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Feature: Following Mad Men: Season 4, Episodes 1-3

Season 4, Episode 1: “Public Relations”

Back in season one, it looked like Mad Men might be an ensemble piece. Peggy seemed to get as much screen time as Don, Pete’s inner turmoil was regular grist for the mill and Betty and the Draper children sometimes got whole episodes to themselves. But out here in far season four, we’ve long accepted that this is the Don Draper Show. And to be honest, I think it’s been good for the show to find its focus.

But, having found this focus, it seems clear that season four is going to be all about the deconstruction of the myth of Don Draper. Which is all fine and good and everything, but subtlety is not always Mad Men’s strong suit. Case in point: episode one opens with one of those groan-worthy clunkers the series is so fond of. “Who is Don Draper?” asks the one-legged journo interviewing Don for some advertising trade rag. Gee thanks Matthew Weiner, or should that be CAPTAIN OBVIOUS. It’s worse than that bit in the Halloween episode where the kids were trick or treating and the neighbour looked up and asked Don, “And who are you supposed to be” and there was a lingering pause because, you know, Don’s like, PERFORMING ALL THE TIME AND HIS WHOLE IDENTITY IS A COSTUME ARGH KILL ME NOW I GET IT ALREADY.

Anyway. It’s eleven months after the close of season three and we’re dropped into the brave new world of Sterling Cooper Draper Price, with its crisp white interiors and precarious financial situation. The choice to elide eleven months seems like an odd one. The dramatic change in tone and pace that occurred in the last episode of season three has seemingly been abandoned, along with the sense of forbidden excitement that came with the founding of Sterling Cooper Draper Price (from now on it’s going to be SCDP). Things are definitely different at SCDP, but in many regards it seems to be business as usual. I am a little disappointed.

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) is back, staring imploringly out at you from those eyes the colour of non-consensual sex. If Kartheiser tells you he can get the red wine stain out, you may as well just move back to Germany. No sign of Trudy yet. Possibly she’s making out with Jeff from Community while Pete’s at work, which would serve him right really. Pete’s kowtowing continues to be one of the funniest things on the show. Though when the alternative is Roger’s superciliousness and Don’s tantrums, he may actually be the one holding the place together.

Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) is looking like she may have had another secret inter-season baby. But sometimes the show just frumps her up for no real reason, so I’ll withhold judgement on that one. I’ve had debates in the past about the nature of Don and Peggy’s relationship. There’s Team One-Day-To-Be-Lovers and Team Platonic and Team Somewhere-In-Between, to which I belong. I would love to see Don and Peggy get it on, but it would be like eating an entire chocolate cake on your own. It’s great while it lasts, but the regrets never leave you. Peggy has a boyfriend now, it’s the mysterious new co-worker we’ve got our eye on… but I can’t help but feel they’re all just stand-ins for Don.

Betty (January Jones) and new husband Francis are still…um…doing whatever it is that they do. The almost total absence of character development for Francis seems to hint that Don’s comment, “Believe me Henry, everyone thinks this is temporary,” may not only be funny, but accurate. The fact that less than a year in they can only get it on when they’re in the car doesn’t bode well. Betty continues to accomplish the impossible by making Don look like parent of the year in comparison. Though I too once pulled a Sally-Draper-Forced-Spew at the table, and I turned out all right. There’s hope for us all.

We’ve checked in with our non-Don major players, but there’s little doubt what this episode is about. Don goes on a date, fails to seal the deal. He can’t convince the family-friendly folks over at Jantzens that it’s time to admit that they’re selling bikinis. He’s living in the world’s saddest bachelor pad. And he’s paying prostitutes to slap him during sex.

This last, though undoubtedly titillating, felt a little like that chocolate cake I mentioned earlier. Sure, I enjoyed it, I’m only human, but I felt like this episode was giving us too much too fast. Any one of these things on its own would have got the ball rolling on the “Don Draper is not the man you think he is” trajectory that this season seems intent on, but taken together, it feels like overkill.

Season 4, Episode 2, “Christmas Comes But Once A Year”

Oh good. Glen’s back. Our favourite proto-stalker returns this episode, having apparently transferred his affections from Betty Draper’s hair to her daughter. The scary thing is that, starved of affection as she is, it seems unlikely Sally will muster the strength to rebuff Creepy Glen’s advances.

But Christmas is in the air and that means everyone’s thinking about the family they have, wish they had or perhaps wish they didn’t have. Don receives a letter to Santa from Sally, which he gets his secretary to read aloud to him, raising the hitherto unasked question, Is Don Draper secretly illiterate? I suspect yes. His secretary is suitably touched by Sally’s desire to have her dad home for Christmas, though it’s debatable whether he was actually around any more before the divorce than he is now.

