A promise made it’s a debt unpaid: Here’s Mad Men season 1 review

Now that I have time, the inspiration and after revisiting the first season of this show, I decided to give me a chance to talk about it in a deeper and complex way.

With a group of genius like these: What could possibly go wrong? I'm talking about the actors, not the characters who screwed up so many times... especially Pete..

For those who don’t know, Mad Men is a Period Drama that takes place in the 60’s in the same fashion of shows like The Wonder Years or Happy Days. It’s about a very successful advertising agency called Sterling Cooper located in New York City founded by Roger Sterling Sr. (deceased), who had a son who is the actual partner (played by John Slattery) and Bert Cooper (played by Robert Morse).

It focus in the creative director called Donald “Don” Draper (played by Jon Hamm), who is smart, creative and downright arrogant and manipulative but it has a dark twisted past that is slowly revealed as we watch every episode.

Intro of the show, a perfect methafor of a man falling under a self-created world of lies until the point that he doesn't care about it anymore...

The pilot episode (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) is set in March 1960 and it’s about an article of the Reader’s Digest Magazine that reveals the dangers of Smoking, who became a problem for advertising agencies due the fact that they can’t sell cigarettes and therefore, could cost the account with Luck Strike and loose money.

Meanwhile, a young woman called Margaret “Peggy” Olson (played by Elisabeth Moss) begins their new career as the secretary of Don, and it’s introduced in the advertising agency world by the office manager of Sterling Cooper: Joan Holloway (played by Christina Hendricks) who is the stereotypical hot secretary who is very self aware about her figure and uses it as an advantage. She is like the antithesis of Peggy in some ways.

The third plot in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is about another advertising executive called Pete Campbell (played by Vincent Kartheiser) who is a young, arrogant Draper-wannabe that is going to get married very soon with a woman named Trudy (who doesn’t appear here), but when he met Peggy has a little crush on her and despite make a snarky remark about her clothing, he gets somehow to have an affair with her in the last third of the episode.

Draper, being the enigmatic genius that he is, comes with a brilliant idea: instead of selling the cigarettes under a “death wish” statement, suggested by a company researcher, he comes with the slogan: “It’s Toasted” referencing the way they make it because if they can’t say that smoking is healthy, neither can their competitors, which leaves to use that phrase as a statement that while all the tobacco companies produce poison, Lucky Strike is something different.

Lucky Strike, It's Toasted... any questions?

Now, despite that the idea it’s brilliant and the execution it’s really well done, the whole “It’s Toasted” thing pre-dates the 60’s, and for a show who is critically acclaimed for his historical accuracy it’s a really weird anachronism, and no, it’s not a mistake from Matthew Weiner, the creator and writer of the pilot; the script was written in the 2000’s so this is completely intentional.

But with that said, the show is really well put together in terms of visual style, writing, acting and directing. Jon Hamm as Draper is very cynical and eerie in his performance, leading us to think who this man is and what makes him so special.

The Answers fall like pieces of a puzzle during the first run of the show, in scenes that that, at first, seems so insignificant that you can easily overlook the first time. Like in the third episode (Marriage of Figaro) where Don is traveling on a train and a veteran from the war of Korea (in which Don is a veteran as well) recognizes him as Dick Whitman who is the real name of Don, but at this point we don’t know any of that we just simply assume that the guy just made a mistake.

Another important story arc in this season is the Nixon vs. Kennedy Campaign where Sterling Cooper roots for Nixon due the fact that Bert Cooper itself is a republican. The problems appeared when they realized that Nixon doesn’t have the young appeal and charm of Kennedy, which happens to be the winner at the end of the season against all the odds.

Of course, because it’s a character-driven show, the focus on historical event take a backseat in favor of the personal issues of the Sterling Cooper agency as well the personal lives of these people. We know what´s the deal with Don, but if we talk about character evolution during this particular season, Peggy is the one who gets the cake. Starting as Don Draper’s shy secretary, she was smart enough to get the attention of the men not because her body but her ideas and conviction that made her stand over the rest of all the group of females.

In the sixth episode (Babylon) they made a research of lipstick product using the secretaries of SC as subject tests. Peggy was the only one who looked for a particular lipstick and when the meeting it’s over she comes with the phrase “Basket of kisses” that brought the attention of one of the ad men, Freddie Rumsen (Joel Murray) who was working on the Belle Jolie lipstick campaign and ask her to write a copy of the account, which turned out to be successful.

But because not all the things can turn out to be okay, we had drama at the end of the season when Peggy discovers that she’s is pretend for having the affair with Campbell who, at this point, lost all interest on her.

And speaking of which, we also got Pete Campbell as our Joffey-type of character in this show. His arrogant, selfish and unwarranted self-important attitude makes him one of the most obnoxious jerks in the history of television. But because Mad Men is a show that doesn’t make distinctions in the morality of his characters, we also have a little bit of insight of Pete’s life.

Campbell belongs to one of the most important families that practically built up NYC with their money: The Dykemans. And because pee always got what he wanted, he never got the chance to became a self-made man like Draper and now that he’s married with his wife Trudy (played by Alison Brie), the daughter of one of the clients of SC, his life is under control of everyone, which it makes him feel insignificant.

And at last, but not least, we have Don Draper’s wife Betty Draper (played by January Jones) who seems to be the most self repressed character in the show , living under the shadow of a man who barely knows, trapped into a life of housewife who can’t do anything that let her express her talents, like in the ninth episode (Shoot) where it’s revealed that she used to be a model and almost gets hired by an ad agency called McCann Erickson who rivalries with SC and they wanted to have Draper working for them as well. But Don, being loyal to SC rejects the opportunity and the rival agency fires Betty because she was just the bait for Don.

But in the end, the Draper arc it’s the one who gets the better progress, when we met Don Draper’s Brother in 5G, a man called Adam Whitman that all he wanted was to reunite with his older brother and the only familiar who still lives, but Draper rejects him because he’s running from his past, which it makes Adam kill himself because he lost the only thing that cares for him: his family.

The things get darker when we discover that Dick Whitman was the son of a prostitute that got pregnant by Dick’s father and was raised by him and her wife, that bit sort of remind me the Jon Snow Story Arc in Game of Thrones, but the difference between Jon Snow and Don Draper is that Don is a man who made himself with lies and frauds to reach all his goals, and Jon is a man who made himself being truth to himself and suffer a lot of torments for it.

But the inflexion point is in the twelfth episode (Nixon vs. Kennedy) where it’s revealed the origin of the name Don Draper, who was a Lieutenant that was killed in an explosion in a Trent when he was covering Dick Whitman. He took the chance and changes their name tags, which it makes Dick guilty not only for desertion but phishing as well. It’s similar to the Simpsons episode “The Principal and the Pauper”, the premise of a man who stole the other man’s identity during a war. And then people say that episode was bad.

The deeper we explore this world, the more dirtier things we found about these characters, who live in a world where social standards are slowly changing but they have problems with their own personal lives that affects the other ones around them, and that’s because the world of Mad Men it’s like a big machine full of grinds that works in just one way, but when of them presents some malfunctioning, it affects everyone else.

Despite the pacing of the show, which it’s kinda slow at times, it’s still very fun to watch, very appealing with his visuals, very carefully written with its characters and storylines, resulting in a perfect hell of a show that it just got better and better, and it’s going to be sad when we get to the finale this next year, but the legacy of this show will always live forever.

Just Remember…

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE.