We are in a limo, travelling along the promenade in Nice. From someone's point of view we can see a hand picking up something that looks like Southern Comfort before returning to a cigar. Along the prom there are high class prostitutes touting for business. The lights and palm trees filter through the windows, many colours. Sounds of traffic through the open window, of the sea, of disco music. We feel that it's the late 70s and this is soon revealed when a newspaper (New York Times) is picked up, revealing some major news event. As the pages are turned, and there's small story that reveals the accidental death of an advertising executive. We don't find out who it is. We hear the horn being honked. The car crashes. The horn resonates. Don Draper wakes up, in 1965, in a cold sweat.
That was a dream I had. It could easily be the opening of a new season of Mad Men. 'Who is Don Draper?' is the tagline of Season 4, and while that will be banged on about as the series progresses, it's clear that we already know what Don Draper does, and if you've been following it, we know where he suppoesedly got his identity from. That's of course if we trust his memories. We don't have to. There is reason to believe that we shouldn't trust his memories due to his complex personality and his infidelity.
If you haven't seen Mad Men at all then you should. You're in for a treat. It's not just a sleek satire, a triumph of style over substance. In fact it's the substance of the show that makes the drama. That so many TV critics don't really get it, so keen they are to rant on and on about the fashions, the smoking, the sexism, misses the point. From the opening credits of a man throwing himself off a building, it kind of remined me of Joseph Heller's 'Something Happened.' The narrator of that novel could easily be Don Draper. The show, in terms of status and the main character's infidelity could also exist in the same world of Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman.' It's certainly directed as if it were a piece of theatre by Miller, Ibsen or Chekhov in that it's about people, about insecurity, status, and whether it's culture and backdrop is middle America in the 60s, the show's backdrop and psyche easily slots into todays 24/7/social networking/shopping/aspirational culture.
But it's heart, if it has one, which it does, is Donald Draper. When you ask the question 'who is this person?' you're also asking 'Who are you?' It doesn't become a trite phrase then.You can be daft and answer 'well I work at Hobby Craft and I enjoy strangling cats...' but that doesn't go to the heart of the truth. Obviously the show as a whole is an ensemble piece with every character having just as much mystery and social anxiety as Draper. The women are stronger than the men in the show, even if that strength means knowing when to hold your tongue or wear a tighter skirt. You feel that any one of the characters could go crazy in the office with a shotgun or throw themselves out the window. Pete Campbell especially.
In earlier seasons Don Draper has it all, the respect of his colleagues, money, status a perceived successful marriage and access to any women he desires. You know it will fall apart. You know he'll lose everything and in some respects go back to being the kid in the depression who had nothing. But do we trust his memories? What strikes me about Mad Men is that it's a show that can more or less go in any direction, once it starts to slowly collapse. When reality collapses around you, you're either left with the brutal truth or sheer fantasy. Mad Men, a ficitonal show which in many sense feels like a dream world, could be a figment of Don's imagination. Mad Men could be Don Draper's heaven/purgatory/hell much in the same way as Gene Hunt was the master of his purgatory in Ashes to Ashes. Although with Mad Men, if this route were explored, I feel it would have more plausibility than a purgatory for coppers blag.
So my opening intro could make sense in Mad Men, if Don Draper becomes someone who even didn't think he was, or if in fact Mad Men were somehow his disjointed autobography. It's intriguing. I doubt that the show will go down the fantasy route but you feel it could do it with seamless ease, that it would already add to the rewarded repeated viewings. It's to the credit of the writing, direction and performance of John Hamm that we care who Don Draper is.
So there you go. Mad Men is great.