Over at SCDP Freddy “Is-That-Urine-Running-Down-Your-Leg-Or-Are-You-Just-Happy-To-See-Me” Rumsen is back, sober, and bearing a much-needed client. But apparently A.A. doesn’t have a 12 Step program for overcoming misogynistic douchebaggery, so it’s not surprising that he’s soon butting heads with Peggy’s budding feminism. This is 1964 after all and if Don Draper is buying Beatles records for Sally, then the end is closer than they realise.

Again and again, Mad Men presents us with images of the beginning of the end: Peggy taking her place at the conference table; Freddy giving up drinking. But by now we’re familiar with Mad Men’s rock-hard core concept: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Don Draper didn’t disappear, he just adapted. And Peggy is never getting that corner office.

Though there’s no denying that Don isn’t adapting too well at the moment. Operation Deconstructing Don continues in excruciating fashion this episode with the incident of the secretary. We all know sleeping with his secretary is beneath him, but we wouldn’t have thought until now that it was beneath her too. Don’s vile reaction is upsetting not only because he’s being a jerk, but because we would probably not handle it any better. And we want Don to handle it better than we would, that’s what he’s there for. We know Don’s stock is plummeting and even the nurse across the hall would rather get an early night.

Other points of order to be addressed this episode include wondering just how far SCDP will go to keep Lucky Strike on board. Roger dons the Santa suit this time, though he certainly isn’t happy about it. But if Don has to debase himself for the company, things are probably not going to go smoothly.

Peggy’s beau is in for a surprise when her kid turns up. Though how long has it been since we got a glimpse of the secret attic-child? He’s probably 35 by now. Maybe the Mysterious Co-Worker is actually Peggy’s son? And how long can Peggy’s deep ambivalence toward marriage hold out against the onslaught of everyone’s expectations? She may have won the battle against Freddy, but the war’s so big she can’t even see it yet.

Season 4, Episode 3, “The Good News”

Last time Don went to California he very nearly didn’t come back, and it’s not hard to see why. The first Mrs Draper lets Don be Dick for once, rather than just being a dick, which is how things usually go. Anna Draper seems convinced Don is a Nice Guy and so he gets to be, at least for a few stolen hours. More mysterious are Anna’s motives. She seems to love him, but not be in love with him, making her pretty much unique among the women in Don’s life. She also seems to enjoy setting him up with her inappropriately young nieces, which is a whole other mystery, and a pretty creepy one at that.

The big news is that Anna is not long for this world, her broken leg the one visible symptom of late-stage cancer that could kill her any day. A fact that Anna’s sister has kept from her, though Anna is a canny woman and it’s hard to believe she doesn’t have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. Don is left with the decision to tell or not to tell. He decides not to, and I’m still wondering if it was the coward’s way out.

The news of Anna’s illness puts an end to Don’s seduction of her niece, thank god, making it four strikeouts for Don this season by my count. The niece is more cipher than actual person, a mouthpiece for this episode’s take home line: “Nobody knows what’s wrong with themselves. And everyone else can see it right away.” Surely Don’s problem is the exact opposite? No one sees what’s wrong with him until it’s too late. Where is Don going to escape to when Anna’s gone?

Back on the East Coast we finally get a proper catch up with Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Dr. Stupid. If you can stop screaming “YOU COULD DO BETTER” for more than four seconds together you’ll see that Mad Men is pulling a “douchey characters doing nice things” in an effort to flesh out Dr. Stupid, who we actually know little about, other than that he’s a rapist and a subpar doctor. But it’ll take more than one stitched-up finger to accomplish that monumental feat. I think we’re all counting down the days till he gets killed in Vietnam.

After saying goodbye to Anna, probably forever, Don finds an unlikely drinking Buddy in Lane, another character we’ve not seen much of for a while. Yet again the show delights in tearing down and stomping on the facade that is Don Draper. When the stand-up comedians are picking on you, you know the game is up. Lane proves to be about as awkward a partner in debauchery as you’d expect, though the vision of him and Don watching Godzilla together is one I’m going to cherish for some time.

I’m starting to wonder how long the deconstruction of Don Draper can go on for before we get pretty tired of it and want him to pull his shit together. The prediction that he’ll be married within a year is an interesting one… maybe he’ll pull a Sterling and marry poor old Allison the secretary?

Zora Sanders is an Arts student at Melbourne University majoring in Cinema and Creative Writing. She was one of the Editors of Farrago in 2009 and has an occasionally updated blog.

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