Walrus Comix TV Review:
AMC's 'Mad Men'

The early 60s must have been a wonderful time to find yourself immersed in the proverbial hustle and bustle of New York City’s Madison Avenue…unless, that is, you happened to have the distinct misfortune of being anything other than a classically Anglo-Saxon male. In that case, as a former fictional Midtown denizen once intoned, it was indeed no soup for you. AMC’s new drama, Mad Men, contemplates what life was like back when men were men and women and minorities were most often inconsequential. As imagined by former Sopranos writer Matthew Weiner, Mad Men follows the testosterone-infused comings and goings at a Manhattan advertising agency in the early 1960s that is clearly not ready for the changes in social climate that would resonate throughout that decade. It’s an insightful look at a politically incorrect Camelot before the fall dominated by men whose lives seem no less complicated for the advantages they enjoy.

Weiner is no stranger to the intricate and often antisocial ways in which the male mind goes about catering to its cognitive missives as well as those more libidinally located. Having cut his teeth on The Sopranos, eventually progressing to the point that he coauthored that series’ penultimate episode (The Blue Comet) with David Chase, Weiner has set his sights on a different breed of ethically challenged men that predate Gordon Gekko as much as Tony Soprano. The title of the series is a nod to the lingo ascribed to Madison Avenue marketing executives by, well, the aforementioned Madison Avenue marketing executives (hey, it’s their job), and it aptly describes the ways in which they frequently navigate their own social cliques while surmising the threat potential of would-be interlopers. These guys may have traded the sandbox for corner offices, but their most primitive urges have made the trip with them out of the primordial ooze. They drink. They smoke. They womanize. They frequently do these things simultaneously and excessively. This Dionysian multitasking is seemingly only interrupted by the occasional pursuit of money and uncomfortable attempts at juxtaposing their inner selves with postwar Rockwellian ideals of suburban bliss.

Leading the charge and acting as the amoral center of the show is Sterling Cooper Agency creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Having navigated his way through the corporate ranks with requisite aplomb and precision, Draper embodies the sense of conflict that would envelop the 60s, as he is neither an upper crust, old money WASP holdover nor a radically evolved and enlightened purveyor of social change. He alternately appears chauvinistic and chivalrous, thoughtful and licentious, although you get the feeling in watching him that he merely caters to whatever impulse will ultimately prove most effective in furthering his climb towards economic and emotional autonomy. Hamm lends his depiction of the character ample charisma in hinting at layers beneath his sharklike veneer while balancing the distinctions between being complicated and being your garden variety asshole. Draper seems most at ease when cavorting with and confiding in his in-town girlfriend, an artist who has no pretenses about the depth of their relationship. His interactions with his wife and children seem remote and dispassionate by comparison, and the plot device by which his relationship with his mistress is first revealed as opposed to his family unit serves not only to give the series a bit of a clever chronological jolt but reinforces the dichotomy of the lead character. His work in advertising has allowed him the ability to cynically compartmentalize whatever emotional flourishes he may entertain via his interactions with the people around him, yet there are signs that somewhere within him exists the potential for more than detached irony and furtively temporal distraction.

The other main character in Mad Men is the time period itself. The social attitudes and mores at play within the social and professional cliques of the Sterling Cooper Agency bring to mind a roving Tailhook convention representative of one of the bottom rungs in Anita Hill’s personal version of Hell. Minorities and women en masse are relegated to the periphery except when attending to whatever whim or service they can cater to at any given time. The office is a hormonal warzone in which sexual harassment is meted out as a means of professional subjugation and secretaries are advised to have thick skin in conjunction with equally thin layers of clothing. Draper storms out of a meeting with a valued client who has undertaken her father’s business affairs when she has the audacity to question his professional opinion while sitting next to a Jewish mailroom worker who has been passed off as a budding artist in an effort to mirror the client’s ethnicity. It’s an impressive two-for-one showcase of the kind of crudeness that passes for professional decorum at Sterling Cooper. Draper is understandably a bit frazzled in light of the recent news that one of his largest clients, Lucky Strike, is apparently manufacturing a product that not only has no health benefits as previously advertised but just may be linked to the budding epidemic known as cancer. The interactions between the makers of Lucky Strike and the ad agency as they try to elude the Surgeon General’s grasp function not only as exercises in black humor but set the stage for a boardroom struggle between Draper and an upwardly mobile erstwhile protégé (Vincent Kartheiser) who practices his own brand of moral relativism in and out of the office.

The obvious conceit that Weiner offers in highlighting the social shortcomings of the titular Mad Men is the realization that many of the same attitudes remain at play in today’s society, albeit in much less overt fashion. His challenge will be to continue to imbue his characters with the requisite qualities that portend whatever progress has been made since the early 60s. Men have behaved badly for a long time now, but Mad Men offers a glimpse via its crisp writing and deft performances into the incremental evolutionary baby steps that some men are just crazy enough to alternately attempt and resist.

-Brant Miles