- Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Roger Sterling (John Slattery) meet with uneasy clients in the Mad Men season 4 opener.
“Who is Don Draper?”
Asked by a stone-faced Advertising Age reporter, it’s the first line of “Mad Men” season 4.
While that’s been the central question of “Mad Men” for three seasons now, the season opener “Public Relations” seems to indicate Don Draper himself has probably never been further away from having an answer.
After successfully blowing up Don’s marriage and workplace last season, creator Matt Weiner opens season 4 by rewarding Don with the professional and personal freedom he’s always wanted.
But as the old saying goes, Don should have been careful about what he wished for.
It’s November 1964, nearly a full year after the disintegration of the Draper marriage and the wholesale mutiny that saw most of Sterling Cooper’s key players jump ship and start a new agency.
At first glance, Don and his co-conspirators at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce seem to have weathered that startup year remarkably well. While the new offices of the “scrappy upstart,” as Pete calls them, may not have the same grandeur of their old stomping grounds, Don has been busy working his magic.
Flush off the smashing success of Don’s Glo-Coat campaign, the new firm is beginning to build buzz, mostly around Don’s new rock star status. Don, however, is only feeling the pressure of being the engine under the SCDP hood.
“We are all here because of you. We all just want to please you,” an exasperated Peggy tells him after one of Don’s trademark short-tempered tongue lashings.
Success means Don Draper has to start selling himself, not just his accomplishments. Considering he’s not even Don Draper, that’s a tall order for a guy who’s spent three seasons lying to literally everyone about his shady past.
“Who knows who you are,” Roger says after the Ad Age piece paints an unflattering, Dorian-Grayesque portrait of SCDP’s shining star.
As the creative engine, Don’s also feeling the pressure over the agency’s precarious financial state. With over 70 percent of their business coming from Roger’s big fish Lucky Strike, everyone from Roger to Pete to Lane is looking to Don to be the rainmaker who’ll Pied-Piper more clients to their door.
Then there’s that whole single-and-not-so-loving-it thing. With Betty already re-married to “other man” Henry Francis (and man, was that ever quick), Don’s former life as a loving husband and suburban father is also history.
And the thrill of the chase doesn’t seem to hold the same allure for single Don that it did for married Don.
He only half-heartedly pursues actress-glorified extra Bethany during their blind date. He doesn’t even seem that put off when Bethany shoots down his efforts to get her upstairs.
Maybe that’s because Don seems a lot more interested in keeping his appointment with a prostitute. Of course, the cash means she has no problem indulging Don’s apparent S&M fetish as she repeatedly slaps him across the face.
“Hit me,” Don says. “Do it again.”
We’ve seen before that Don seems to enjoy the assertion of power as part of sex (just ask Bobbie Barrett back in season 2). Don’s also displayed a tendency for self-punishment before. But this side of Don, completely unmoored from his dreams of the perfect family he never had, show how alarmingly off-course the ad world’s rising star is.
- Don Draper (Jon Hamm)
After blowing up at a pair of milquetoast Jentzen swimwear execs, Don seems to turn at least one corner, fully embracing a second shot at celebrity with a Wall Street Journal reporter.
As he charmingly embellishes the story of his role in the Sterling Cooper coup, you can’t help thinking that while Don’s brush with the limelight might help fill the agency coffers, there’s still plenty of Dick Whitman-sized damage that a little truth can wreak on the entire firm’s future if they aren’t careful.
Other points…
Of course, another upside to the new smaller, hungrier agency is being able to see Sterling Cooper junior members like Pete and Peggy step up and even challenge the likes of Don and Roger.
Pete appears to have really come into his own at the new agency. When he’s not holding client hands through pitch meetings, he’s even playing unexpected company cheerleader, smoothing some of Don’s ruffled feathers after his tense Jantzen meeting.
“Creatively, Y&R’s not capable of living in this neighborhood,” Pete says. “ You know why? Because you don’t work there.”
Even though Pete and Peggy’s secret bid to get Sugarberry Ham more publicity with a staged supermarket fight nearly blows up in their faces, it’s a more self-assured Peggy than we’ve seen before. Even though she screwed up, she’s still willing to stand up to and question Don’s anger in a way that would have been unthinkable back at Sterling Cooper.
- Even though many elements of the old “Mad Men” dynamic seem familiar, this is definitely not the old Sterling Cooper. Kudos to Weiner for not only having the courage to completely turn a reigning two-time Emmy-winning series on its head, but accomplish it with enough skill and daring to leave ample expansion room for new possibilities.
I think we’re going to look back on the start of season 4 as the catalyst for change that will probably keep the show on the air another 2 to 3 years longer than it would have previously.
- Speaking of changes, the last year doesn’t seem to have been too kind for Betty either, does it? On the surface, she’s remarried to a trustworthy man like Henry and everything’s great.
But without being the good cop to Don’s bad cop, all of Betty’s own bad cop traits are coming out big time. And Henry is noticing. Between her “Mommy Dearest” child-rearing practices and her strange refusal to move out of the house she shared with Don, it seems pretty clear that Henry’s already asking some serious questions about exactly what he’s doing with her.
- And a show of hands now – do we not all agree that Henry’s mom Pauline is already the runaway favorite character of Season 4?
In three-plus seasons of “Mad Men,” we’ve never had one character so bluntly and accurately break down another character to its core like Mama Pauline busts up Betty to Henry.
“(The kids) are terrified of her. I know what you see in her – and you could have gotten it without marrying,” Pauline says. “She’s a silly woman. Honestly, Henry, I don’t know how you can stand living in that man’s dirt.”
30 seconds on screen. My favorite new character. We need more Henry mama, pronto.
- Not much this week for either Harry or Joan. Although Joan did get one of the best lines of the episode when Harry asked her not to spread the news about the jai alai special he just sold to ABC — “I won’t even tell people after it’s aired.” Also nice to see Joan has her own office and some of the respect she’s been due for a long time.
- Finally, it’s nice to see the old Roger Sterling back. Like his younger colleagues Pete and Peggy, the new agency seems to have lifted Roger out of the doldrums he found himself in toward the end of last season. His marriage to gold-digger nitwit Jane hasn’t even imploded yet. A happy Roger is always a more entertaining Roger.
“You just know one of them is leaving New York with V.D.” Ah, thanks for coming back, Roger – we missed you.
- January Jones, Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks
