I do not have cable so I miss the boat when television series such as Mad Men are popular then end, but I prefer it that way because then I get to watch the entire series without interruption and not forget any detail. I can judge it as a whole as opposed to gradual or sudden disappointment or the opposite. If you are like me and live under a rock, then you may not know that the series focuses on the people who work at a Madison Avenue advertising agency during the series and their families as a microcosm of how American life began to transform into the world as we know it today.
I loved Mad Men. Watching this television series during a global pandemic managed to defrost me from the numbing effects of living in a nascent dystopia, which is strange because most of the characters are willfully almost entirely devoid of normal emotion. It is a series about how the world revolved (yes, I am using the past tense as if it ended) around cis gendered white men traumatized from various wars abroad and at home accustomed to numbing themselves with various addictions such as sex, alcohol and drugs, because they so fear being alone with themselves and have to face themselves, a person whom they did not particularly like. Instead of love, they give money because it is more easily accessible and recognizable. As long as they can give the impression of normality and stay in a frenzy of hunger and success, they hope that no one will notice the cracks in their lives. Even at the top of the food chain, despair and fear of others’ discovery of their deficiencies are their constant, faithful companion. Gradually other characters begin to question their acquiescence to this system and want more while still cosigning the social contract that they were taught to swear allegiance to, but has no allegiance to them.
How was I, a woman of color, albeit biracial, able to relate to Mad Men, an extremely white show about sad, wealthy white men? I work in an office—one that completely does not resemble the ribald, instant gratification atmosphere of that office, but does in the way that the characters imbue each job with such importance until they gradually realize how unimportant and ephemeral their goals are regardless of how tangibly and recognizably those goals are professionally. When we encourage children to work hard, study and enter certain professions, we potentially can be asking those children to cosign and devote their lives to a system that is not only rigged against them based on random demographics, but is destined to dissatisfy even in the face of success without warning them of the existential crisis faced by those who benefit from it the most.
Mad Men is an ensemble series, but it definitely has a protagonist, Don Draper. I am someone who is attracted to talent, not looks, so I have never understood the appeal of Jon Hamm before watching this series. I have seen him in quite a few movies while shaking my head, “I don’t get it,” but in this series, he looks the same without the benefit of aging makeup, but with his posture and voice, he is able to signal the time period, his age and the point in his life story that he is depicting! I was blown away and am ready to reconsider that maybe the filmmakers do not know how to use him to the best of his abilities. A negative of watching any series when it airs is lacking the touchstone of other people to understand whether or not a character was considered appealing by everyone or not versus whether the series was sympathetic, but the public hated a character. All the characters are objectively awful in a variety of ways, but no character is entirely without appeal. There was more than one occasion when a character accused him of ruining his or her life, and I genuinely asked, “How?” in spite of a list of objectively detrimental conduct that preceded that moment because it was not the proper response at that particular point. I am sorry Megan, Peggy, Duck and Jim Cutler. You certainly have a bone to pick, but your rhythm is off. Joan and Sally can come at him though. I will sign a waiver for them. It felt as if he always got negative reinforcement every time he actually tried to be a decent human being.
It will not be flattering, but I have a confession. The character whom I related to the most in Mad Men was Pete Campbell. He is a truly horrible person whom I would not trust alone with any woman, including myself; however as the series continued, I was horrified to realize that if I was in that office environment, Pete was as close as any character got to woke and be an ally. I would not invite him to the cookout, but because his god was genuinely money, status and accolades, he did not understand why black people’s money was not valued, and it led him to see black people as *gasp* people with jobs and families. Sure Pete had no black friends, but he had no friends of any hue. Others may love Draper for relating to Peggy while objectifying most women who came within arm’s reach, but Pete is the guy that you could count on. He would never be smooth like Don in actually helping you because he would be too busy screaming in outrage on your behalf, “Racist!” Change one letter, and a certain word could be thrown at him. His empathy made me recognize some traits that we share, which are probably negative, and I should work on them: his eagerness to do well, being aggrieved at lack of recognition and feeling invisible. I would never want to have lunch with him. Side note: I did not recognize Vincent Kartheiser, who played Angel’s son in Angel, a spin off television series from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I loved more than the original. I am still concerned that they are standing in the rain.
I hated Betty Draper for a handful of moments in Mad Men, which I will not spoil for you, but they all involve her housekeeper, Carla. If Carla was a real person, she would deserve a reward for restraint and a calm disposition. Do not come to me with the excuse that Betty was a woman of her time. She was the fifty-two percent’s mama! Even her husband had moments when they were like, “Damn! WTF!” Sheer empathy should have made her a better person, but she followed humanity’s worst impulses—if she had it hard, you were going to have it worse. At least she defended the dog, but in the most casually serial killer way ever. Yikes!
If I had to critique Mad Men, it is that Netflix is yanking it today. I used it like a multitasking show, but it deserved my complete attention. The acting is phenomenal. The intersection of an era with personal character arcs was universal in its specificity. Elisabeth Moss knows that she is my girl so I do not need to praise her here. I started off horrified by the sepulchers but like the series, by the end, I was able to gain some perspective of how much they actually grew as people in spite of their lack of introspection.