Taking full advantage of the void left by the conclusion of The Wire, Matthew Weiner’s riveting picket fence tragedy has quietly and without fuss taken ownership of that show’s throne and now wears the crown of the best show on television. A sharpened skewer aimed at the dark heart of the nation, Mad Men follows the exploits of Manhattan advertising firm Sterling Cooper, and it’s employees as they busily work to promote the American dream while simultaneously coming to terms with the fallacies of it in their own private lives.
While it might sound as dry as a mouthful of prairie dust just like the real business of advertising, Mad Men is a show all about the disconnect between perception and reality. Key to the show is that absolutely everybody is hiding something. Whether it’s mousey copywriter Peggy with an illegitimate child, secretly gay Salvatore from the art department, or busty Joan’s abusive fiancée, life at Sterling Cooper is a careful balance of rotating indiscretions. In an era defined by stifling conformity, rigid gender roles, and the dedication to a single, solitary way of life, Mad Men casts the viewer adrift in a sea of cultural intrigue. The wall of gray flannel suited gents indicating happy cogs in whirring machines, while at home perfectly feminine women wait, quietly going mad in prisons of domestic dissatisfaction.
This is a gleaming, confident America reveling in a post-war economic boom where there is no such thing as too much. Everyone smokes like a chimney and drinks like an Irish dockworker. Season two opens with thirty-six-year-old Don Draper nonchalantly shrugging as he receives a health assessment from his doctor that would alarm a man in his late fifties. The central personification of the manufactured nature of the Eisenhower era, Don, as we learned last season, is really Dick Whitman, the child of a prostitute and an abusive alcoholic who assumed a dead man’s identity in order to secure an early return from war.
In its essence Mad Men is a show about the absurdity of conformity. It's a show about role-playing, about image, and about artifice, showcasing some superbly maddening contradictions and hypocrisies. America is literally shooting for the moon, yet the civil rights movement is in its infancy. Couples are encouraged to settle down young and start a family, yet the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation hangs over their heads. A serial adulterer, and head of Creative at Sterling Cooper, Don is essentially paid to tell lies and manufacture perceptions while simultaneously living out one himself.
Butting heads with Duck Philips, himself a divorced, recovering alcoholic, Don’s mask gradually begins to slip as he begins yet another affair with the headstrong wife of a prominent comedian. Peggy meanwhile transforms from the shy little girl of season one into a confident executive. Pete Campbell, played with just the right amount of weasel pomposity by Vincent Kartheiser, still struggles to assert himself in his marriage as he and his wife continue to try for a baby. The Greek chorus of the office staff enjoys much more prominent and rounded roles this season; each one gifted their own detailed mini-arcs. There is also something of a youthful air to this season, as clients want to capture a younger market and so young people, “kids,” are drafted in to assist. Asked how best to get young people to buy a certain brand of coffee a fresh faced boy flatly replies: “Well our generation doesn’t want to be told what to do.”
Of course we know where all this is heading; The Kennedy assassination, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the counter-culture movement, and the birth of the sexual revolution, and the dramatic irony drips off this show like delicious syrup. But ultimately Mad Men belongs to Jon Hamm and January Jones whom, as the slick Don and frustrated wife Betty, perfectly encapsulate the delicate sensibilities of a nation on the edge of a precipice, populated by millions upon millions of couples drifting emptily through the hollow bowels of the American dream, strangers to themselves and strangers to each other.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Mad Men season two features commentaries on all thirteen episodes from cast and crew. "Birth of an Independent Woman" is a two-part documentary detailing the rise of independence amongst women at the turn of the 1960’s. "An Era of Style" is a fashion doc where industry experts discuss the dominant trends of the time and the legacy of those trends today. Finally Time Capsule is a retrospective outlining the major cultural and historical events of the time and their impact on society.
"Mad Men: Season Two (Blu-ray)" is on sale July 14, 2009 and is rated NR. Television. Directed by Alan Taylor, Andrew Bernstein, Lesli Linka Glatter, Michael Uppendahl, Phil Abraham, Tim Hunter. Written by Matthew Weiner, Lisa Albert, Rick Cleveland, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Jennifer Getzinger, Robin Veith, Jane Anderson, Marti Noxon, Kater Gordon. Starring Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, January Jones, John Slattery, Jon Hamm, Mark Moses, Melinda McGraw, Patrick Fischler, Vincent Kartheiser.
