You guys! After a hiatus of almost a year and a half, Mad Men has returned to AMC and my life is once again complete. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I’m really glad the show has returned. It is one of the highest quality programs on TV right now, and certainly one of the smartest shows I watch.
I celebrated the premiere by attending a costume theme party at the casino here in Halifax with some great ladies and fellow Mad Men fans. We all dressed up and ordered old-timey drinks like sidecars and vodka gimlets before the show came on. (Proof that I am hardcore into theme parties? My friends and I came to the Mad Men bash straight from a 90s themed costume party, and did a quick costume switcheroo in the restaurant washroom.)
Click through to read my full review of “A Little Kiss” and then head to the comment share your thoughts!
It looks as though Mad Men is picking up about a year to a year and a half after where we left off. (So, almost like real time?) Don and Megan are married, and she’s been promoted from her gig as secretary – albeit for very different reasons than Peggy. Joan was at home with a new baby, Betty was nowhere to be seen, and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is…afloat. Stable, but not successful.
Mad Men has always been a slow-burn kind of show, and that’s exactly what Sunday night’s episode was. But it was also filled with little details that I loved. An early Addams Family reference as Don dropped off Sally and his other less interesting offspring let us know that Betty is around, and he still hates her. Don Draper was turning 40, and even though Megan knows Don’s secret and that Dick Whitman had been 40 for months, she was eager to celebrate anyway. With a poorly planned, last minute surprise party.
The party wa
s delightfully awkward, from Peggy’s snarky comment about having to go back to work to Roger’s obvious disdain for his wife, to Megan’s sexy, scandalous performance of a French song for Don. The clothes were fabulous, and Don’s embarrassment was fascinating. Betty might have been terrible, but at least she understood decorum.
Also fabulous? Harry making lewd comments about Megan at the office on Monday morning, with Megan right behind him. He spent the rest of the episode fretting over whether he’d be fired, which made him easy prey for Roger Stirling who was looking for someone to trade offices with Pete Campbell.
Viewers who work in advertising probably appreciated the scene where Peggy pitched a cutting edge bean-ballet commercial to Heinz, who’d asked for something bold but really wanted the “bite-and-smile” material they’d been serving up for years. When Don entered the meeting and said to give the clients what they want instead of selling them on Peggy’s better, more creative idea, she was astounded. One of my favorite lines of the night was “Clients are right all of a sudden? I don’t recognize that man. He’s kind and patient. It concerns me.”
There are plenty of office politics to go around, too. Pete “Bitchface” Campbell has been bringing in the most clients, but Roger kept crashing his meetings. So, of course, he scheduled an imaginary inconvenient 6:00 am meeting with Coca-Cola to teach Roger a lesson. Rarely am I on Team Pete, but that was both hilarious and deserved.
I also loved the Joan stuff, as we saw her struggle with staying at home with her new baby and her mother there to both help and criticize. She’s dying to get back to work, and had a near breakdown when she thought she was being replaced. Lane Pryce was there to set her straight, telling her the office has been a shambles without her. Oh Joanie, of course they can’t get by without you! (Another great moment? Roger Stirling shouting “Where’s my baby?” when Joan came to visit with their new son, followed by “Get that brat out of the way so I can see her” – because he was talking about Joan, not the child. You’re playing with fire, Roger!)
The episode also touched on some racial issues, as we saw some Madison Avenue white execs behave with embarrassing anger, immaturity and prejudice as they witnessed demonstrations, and then we saw Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce place an ad claiming to be “an equal opportunity employer” that was not a genuine attempt to change with the times but an inside joke. The gag resulted in a crowd of African Americans showing up with resumes to apply for a job that didn’t exist. None of the white execs knew how to handle the situation, so Lane simply sent away the men and took resumes for the position of a secretary. Will they actually hire someone? That could be interesting.
I really enjoyed the premiere and I’m interested to see where this season takes us. Megan seems to have had an interesting influence on Don, as he appears to be dramatically less interested in work than he used to be. That can’t last, right? The scene in which Megan poutily cleaned the apartment after the party in skimpy underwear showed both how immature she can be and how attracted to her Don still is. That definitely can’t last. Soon, I think, we’ll see Don stepping outside his marriage again.
So, what did you guys think?
You nailed that review – exactly how I felt about it. My favourite exchange of the night was between Roger and Jane: “Why don’t you sing like her?” “Why don’t you look like him?”
Ooh, that was a great exchange!
Yeah, I loved the episode last night, and the party! I loved Pete’s trick on Roger, I loved the “there’s my baby!” moment, and I loved seeing the dynamic of Meghan and Don. Also, I loved the new sets for Don’s condo; I’m always obsessed with looking at the background details! So good.
Poor Sally, looking for the bathroom in the new condo and walking in on her dad and a naked Megan. That girl is gonna need therapy.
Soooo happy Mad Men is back. Great review, so much happened, but it was at a slow burn. As an aside, I think I may be the only person who thought Megan’s clean up tantrum was some kind of elaborate sexytime power game with Don. She’s holding ALL of the cards, in my opinion.
There’s definitely a weird power struggle there and I agree that the underwear cleaning was a total play for power. He wouldn’t get all hot and bothered in front of their friends at the party, so she made him want her then. But I don’t know if I think she holds all the cards or not. I’m not sure.
