Mad about Mad Men 0 comments

By Bradford Winters

Being a writer and producer in television, I’m not always the most dedicated or up-to-date audience member of the medium. Call me disloyal, indifferent, or even lazy, but most days after having spent hours at the office racking my brain on this or that story, outline, or script, the last thing I want to do is come home and turn on the tube to prime-time drama.

The way a banker on Wall Street may not be up for Monopoly at day’s end, or a massage therapist for that kind of foreplay with a loved one. God bless the schoolteachers who come home to children of their own.

So it is that I finally get around to a show like The Wire only after it’s off the air, and regretfully, I admit, for having missed out on the cultural discourse at the time; or, more recently, to a show like Mad Men which I’ve done a better job of catching up to, near as I am to the end of season two on Netflix while season three draw to a close.

And I’m as mad as everyone else is for what is certainly the greatest show currently on television, and possibly the greatest show ever.

Here is a series that brings a sense of saving grace to television by breaking all the rules, by letting the emotional lives of its characters actually dictate the storyline—not theoretically, that is, like so many shows that kid themselves with this pretense while serving instead the more plot-minded mechanics that dictate their characters.

Here is a series that takes its time, that really, really takes its time, letting the camera linger in silences the way Bergman or Kurosawa would, and endowing the nuance with more significance than a cliffhanger. For the genius of the first season of “Mad Men” is that it took its time to do in thirteen episodes what many another show might try to do in the pilot.

If you’re familiar with the series, think about it: doesn’t the first season feel like one long episode squeezed for all the riches it’s worth and parsed into thirteen segments?

Can’t you see a lesser writer than Matthew Weiner, its creator, or, more likely, a more network-minded production (they’re generally terrified of serialized storytelling as it doesn’t bode well for syndication) bring you the pilot of Mad Men by doing in one episode what the better version did in thirteen: introduce the question of Don Draper’s real identity in act one; dole out some backstory while playing up his double life in act two; get the ploy of his arch nemesis at work rolling in act three so that his job is on the line in act four when the mystery behind his identity is exposed; and save the day in act five only to pull the emotional rug out from under him with nothing other than the audience’s heart strings.

Good luck breaking episodes two through thirteen, when you’ve tapped yourself dry in the pilot.

As I said to a friend after seeing the final episode of season one, I felt like television had caught up to literature, and no longer needed to squat embarrassed in the latter’s shadow.

Perhaps that’s gilding a lily, or at least overstating the case, but nevertheless, this show is that good. And given the usual underbelly of envy and resentment that comes with appreciation for the accomplishments of one’s peers in this (or any other) business, my salutations to Mr. Weiner are clean, congratulatory, and downright loving: hats off to him for doing such a perfect job of it. Fedora hats off to him, to be precise, as precision on every level is the hallmark of what he has created.

But.

Lately I found myself, in the middle of season two, growing resistant to the enigma that is Don Draper. When, at the end of an episode in which his ongoing adultery took a turn for behavior quite scary and dark (I’m trying not spoil anything with specifics here for those who are further behind than I am), I found myself asking as he stared into a mirror while the camera pulled back from him at episode’s end, one of the show’s signature moves: “So what?”

Now that I know his backstory, how long am I supposed to be fascinated with the fact that he is a serial adulterer wreaking havoc on his family behind their backs? Enough with the brooding Don Draper; let’s see him get his ass kicked. Granted that I have a certain sensitivity to the subject given the backstory in my own life, how long was I supposed to watch him get away with murder and not pay the price?

In short, I was beginning to feel, well, a little bit mad.

And, contrary to the very operating principle of the show that I so admire, I didn’t want it to take its typical time to give Don Draper his proper comeuppance. Down with Draper!

Of course, Mr. Weiner and his writing staff were one step ahead of me. I should have known I wouldn’t have to wait long, as any writers room worth its salt—and that is one very salty writers room—must preempt the very questions its audience will be asking, then try to deliver the answers in unexpected ways.

Hence the subsequent episode that ends with the beginning of Don Draper’s comeuppance, in which his dressing-down at the hands of a secondary character who until that point had been portrayed as something of a lowlife, an ugly barnacle on the gleaming ship named Draper, makes it all the more devastating when it lands. A lesser show would have started with his wife, but good things come to those who wait.

I’m back to feeling mad again.