![Mad Men: The Final Season, Part 2 [DVD]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41lrSCG75RL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
This is the first television series I've seen that feels like a theatrical movie rather than another jittery, overly busy, manipulative made-for TV video, with frequently good acting wasted on formulaic, or non-existent plots relying upon sensation, violence, and cheap digital effects to hook and maintain the viewer's interest. Moreover, the characters are not cardboard stereotypes but multidimensional and complex. Women viewers need not feel guilty about watching it on the basis of qualities that will undeniably attract a large female audience: the compelling if not magnetic quality of the flawed but strong and reassuringly attractive lead, John Hamm, who plays the ultra-cool ad man Don Draper (he's got the right charisma to anchor an entire James Bond movie series); the representation of women in the 1960's, a period that requires a woman to be at once a "toy doll," a "perfect housewife," and of course an absolutely competent secretary, who has nothing but time on her hands to perform her duties with mechanical precision, never failing with the proper smile or facial expression at the proper time.
The primary subject of Season Two continues to be Madison Avenue and the ruthless world of selling and buying. The game of "programming" consumers to consume intensifies, with the spoils going to the winner (who now faces the challenge of not being consumed by his own success). But the stakes are now higher, deepened and made more complex by company mergers and staff turn-overs. And while "age-ism" becomes the source of character biases and motivation, the series continues to focus most heavily on one exploited group. While people of every race, religion, and status are subject to failure in the ruthlessly competitive, Darwinian struggle, the series suggests (and increasingly less subtlely) that if one group has suffered the most unfairness--to the point of being excluded from the free-enterprise game itself--it's women. By the 1980s, the protests concerning injustices suffered by women were too loud and frequent to be ignored, especially in the academic world. But "Mad Men" probes deeper, exposing the very sources of unrest among women in the 1960s--not on college campuses but in the more "mature" world of Madison Avenue professionals. Without resorting to propaganda or sensationalism, the series makes it possible for any attentive viewer, whether female or male, to experience a startling wake-up call, a revelation made all the more powerful by the filmmakers' artistry, which allows viewers to make the discovery for themselves, or to "construct" an interpretation that consequently becomes the viewer's own understanding rather than a didactic finger-pointing lesson (the approach of the majority of shows that continually scapegoat child-molesters, internet child predators, sexual deviants, serial killers, drug lords and other "safe" objects of blame).
This theme of the objectification and belittlement of women (nothing so obvious as "harassment") culminates in a chilling episode, appropriately titled "A Night to Remember"--episode 8 from the 2nd season (2008), The episode is a cinematic tour deforce, thus far the most ambitious chapter in a series that seems to be reinventing itself as it goes along, always improving. This particular segment is like vintage Robert Altman in its cross-cutting among the three women who have received the most attention. The time, historically, is the days immediately following news of Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and each of the three women--Joan, the queen-secretary who is herself a combination of keen intelligence in an hour-glass figure; Betty, the manipulated, blonde showgirl/perfect housewife/showcase trophy of Don Draper; Peggy, the innocent "country girl" who has wised-up sufficiently to the ways of men to play their game, attaining power to make decisions that will influence consumers throughout the nation--each of the three will receive potentially shattering epiphanies, showing them the emptiness of their programmed existences in a male-run world that expects of them only compliance along with adoration beyond any they themselves might receive for their physical attributes. The realizations of all three occur in a breath-taking "tour de force" of characterization. The potent mix of minimalist but thoughtful script-writing, artful directing, and "parallel" editing allows the viewer to receive the full force of three separate "actions" (actually, internal "epiphanies") occurring simultaneously.
Needless to say, the women who "succeed" are those who are, by definition, academy-award winning actresses, either landing a man who is a paid ticket to a suburban castle with earning children (and servants to help out) or, miraculously, carving out a place where they are recognized for their actual abilities, talents and potential.
Episode 8 of the 2nd season (2008) is, thus far, the most ambitious single episode of a series that seems to be reinventing itself as it goes along, always improving. This particular episode is like vintage Robert Altman in its cross-cutting between the three women who have received most of the viewer's attention. The time, historically, is the days immediately following news of Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and each of the three woman--Joan, the queen-secretary who is keen intelligence in an hour-glass figure; Betty, the manipulated, blonde showgirl/perfect housewife/trophy of Don Draper; Peggy, the innocent "country girl" who has wised-up sufficiently to the ways of men to be omitted to some of their decisions that will influence consumers throughout the nation--each of the three will receive potentially shattering epiphanies, showing them the emptiness of their programmed existences in a male-run world that expects of them only compliance along with adoration beyond any they themselves might receive. The impact at this point is least felt by Joan but numerous subtleties expose her gradual awakening; Peggy's comes as a result of the hypocritical, self-serving actions of her Parish Priest, who doesn't even know how to play the man's game that she has by now mastered; Betty's is the most disturbing of all--to her as well as the viewer. She is at this moment no less than Nora Krogstad from Ibsen's "A Doll's House." She has been shattered by the discovery of Don's philandering, his lies, his use of her as a means to his own career ends. At first we see the life literally drained from her former color, a ghostly apparition about to follow Marilyn Monroe to a similar dark place. But then the sight of a particular television ad and actor triggers her dramatic action: she calls her husband Don at work and, in a reversal of Nora's slamming the door of her "doll house," tells Don never to come home. She no longer has any use for this stranger.
Most of the above occurs in a mere five minutes--a tour de force of characterization through script-writing, directing and "parallel editing" (cross-cuts). It's only the last 20-30 seconds of the episode that become a bit didactic, or over-done, as the Priest's picking up a guitar and singing a song about salvation, felt by the viewers as his release from his own sexual frustrations, dominates the soundtrack, segueing into a "production number" as the episode fades to black.
The series represents the early '60s with stunning verisimilitude, not only in its portrayal of male-female relationships in and outside the workplace but in the continuous gauzy veil of smoke thrown off by the chain-smoking characters along with the ubiquitous portable bar in the office of each hard-drinking executive. Most of the "action" is internal yet riveting, occurring on a large office stage that seems both capacious and capable of showing the viewer surprises and new discoveries with each episode. The colors are richly saturated--a technicolor effect representative of movies of the day (not the faded, irridescent reds, blues, and greens that would replace the slower technicolor process beginning in the late '60s with "Easy Rider" and continuing throughout the 1970s), the resolution has a sharpness that will score heavily with big screen viewers at home; the camera work--striking angles but a steady camera with shots of sufficient duration to allow the spectator to see each crucial detail--has the professional quality of a bonafide filmmaker "auteur" such as Douglas Sirk.
I had given up on television--turning for relief to the talking heads on MSNBC or mindless reality shows like "Pawn Stars" and "American Pickers." But this series, sponsored appropriately enough by the American Movie Classics channel, is the most refreshing television drama since "All in the Family." We should all hope that it represents a new beginning rather than an anomaly, as unique and distinguished as it is.
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