the sell we're used to, with women as informed consumers.

[Anne Moore]

Cgeye, do you have a link for that ad? I've never seen it, and it sounds really interesting!

[cgeye]

Dunno why this didn't post:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/more-fake-mad-men-more-real-ads/

[Supra TK Society]

MO MO MO MO.....I WANT IT THAT WAY......NO MATTER THE DISTANCE.....YOU ARE MY FIRE.....