Mad Men Season 3 - "Out of Town"

A recent local tab newspaper ran a giant photo of John Hamm and said that Don Draper was what "men wanted to be." I have been thinking about that since is saw it. I did not read the article because I do not want to be Don Draper. Sure he is a handsome, confident man who looks great in a suit. He is also a serial adulterer, a son of a whore with a past life that he seems to equally run from and towards every episode.

The premiere episode of Season 3, "Out of Town," opens with Don in the kitchen making some warm milk for his wife Betty. But his memory transports him back to witness his conception, birth and shotgun adoption to a woman who has experienced multiple still births. In this episode we learn that Don's real name, Dick, actually was inspired by the appendage that rules his adult life. I am tempted to have sympathy for him but by the episodes end, that has all been wiped away by the man he has become. We then see that Don is making the warm milk for his very pregnant wife, Betty, and he comforts her and tries to lull her by transporting her to a comforting sandy beach. The end of season 2 had Betty discovering she was pregnant and Don returning to beg for forgiveness after his exile from home.

Based on my limited experience with pregnancy, I am guessing that we have skipped ahead six to seven months in the future from the final moments of Season 2's "Meditations on an Emergency." One of the things I love best about Mad Men is its absolute refusal to spoon feed the audience. Writer/creator Matthew Weiner just drops us into this future world and leaves us to figure out what has occurred. At the end of last season we sat on the precipice of many life-altering issues. The entire world was embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the agency had just been bought by a British company and Don had walked out on them in his final play against the manipulations of Duck Phillips, and Don was still piecing together his shattered marriage.

In the office we see most of our main characters but things have changed. The new head of accounts was being fired and the job was given, in confusing fashion, to both Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove. In Duck's version of the future of Sterling Copper, Pete Campbell was to replace him as head of accounts. When he learns that he will be given the job he always felt he deserved he is ecstatic. When he learns he will have to share the job with Ken he is devastated worse than when he learned his father had been killed in a plane crash. Pete is similar to Don Draper in that he only really cares for what is best for him. The few other people that are actually in his life (including his wife) are just an afterthought. Both Ken and Pete walked into the office expecting that they might be fired. Ken sees the shared job as a reward, Pete sees it as an insult and a gauntlet being thrown at his feet.

Weiner also drops in several new British characters and we are left to figure what their role is and what their motivations are. The financial man, Mr. Pryce seems like a very standoffish, British bureaucrat with little regard for the feelings of the people at Sterling Cooper. Yet near the end of the episode he chides his assistant Mr. Hooker (nicknamed Moneypenny by the staff after the James Bond assistant) for acting prideful and recognizes how hard the transition has been for the Americans.

One of Mad Men's strengths is showing us many sides of a character. I have often remarked that there is no one to really root for. Certainly not Don Draper who has apologized his way back into his wife's arms and within the first hour of Season 3 he is jumping back into bed with an attractive blonde stewardess. He has several chances to NOT cheat and does not stop. When the woman tells him that she is engaged, he has the opportunity to redeem them both and he just plunges forward by tell her, "it's my birthday." But there are several characters that we can at least want to root for.

It is nice to see that Peggy Olson, the secretary turned Mad Woman, is still powering along as a strong woman. Her scenes lamenting to Joan about how she does not need to listen to her girl talk about retaining water put her soundly in the camp of all the men in the office who have little regard for their "girls." While I want Peggy to succeed, I don't want to see her lose her soul in the process. When she had her unplanned pregnancy, she took life advice from Don Draper. That may not be the best source if you want to keep said soul.

While I lament Don's "out of town" fling with his stewardess, I was thrilled to see Sal Romano's encounter with the bellboy. Is this hypocritical since Sal too is married? I do not know but since Sal's marriage and most of his outward life is an act, it is hard to know where to draw the line. As a gay man, Sal is forced to keep his real desires hidden in order to maintain the life that he has built. As much as we have seen social mores change on Mad Men, we have also seen cruel comments about homosexuality that would keep some of the bravest men closeted. Bryan Batt has done a remarkably subtle job of playing this character. What makes this encounter all the more gripping is when Don sees the real Sal through the window from the fire escape. It seems as if Sal is going to come out to Don on the plane but all Don is thinking about is the client. There are so many plot lines being symbolized by Sal’s artwork of the open raincoat and the line, “Limit your exposure?” So many of these characters fear the exposure symbolized by that London Fog raincoat. [Is it my imagination or did Sal get the art wrong from what Don explained? I haven’t had time to watch it twice yet.]

It is interesting to see how easily Don transitions into the role of Bill the accountant for the flight crew and then transforms he and Sal into accountants for the CIA. Sal plays along as best he can while his creative director puts on a show. Little does he know that Don has been pretending to be someone else as long as Sal has. Don Draper is not even Don Draper. He is Dick Whitman – son of a whore, a dick who thinks with his dick first and never wants to expose his true self to anyone.