MAD MEN 3.1 & 3.2 – "Out Of Town" & "Love Among The Ruins"

WRITERS: Matthew Weiner (3.1) & Cathryne Humphris, Kater Gordon & Matthew Weiner (3.2)
DIRECTORS: Phil Abraham (3.1) & Lesli Linka Glatter (3.2)
GUEST CAST: Ryan Cartwright, Michael Gaston, Embeth Davidtz, Lauri Johnson, Brynn Horrocks, Sunny Mabrey, Kelly Huddleston, Annie Little, Jamie Elman, Ryan Cutrona, Eric Ladin, Kiernan Shipka, Abigail Spencer, Brian Carpenter, Kevin Cooney, Megan Henning, Talia Balsam, Elizabeth Rice & Jeremy Scott Johnson.

[SPOILERS] Watching Mad Men somehow makes you feel like a more intelligent, sophisticated person. The glacial pace may not be to everyone's taste, but the acting, production design and scripts are so precise and beautiful that it's like letting your mind slide into the '60s for a bit of urbane escapism. Season 3's premiere "Out Of Town" picks up only six months after the events of season 2's finale, so it's April 1963...

Betty (January Jones) is still pregnant with Don's (Jon Hamm) baby, although we open on Don remembering his stepmother's traumatic miscarriage, his own birth from a prostitute mother (who christened him "Dick" because that's the appendage she'd love to cut-off his client father), and his eventual delivery to his stepmother as a "gift from God". The fact Don's warming milk on a stove as he reminisces, eventually creating a horrible thick skin on the surface, is another of those excellent symbolic touches Mad Men excels at.

Last year's merger of Sterling Cooper with British firm PPL has gone through, with one third of the existing Madison Avenue staff consequently fired in a downsizing, ending today with Burt Peterson (Michael Gaston), the Head of Accounts. SC's new Financial Officer Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) is quick to replace him with an overjoyed Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), without telling him he'll actually be sharing the workload 50/50 with eager pup Ken (Aaron Staton). Predictably, while Ken reacts with a maturity above his years at the promotion, despite its dual nature, Pete is simply infuriated that his power's been halved and he's apparently being squared-off against a rival.

The most enjoyable storyline concerned Don and Sal (Bryan Batt), who take a flight to Baltimore to schmooze the London Fog Coat Company, while allowing time to flirt with two air stewardesses by posing as Jimmy Hoffa's accountants. At their hotel, Don's square-jawed charms work a treat on tall blonde Shelly (Sunny Mabrey), whom he takes to his room, and Sal gets an unexpected surprise when a handsome bellhop (Orestes Arcuni) makes a pass at him, instigating what appears to be Sal's first homosexual encounter... only for both men's would-be conquests to be rudely interrupted by a fire alarm.

Most interestingly, while evacuating down the fire escape with a barefoot Sally in tow, Don passes Sal's window and notices his friend's tryst with another man, although he never mentions it. Perhaps Don understand only too well what it must be like for Sal to essentially invent an identity that's fooled everyone (including his wife Kitty) all these years, so respects another "fake". I loved Don's double-meaning he slipped to Sal on their flight home, by using a London Fog raincoat slogan "limit your exposure" as a friendly word of warning about the dangers he faces trying to fit in.

As premiere's go, it was an interesting and slick start in Mad Men terms, although anyone new to the show may feel underwhelmed and thrown into the deep end. It's still the kind of series that really needs the audience to attune themselves to its unique style, pace and mentality. Nothing is given to you on a plate, and the pleasure of most episodes is noticing the symbolism and themes to each week's story (I particularly like it when a current ad campaign echoes something happening in the character's lives.) It should be interesting to see how the British takeover pans out, speaking as a Brit who loves anything that features an Anglo-American clash in drama. The wonderful Jared Harris (son of the great Richard Harris, and last seen as a villain in Fringe), is a sublime piece of casting, and I can't wait to see more from him.

~

"Love Among The Ruins" contained a very interesting theme of infantilizing adults, for their own good or the benefit of others. We're immediately shown a scene from the musical "Bye Bye Birdie", with actress Ann-Margret singing the titular tune and being described by the unimpressed Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) as having the ability to "be 25 and act 14". Pepsi want an advertising campaign based on this sequence from the movie, to sell their new diet cola Patio, and Don doesn't agree with Peggy's claim the Ann-Margaret-inspired ad will only appeal to men who swoon over childlike, naïve-looking women.

Interestingly, Peggy is later seen re-enacting the "Bye Bye Birdie" song in her mirror at home, before heading out to a club alone and playing the role of a subservient "girl" in order to attract a young student (whom she even lets assume she's a lowly typist at Sterling Cooper, not a copywriter), so she can later dominate him in bed and be the one to leave for week in the morning.

The meat of episode 2 actually concerned the arrival of Betty's ailing father Gene (Ryan Cutrona) with her brother William (Eric Ladin) and his wife Judy (Megan Henning) to the Draper home in Ossining. It appears that Gene's mental deterioration is quickening pace (in one scene he mistakes a distant police siren for a liquor raid, believing there's still Prohibition, and pours the Draper's alcohol down the kitchen sink.) Betty wants to takeover responsibility of nursing her father (possibly because she's jealous of Judy's role?), whereas her brother would apparently prefer he was put in a home, and Betty suspects it's because that would result in a quicker death and subsequent inheritance of her father's house. Again, to push this episode's apparent theme of infantilized adults, William and Judy are forced to sleep in child's bunk-beds, Gene is palmed off to watch TV amongst a group of kids (or play cards), and there's even a sequence towards the end when a grownup girl joins children in dancing around a maypole to celebrate springtime.

At Sterling Cooper, Pete is asked to pitch a campaign to redevelop the beautiful Penn Station at Madison Square Garden, the demolishment of which is causing a lot of public outcry from "beatniks" according to developer Mr. Raffitt (Kevin Cooney). The liberal-minded Paul (Michael Gladis) upsets the meeting by agreeing with the protesters, forcing Don and Roger (John Slattery) to fix things over a dinner with Raffitt, where they persuade him he can "change the conversation" to people are less concerned about losing something, and more excited about gaining something. I always find the advertising business curiously fascinating in Mad Men; how these men can help shape perceptions and turn situations around with carefully chosen words. It's a kind of magic that works in tandem with the whole show's somewhat dreamy, laissez-faire approach, where you sit spellbound for nearly an hour just soaking it all up like a sponge. Matthew Weiner's and his writers put Don Draper to shame.

Overall, "Love Among The Ruins" wasn't quite as satisfying as "Out Of Town", but both were about on par with each other and gave us an interesting inroad to the new season. It looks likely that Sal's sexuality will play a big role this year, now that Don knows the truth about him, and it should be interesting to see how the Drapers cope with nursing Gene (particularly once their new baby is born).

Don's already back to his old tricks, seconds away from bedding an air stewardess, but it was quite noble of him to help Betty win the family argument over what to do with her dad, by emasculating her brother in private. And we also learned that Roger's daughter Margaret (Elizabeth Rice) is going to marry a handsome young "kid" on 23 November -- the day after John F. Kennedy's assassination -- so I'm sure the writers will find a fascinating way to make that political tragedy (and iconic moment of the 20th-century) be reflected in the fictional world of Sterling Cooper.

So yes, I was happy with these episodes because they setup some significant changes for Sterling Cooper's business operations with their British parent company, and the Draper's family life suddenly got a lot more complicated.

27 JANUARY 2010: BBC FOUR / BBC HD, 10PM