To Go Among Mad People

Mad Men's third season was a narrative list of bad choices. (If you haven't watched it ahead of Sunday's Season 4 premiere, that's your bad choice, and there are spoilers ahead.) Not that Matthew Weiner's characters have ever been what you'd call right-thinking in their personal lives, but by season's end they'd torn down everything they valued. Betty Draper chose what she believed was her only option to flee suburban ennui, pursuing the same ennui with a different man she barely knew. Peggy Olson went to bed with Don Draper's direct competition. And Don, leading with his chin, fell in with violent drifters and poached his latest extramarital partner far, far too close to home.

Maybe the creators were tired of the Sterling Cooper cloister, and wanted new sets. So assume that Season 4 will open in a new corporate space for the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce -- the only good choice any characters made last year, if you discount Don's coming clean about his past and Sal Romano's stand against sexual harassment. But Don's confession was forced, and Sal's act went hand in hand with his denial of self; if only he'd sought help from the openly gay EuroSmith! (I'm not suggesting the two should have become lovers, the most obvious, tired dramatic path possible -- just that Sal might have found support in coming out to his workplace, if he'd only asked for it.)

I just pray that my favorite character, the Mad Men camera, continues to make perfect choices as it's done all along. This video essay first appeared on this blog last year, on the eve of Season 3, and contains spoilers for Season 2. That said, if you're still worried that two-year-old plot points from a TV drama will burn your toast and poison your dog, I don't know what to do with you.



Thoughts/wishes/expectations for this new season? Did you find the third season unfocused, and hope for balance to be restored? What's the best way to mix an Old-Fashioned?

In Retrograde

What more to say in admiration of "Mad Men," returning to AMC this Sunday? The depths of this shockingly good period drama have been so thoroughly plumbed by critics that the only thing left for me to discuss is the hidden star of the show, something designed to go unnoticed unless you squint.

When Season Two launched last year, I noticed a handful of new wrinkles to characters I'd grown to love/loathe in the first cycle. For one, Don Draper is soft and domesticated, seeking solace in foreign films, until he gets his mojo back by way of sexual assault. Joan Holloway's confidence has gained a brittle, desperate edge as she becomes less of a person, in the terms of her era, and more of an object. Everybody hates everybody at Sterling Cooper -- Sal, Ken, Paul and Harry dine out on each other's misfortune, and there's not much veneer of camaraderie overlaying the bile. (Unless you count Sal's fondness for Ken, and that's essentially a crush.) Betty Draper's encounters with peers outside her suburban Rapunzel tower — a divorcée in Season One, a roommate-turned-escort this time around — raise the possibility of a life without her faithless spouse, built on her own guile and sex appeal.

But I was stumped by any attempt to write a love letter to the only show I consume faithfully. The late Andrew Johnston and his collaborator Matt Zoller Seitz had already shed the fullest possible light on Season Two in their coverage for The House Next Door, a recap/analysis I always looked forward to after the latest episode aired. So I looked again at what I'd detected in the series, and saw that I was being pointed toward certain revelations by the camera itself.

I hope you gain something from the video essay that resulted -- it offers no major insights, but it was fun for my first stab at the form. Oh, and if anybody's got tips for how to avoid a jerky frame rate in DVD Ripper Standard for Mac, drop me a line.

RETRO: The Camera & 'Mad Men'