I love this show, and thank you for writing about it, because there’s so much I don’t catch just because I’m a 30-year-old with basically no interest in the literature of the 60’s.

I mean like 90% of the show is on a frequency I can’t pick up - I’d never even heard of Frank O’Hara - and it’s really interesting to have that stuff interpreted for me.

Huge fan of the show as is a 25 year old who works in my office.  Her reaction to the show is quite illuminating.  She looks at it as a costume drama and takes place in a world that she has never seen.  The imagery and allusions are not lost on her, but there are many aspects of the show that she has never experienced.  Her reactions for instance to Peggy’s priest and his taunting of her.  She sess that as unconscionable on the part of the priest, who in her mind is grappling with his own interest in Peggy which doesn’t seem entirely based upon saving her soul. 

Personally, what I find interesting is how the writers have made Don such a likable character in the face of all that he has done to his family.  He is the height of self serving yet when I look at his relationship with his wife, I find myself rooting for him rather than Betty for inexplicable reasons.  I think it is a mastery at characteriation that could accomplish these views in the face of his behavior.  Great show with lots of nuance.

I think the reason we root for both of them is that the show does such a good job at showing us how they’re decent people trapped by the culture’s expectations of them. 

I really love this show, and I first heard about it on this blog, thank you

After Joan was assaulted, there was an outcry on a Mad Men forum I read that has a younger audience, with many saying that surely she’d leave him (although a lot of that was probably wishful thinking). But I knew it was more likely that Joan would go on just trying to pretend that nothing had happened; hell, even today there are a lot of people who wouldn’t consider that rape, let alone then, when that sort of thing was just whispered about as a “bad date.”

I think that as 30 something watchers of Mad Men, in the first season my boyfriend and I sometimes anticipated what was coming historically so much that we sometime forget to pay attention to the unfolding lives of the characters.
Once the second season started, we had more invested in the characters and the historical events went to the background a bit more.
I think that my mother (still in Jr. High and High School in the early to mid 60’s) would come away from it with something else having lived through that time in history and perhaps my grandmother something else- being a mother of 4 by then. I think that perhaps my grandmother would be far more sympathetic to Betty Draper- while I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for her to get the papers in order for a divorce most of the second season.
It’s such a shift in thinking for a lot of women my age I think to be dropped into that time where your options as a woman were a lot more limited (mostly by the status quo/popular opinion- see the redhead mother of the creepy kid who has a crush on Betty for instance). I mean we KNOW that it was different by seeing just how a woman can be held in such an invisible web not just by herself but all of society is pretty enlightening I think.
I would hope that there’s a compare/contrast going on for lots of women and also a “never again” going on too.

So this is a good opportunity to whore my blog, Basket of Kisses, the first (and biggest) full-time Mad Men fan blog (co-run by my sister and I). We’re both feminists, and were both born around the time the series takes place, and our regular commenters (we call ‘em Basketcases) are just brilliant. Some of the literary allusions I get, some I research, and many I get told about in comments. And since I’m a long-time Pandagonian, it’s pretty thrilling to hear you talk about the show.

I haven’t seen the show, just wanted to say that Rothko really does suck.

You know I love this show. And now I’m glad you’ve caught up. Some random thoughts and observations ...

There was a moment, when Don was hanging out with the Eurotrash in Palm Springs (are they Nazis on the run? what?), when I thought he’d pull a Roger O. Thornhill thing and turn out to be a spook. Especially since they picked him up at an aerospace conference.

It’s interesting how Don’s physicality changed once he “became” Dick. Hamm is a better actor than I initially thought.

I loved the born-again baptism in the Pacific.

Your comment about the art world eclipsing them is interesting. Mad Ave was the first time artists (copywriters and illustrators) made more than a living wage on such a large scale. Yes, Virginia. Persuasion is an art. And I know that because Plato and Peggy told me so.

Dick says something to Anna, paraphrasing here, “I’m having trouble fitting into my life.” I think alot of people feel that way at a certain age. And most of them aren’t hiding in another man’s life. Or are they?

And another thing ...raise your hand if you think Pete’s going to shoot himself.

Count me in as another huge Mad Men fan.  A few comments.

Visually, I love how the show is so richly detailed.  Not just the set design and the costumes (men’s suits apparently did fit well at some point in the 20th century), but also the cinematography; the composition of the takes looks at lot like the composition of photography of the period.  The writers must have done a huge amount of research not only in pop culture, but also in academic studies of and from the period.  I’m in my mid-30s myself, but the show isn’t as unfamiliar to me as it would normally be because I’ve read a lot of the history and cultural commentary from the period and I can recognize a lot of the themes.

