Last year I discovered the popular AMC drama Mad Men via Netflix, and became hooked immediately; hooked but a bit conflicted, all the same. The hook was the 1960's setting, which feeds into my fascination with that decade, and the strong production values that obsessively recreates the look and mood of the times. The first two seasons had me enthralled, though when I scratched the surface I wasn't sure there was much there there, especially in seasons 3 and 4. But I'm finding that as this long delayed fifth season is unfolding the show is living up to the claims of artistic merit that were only a pretensions in the past.
We are now in 1966, a tipping point of sorts. The fashions are becoming more bold and colorful, mainly for the women, the decor more modern, and we are beginning to see the change in social mores brought on by the civil rights movement and burgeoning sexual revolution. Alcohol, the drug of choice up to now, shares more time with marijuana, a minor player in the past, and one character has even experimented with LSD (and not a character you might expect). In typical Mad Men style these changes are introduced gradually. We saw the early rustlings of the emerging counter culture as early as the first season, set in 1960, by way of Don Draper's affair with a bohemian artist in the Village. Don't get me wrong, it's not like we're seeing hippies everywhere here in season five, (I don't think they've shown one yet); the makers of the program are careful to show that cultural shifts, even the radical ones of the '60's, take time to permeate the society. But unlike ABC's attempted copy cat drama Pan Am, which glorified the times that were a changing, Mad Men approaches these things with a far more ambiguous air. There is a darkness amid the change that's palpable.
With the new season we continue to follow the misadventures of the fore mentioned Don Draper, ad man extraordinaire, who's now remarried. Struggling to put his philandering past behind him, he has remained faithful to this point, not counting a "was it real or was it a hallucination" conceit from this season's third episode (and no, this did not involve acid). The world is changing, to be sure, but Don and the rest of the cast only seem half aware of it. To paraphrase the words of Bob Dylan, they know something is happening, but they don't know what it is. There are race riots in Detroit and Los Angeles, but the headlines are dominated by the Richard Speck murders in Chicago. Vietnam is escalating, but again it doesn't seem to be on people's radar, and only in so far as it effects one character personally. In spite of the veneer of normalcy Don, in particular, knows that something isn't quite right. He's worried, especially about the younger generation and their future. He encounters a teen age girl back stage at a Rolling Stones concert (he's there in a vain attempt to talk them into doing a Heinz Baked Beans advertisement). He questions her as to why she likes The Stones, probing her answers to find the right marketing angle. She stops him by saying that he sounds like a psychologist. He seems genuinely stunned that a teenager would even know what one was, let alone what one would sound like. I don't think the season one Don would have been on the make in that situation (he's a philanderer, not a creep) but I'm not sure he would have shown a father's concern for the girl either, inquiring if her parents know where she is. He's not so much shocked by her sort of adolescent world weariness as worried and disappointed by it.
This sort of discontent runs through season five's story lines. In this past Sunday's episode Peggy Olson, the secretary turned copy writer, has agreed to move in with her boyfriend Abe; a bold move in 1966. She invites her strict Catholic mother for dinner to tell her, and is met with disapproval, as one might expect. But this isn't treated as simply a clash of generations; the Victorian past colliding with the Swinging Sixties. This isn't even about Abe being Jewish. Peggy's mother warns her that this arraignment has no future; she's doing this to avoid being alone, but alone she will be once Abe finds a woman he's willing to give a ring to. She's settling, and in her heart she knows it.
And that's the strength of this season, and especially this past episode; you can see scenarios being constructed that lead to predictable ends, but once we hit the pay off a subtle twist is applied that raises it above the level of a cliche. There is a rather inevitable, and obscene, encounter between Roger Sterling, one of the firm's partners, and Don's mother-in-law (I called it, though not the particulars, at least twenty minutes before). In earlier seasons it would have been played strictly for shock value, but instead it's used as a metaphor for lost innocence. The sins of the characters are not glorified, even if they aren't exactly condemned, and all the freedom in the air isn't necessarily translating into happiness. In the background are the children learning way to soon that the city can be a dirty place.
This season was delayed because of a contract dispute between producer Matthew Weiner and the network, but I believe at least two more seasons are lined up, that will bring our heroes (a term I use very loosely) straight into the jaws of the social revolution to come. I hope the jaundiced eye they are presently employing continues. I don't expect a "conservative" take on the sixties, but the typically romantic portrayal of that era would be disappointing, and unworthy of the show and how it's developed.
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