Mad Men Series Blog – The Doorway

“Are you alone?”

Last season’s final shot posed the serious question; is the old adulterous Don Draper back?
Mad Men season 6 opens with a doorman’s heart attack, leaving the both literal and allegorical doorway unattended. The show then transitions to the glorious beaches of Hawaii, where Don’s voluptuous wife Megan sunbathes while he relaxes with a copy of Dante’s ‘The Inferno’. Anyone familiar with the book will understand it’s depiction of pain and suffering – something Don can relate to. His literary influence dawns on us in a boardroom meeting when he relents, “Heaven is a little morbid. How do you get to heaven? Something terrible has to happen.”

In it’s opening five minutes Don never utters a word. Not until he meets Private First Class Dinkins, a soldier serving in Vietnam and drunkard hours before his wedding does he use that voice of his. Don’s past never eludes him. He exchanges words about the Korean War, Advertising (typical small talk), and the next thing we know he’s walking the bride down the aisle. It’s only when he accidently switches his lighter with Private Dinkins’s that we realise the significance of his presence. Don spends a large portion of time looking hypnotically perplexed by the lighter. It reminds him of his past life as Dick Whitman. The exchange of lighters with the real Don Draper, whose life he stole (or rather continued) resulted in the man we see before us now. A dash of identity crises fuelled by smidgen of existentialism is a recipe for a broken Don Draper.

Everything in this show continues to be top notch – the set design, the wardrobe, the subtle, anachronistic racism, Roger Sterlings collection of quips, the facial hair. Oh good lord the facial hair! We’ve got goatees; soul patches and full on bear sized beards. If there’s anything in the first episode that’s upsetting it’s the severe lack of the tough-lipped gorgeous redhead Joan Harris played by the gorgeous redhead Christina Hendricks. Did I mention she was a gorgeous redhead?

The office of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce returns with a new floor. However bad news hits quickly with the death of Roger’s mother. He seems rather unmoved by this development and while his receptionist weeps wildly for his loss we laugh at his awkward method of comforting her with gentle strokes of two glasses of vodka. His mother’s funeral brings us back to a lot of Roger’s past, including both his ex wives and some lovable old grannies. Don throwing up becomes a highlight at the funeral as well as Roger’s reaction – “He was simply saying, what we were all thinking.” While Roger seems to be all fun and games even he endures an existential crisis. When he learns his shoe shiner has died, it hits him harder than the death of his own mother. I don’t think I was ready for his gut-punch sobbing.

Although full of melancholy, Mad Men is never short of unexpected humour. Don Draper’s ex-wife Betty Francis, a typical housewife known now as Slightly Less Fat Betty, spends much of her time obsessing over her daughter’s friend, a talented violinist who runs off to the streets of Manhattan. In a desperate attempt to save this young girl, Betty travels to a shoddy run down apartment only to be greeted by a couple of vagrants preparing goulash in a septic pot. This scene was entertaining and disgusting in equal measure.

Peggy Olsen, now a creative director in rival ad company, channels her inner Don Draper to solve her problems – tough on her underlings; pushing them into late nights; never being happy with an idea until it’s truly brilliant. Peggy and Don’s relationship was the one which flourished the most, it’s sad their partnership has finished, but her mirroring of Don’s epiphany-moments brought a great smile to my face.

The new character that gets the most attention in the episode is Dr Arnold Rosen, a medic with as much wit and intelligence as Don. Rosen’s profession in dealing with mortality enthuses Don’s curiosity about death. This curiosity even bleeds into Don’s ad work, he comes up with an ad slogan ‘Hawaii: The Jumping off point.’ Is the show trying to suggest that it’ll all end with Don taking his life in the fashion identical to the show’s opening sequence? I think not. Creator Matthew Weiner is cleverer than that.

So is the old adulterous Don Draper back? Well kind of. It is revealed he is cheating on his wife with Dr Rosen’s wife, but this ain’t exactly ‘old Don’. He wishes he could stop, but knows in his heart he won’t.

Mad Men is more than just show about sexism, racism, drinking and smoking in the workplace. If the season opener is anything to go by, themes about the repercussions of choices in life and the inevitably of death will be played out in forthcoming episodes. Luckily there’s always gorgeous women and ‘60s fashion to look forward to alongside it.