And, as everyone else says, I like how people are so complex in the show.  You find yourself liking characters who behave terribly.  I even like Roger Sterling and he’s a complete cynic and scoundrel.

Re:  Joan.  It’s sad to see what’s happening to her and how her survival strategy no longer is working for her.  There was a certain irony, I thought, in her being passed over for the script reading job because she never really had much prior interest in “moving up.”  I recall when Peggy came to Joan for advice, and not only did Joan rebuke Peggy for not taking Joan’s advice earlier, but adds, “I’ve never had your job.  I’ve never wanted it.”  But we see later that she wanted it more than she thought.

I will say that the writers bought Don a lot of sympathy by showing that he saved Peggy’s life.

I’m torn on this one.  It was, after all, a genuinely kind and good thing to do.  It was still all about him, though.  About reaffirming his belief that you can just reinvent yourself and bury the past with no serious repercussions.  That he can do whatever he wants, and everyone else will be too tied up by decorum to say anything about it.

At the end of the season, they made a fairly explicit parallel here, with Don taking an unexplained leave of his own.  The junior members of the firm gossip about it, as they did when Peggy was absent after giving birth, but otherwise nothing changes.

The second season was quite self-consciously packed with literary allusions on top of all the other allusions the show makes

Did ANYBODY else get that little moment at the Memorial Day party where Betty is chatting with this couple, and they mention “the summer the Rosenbergs were executed”?  I was almost positive it was a reference to The Bell Jar, which opens by identifying the setting as “the summer the Rosebergs were executed”.  Though they didn’t go anywhere with it - it was just an interesting little moment.

It’s not, in my mind, a coincidence that Ken features prominently in the scene where they’re talking about Bob Dylan and then Curt (like O’Hara) announces he’s gay without any pretense of shame over it.  And Ken chortles and carries on.  He’s getting passed by.  And he’s the one who is most open-minded!

I’m really, REALLY hoping that Ken is gay.  That whole subplot where he and Sal had that odd sort of chemistry/tension, and then Sal kept his lighter (and the two of them thoroughly ignore Sal’s wife, to the point where even she notices it and is upset), really had me hoping they would get together, in some kind of way, maybe years from now.  I’m imagining some sort of fevered confrontation/love scene in the wake of Stonewall, for instance.  Was Sal also in Curt’s “oh hai, I’m totes gay!” scene, too?  I forget.

Were we the only ones yelling, “Go get you some, Betty!” when she picked that guy up in the bar?

No, you definitely weren’t.  Though I was also afraid that it would end up biting her in the ass later.  More out of my expectations of the narrative arc of the show than because I think extramarital sex should come with “consequences”.  Especially in the way that Betty often thinks she’s using her own agency in the world, and then it turns out she was a pawn the whole time. 

Her reactions for instance to Peggy’s priest and his taunting of her.

WTF?  This was one of the few bits of the show that I felt was vehemently not a “period” situation, which I could relate to as a non-traditional woman who is not religious, but comes from a devout background and thus comes in contact with sanctimonious fundie pricks on occasion*.  I related to Peggy’s situation here a hell of a lot more than I did to Betty’s unwanted pregnancy, one-night-stand, and decision to stay in her marriage despite Don’s bullshit.  That, to me, is an almost Jane Austen level of “period” quaintness—if I found myself pregnant with the child of a man I didn’t want to be married to anymore, I’d just have a fricken abortion already and call it a day.  But the priest bit?  Will probably happen to me (again) when I go back to Louisiana for the holidays.

* Though I have to say that I’m pretty sure the priest has also been manipulated by Peggy’s sister, who btw I’m like 99% sure is NOT raising Peggy’s child.  If you notice in the episode where Peggy has just had the baby and is in some sort of asylum, she seems to be heavily pregnant, herself.  Anyway, he’s heard this horrible story about what a selfish baby-hating penis-envying harridan Peggy is—I don’t think it’s so much that he fears for her soul as it really is, but that he’s heard her sister’s innuendo-laden narcissistic side of the story and Peggy doesn’t seem interesting in telling hers.

Nice catch on “The Sound and the Fury” allusion re: Duck, Amanda—I missed that one. Nothing on that show is co-incidental, and your analysis makes sense.

I did catch the “Ship of Fools” reference—it also ties into the greater theme of how the tides of historical change overtake some people (like Joan) while others (like Peggy) are flexible enough to surf them or (like Betty) at least stay afloat. And it’s always unexpected as to who will sink and who will swim.

