How a Hot Rod Reinvents the Rainbow
Mad Men - Season 2 (2008)
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
With the lamentable exception of a stroke victim used to elucidate the inner turmoil of Don and Betty’s marriage, the second season of Mad Men is as sure-footed, nuanced, and wonderful as the first season was awkward, over-bearing, and over-hyped. I don’t know if Matthew Weiner had more time to articulate more precisely his intentions for the show to his staff, or if writers were replaced, or what, but the Drapers are no longer merely the prettiest couple in the room. They are handsome, to be sure - few movies get the way eyes in a crowded public space gravitate to beauty like that slow-motion shot on Valentine’s Day – but they are also, in this second season, true and compelling characters.
If the show writes people like Roger, Pete, and the weird little kid down the street to be facets of Don’s personality – to be the people Don could be if he wasn’t who he was – and Betty is Don’s definitive “other half” – sure when Don is not, more confident of the answers she’ll find to questions each of them asks – it is important to me that Weiner has enough faith in Don to make him, essentially, a good man. In The Sopranos, David Chase fought for a broader sympathy towards mankind and human behavior. Learning to love a sociopath isn’t so difficult if you know enough about him, and once you love someone like Tony, how can you help extending that same goodwill to the world at large?
Weiner, I think, takes a narrower view. Life, Mad Men argues, is made up of many good people, but few who really arrive at the essence of things. Men like Don Draper deserve some sort of record – a biography, a diary left behind – to inspire the rest of us to be better men and women. It’s a Founding Fathers narrative, like George and the cherry tree, modernized with gimlets, neckties, and front-porch Los Angeles breezes.
The LA scenes are incredible, as promised - like the California of Tony’s dreams instead of Christopher’s career. Words, at last, are left unspoken when they need to be, so out with the psychiatrist and in with the agreed-upon derision of fakes like Kinsey. The intensity of that hatred – of the writers’ disdain for bearded Pauls – is how Mad Men shows its hand. We can’t all be Don. We can’t be that lucky, that honest, that good-looking, or that sincere. But we can learn to recognize a false heart, learn to apologize, and strive, in our way, towards that which is noble and right. Bright, too; bright enough, finally, for sunglasses.
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
With the lamentable exception of a stroke victim used to elucidate the inner turmoil of Don and Betty’s marriage, the second season of Mad Men is as sure-footed, nuanced, and wonderful as the first season was awkward, over-bearing, and over-hyped. I don’t know if Matthew Weiner had more time to articulate more precisely his intentions for the show to his staff, or if writers were replaced, or what, but the Drapers are no longer merely the prettiest couple in the room. They are handsome, to be sure - few movies get the way eyes in a crowded public space gravitate to beauty like that slow-motion shot on Valentine’s Day – but they are also, in this second season, true and compelling characters.
If the show writes people like Roger, Pete, and the weird little kid down the street to be facets of Don’s personality – to be the people Don could be if he wasn’t who he was – and Betty is Don’s definitive “other half” – sure when Don is not, more confident of the answers she’ll find to questions each of them asks – it is important to me that Weiner has enough faith in Don to make him, essentially, a good man. In The Sopranos, David Chase fought for a broader sympathy towards mankind and human behavior. Learning to love a sociopath isn’t so difficult if you know enough about him, and once you love someone like Tony, how can you help extending that same goodwill to the world at large?
Weiner, I think, takes a narrower view. Life, Mad Men argues, is made up of many good people, but few who really arrive at the essence of things. Men like Don Draper deserve some sort of record – a biography, a diary left behind – to inspire the rest of us to be better men and women. It’s a Founding Fathers narrative, like George and the cherry tree, modernized with gimlets, neckties, and front-porch Los Angeles breezes.
The LA scenes are incredible, as promised - like the California of Tony’s dreams instead of Christopher’s career. Words, at last, are left unspoken when they need to be, so out with the psychiatrist and in with the agreed-upon derision of fakes like Kinsey. The intensity of that hatred – of the writers’ disdain for bearded Pauls – is how Mad Men shows its hand. We can’t all be Don. We can’t be that lucky, that honest, that good-looking, or that sincere. But we can learn to recognize a false heart, learn to apologize, and strive, in our way, towards that which is noble and right. Bright, too; bright enough, finally, for sunglasses.
posted by NPK at 6:03 AM
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