I do quibble with you about one point Jill, you said that you thought the new episode was about a year or year and a half from the season finale, I think it is a shorter timeline, my guess around 6-9 months. I judge that based on the fact that Joan is home with an infant (who is probably supposed to be a newborn because her mom is there helping out and the baby is not sleeping, hence the all night elevator rides, etc.). Newborn babies on tv are always huge. We don’t know exactly how pregnant Joan was at the season finale. She’s been gone from the office a while, enough that a new receptionist doesn’t recognize her or doesn’t immediately get who “Joan” is. Somehow I think SCDP would not let Joan have a real long maternity leave, there was no such thing as maternity leave in the 60′s I think, because most mothers were married and their husbands worked. I also think that Don and Megan are newlyweds, not married more than a few months at most. They just moved into that apartment, Sally did not know her way around the place and she was not quite used to seeing another woman occupy the domestic spot her mother once did (there was a look at that breakfast). So I am guessing we are 6-10 months from the season 4 finale.
I don’t know if Megan holds all the cards or not either but her little cleanup was definitely a play for power. I think the Don Draper we saw in this episode is the happiest Don we have seen yet. He is not focused on his work, leaving early, not standing up to clients to protect his creative team and there is a lightness about him, him showing his affection publicly for Joan is very un-Don like. I think like this, in his happy place Megan might hold more cards. Don always falls for complex women and although Betty certainly fit more with the image that Don wants to portray to his colleagues, a wife such as this might be just the thing Don needs to keep him from falling back to his old patterns.
I kind of wonder if Megan and Don are Jane and Roger 2.0? There are a lot of similarities there and if that is true, then I think Mad Men has a very sad message. That happiness is just not possible, that success and happiness are certainly mutually exclusive.
I also noticed that happy Don makes Peggy and others very unhappy. He is not backing her up at work, he is not yelling at her and therefore she is not doing her best work either.
I think the Don we are seeing is one that won’t stay around, but it will indeed be a fabulous journey.
Great episode and great to be back with Mad Men and really looking forward to the rest of the season. One parting thought – seeing Joan so insecure and vulnerable somehow was unsettling.
You’re right, the baby wasn’t that old so it’s likely more like nine months. I remember thinking Joan didn’t seem very pregnant when we left off – maybe a couple months? I just checked Wikipedia and it says season five begins roughly seven months later so you’re right on!
I’m really interested in seeing how this new Don continues to interact with Peggy and bother her, because I’ve always loved their relationship.
I am too. I wonder if she will be able to be so good if Don is not riding her constantly and berating her. Somehow I think paramount to Peggy’s ambition is her desire to please Don with her work. He kind of gives her tough love. If he’s not interested in work, what will that mean for her?
Ultimately I think the main message of Mad Men is that success and happiness are mutually exclusive. Don is not now focused on work and he is happy (well at least content) and I think when work takes a front seat again in his life, as it surely will, there were enough hints that business is not great in the episode, his marriage will take a different turn. It will be interesting to see how that affects those around him.
I appreciate the slow burn factor — having watched a lot of breaking bad and the walking dead — the pacing was definitely slower than I was used to…but !…. it feels to me like there’s a stagnation here. Part of the challenge of the show is wondering who is good and possibly redemptive in this morally complex universe. Everyone just seemed kind of dreary and degraded in a predictable way. Megan — who last season seemed to have the spice of creating something different — just seemed kinf of forced (her as an copy writer for real?) and her final scene with her underwear seemed like she underpowered herself. Or kind of succumbed to letting Don’s darker side drag down her own. I suspect we’ll have more in store — but the plot is lacking for the loss of bitchy Betsy (am I alone here, or would she and Henry Francis really have let Don off the hook in such a major way for having not just a concealed but a forged identiy, and the identity of a military hero at that? — I think based on both of their characters they would pushing for criminal action — which may come) — who created dramatic contrast with the world of the office. I always thought it would be better if she wound up with Roger — who’se a bit off his rocker but knows how to have fun.
David, I have seen a lot of reviews and posters from comments (obsessed with reading about MM right now) who feel the same as you about the premiere. I am a little bit influenced with what I have read but I also think about MM in the historical context. In ’66 Civil Rights was indeed going and we saw the beginnings of the countercultural movement taking root in America. I thought the episode was largely about showing the shift of the 1960′s and how the majority of the main characters, by changing nothing now seem stodgy and old fashioned. In 1960 when MM began Don and Co were cool and the ‘beatnik generation’, for example Midge and her friends were on the fringe of society. I thought what the episode illustrated beautifully is how much the 60′s changed things. Now Don & Co. are old fashioned and stodgy and the counterculture, once on the fringe people, like Megan and her friends are now what is considered to be cool. At least that is how I read that party.
I missed Betty too, a lot of people hate her and I do but like Don she is a product of her times, I feel sorry for her more than hate her. I am not sure though that Henry is aware of Don’s identity theft, I don’t recall Betty ever telling him. I do wonder though how it will affect his political career being married to a woman whose ex-husband was a deserter. Betty who exemplifies the perfect political wife now has a checkered past and I wonder how that will affect Betty and Henry’s marriage going forward.