Were we the only ones yelling, “Go get you some, Betty!” when she picked that guy up in the bar?  I hope not.

Cynicism, maybe, but I don’t know if that was a sign of maturity. It struck me as a petty, petulant, coasting-on-charm-and-looks (i.e. very Betty-like) revenge against Don (and also perhaps a misguided/misinformed attempt to force a miscarriage). The fact that’s she’s taking out her anger on someone more powerful (Don) instead of her usual targets (her kids, the riding academy “friends”) indicates progress of a sort, but in the end she still compromises and takes Don back. So all her progress portends is that their marriage’s dysfunction is only beginning.

And how the doctor and Francine both allowed that there’s more going on in any woman’s life than an outsider can see, and that if Betty thinks termination is best, then that choice should be respected.

They both make allowances because they both see a woman’s vagina as something more than a fun-hole and baby-egress. However, even then both are still restricted by society (Francine’s scene takes place in public, in a beauty parlour) and gender roles/patriarchy (the doctor’s scene takes place in private, under the protection of confidentiality, but he still has to be circumspect and “officially” disapproving).

Peggy is the most fun character, but if you step back, it’s incredibly disturbing what she’s had to go through and the choices she’s had to make to get that fancy office at Sterling & Cooper.  I will say that the writers bought Don a lot of sympathy by showing that he saved Peggy’s life.

I may not be that way in advertising anymore, women still have to make those choices to get ahead in “boy’s club” professions (I’m thinking particularly about i-banking and the law, but also other areas).

Peggy’s able to handle things with particular grace because not just because she’s found a mentor/champion in Don, but because she’s entered into a symbiotic alliance with him (she basically “saves his life” during the whole auto accident/Bobbie incident) and, more importantly, because she’s not willing to buy into his core (and also most self-destructive) principles.

Done delivers that speech to her in the hospital about how easy it is to deny the past and move on—a statement so intent and heartfelt that Hamm deserves an Emmy on the basis of that one line reading alone. And yet Peggy has the strength of will and independence not to do that, to incorporate and integrate the past into who she’s becoming. Talk about an over-arching theme to a period piece.

It really was a fantastic season that carried through on an examination of how women struggled with varying degrees of success and grace against the limitations imposed on them at the time. Thanks for writing about the show.

My Mad Men fix! Thanks, Amanda!

I absolutely love this show. I agree that the way it is photographed (filmed) is reminiscent of one of my favorite films from that era (50s-60s): The Best of Everything.

This was my parents’ era, perhaps a little younger than the protagonists in Mad Men, but they grew up in other countries and didn’t have these specific gender/work pressures on them. But oh did it start when they migrated here in the mid 60s.

Excellent review. I wasn’t aware of many of the literary references. Thank you!

My take on the last shot of Pete isn’t suicide. He’s standing guard against those looters coming to the fourteenth floor. Also the gun is a link to Peggy via his fantasy.

I think (as a Catholic) that one of the most interesting tensions in season 2 is the pressure on Peggy to confess to her “sins”. In the final episode she does - but it’s not the one that her family, priest and society want it to be. She doesn’t feel guilty so much for sleeping with a married man and having a baby out of wedlock as she does for rejecting what she has been raised her whole life to want. She doesn’t want to be married and a mother at this point in her life. She makes it clear that she could have made that happen - she could have shamed Pete into marrying her. She was ashamed of having a desire for an independent life and following her ambitions. As the show closes we see Peggy at peace. She has confessed to her “sin” (which really isn’t a sin at all) and she goes to sleep with a clean conscience, while Pete sits alone in his office with a shotgun. By doing what was expected - marrying “the right sort of girl” with the right sort of connections - he has condemned himself to miserable life in a loveless marriage.

My take on the last shot of Pete isn’t suicide. He’s standing guard against those looters coming to the fourteenth floor. Also the gun is a link to Peggy via his fantasy.

Thinking back to the episode where he buys the gun, I’m guessing it’s a symbol of Teh Phallus and/or Pete’s masculinity.  Him sitting there in the dark with his gun isn’t so much that he’s going to kill himself, but more of like a “My Precious” kind of thing.  “The wimmin be tricksy, precious!  They leads us on!  They can’t be trusted!  They wants things we can’t gives them! We don’t needs them, tricksy tricksy wimmin!”  In other words, it’s the primetime TV equivalent of him sitting there stroking his cock.

Pete Campbell’s character development, like everyone else’s, was a mixed bag. His father’s death allowed him to get beyond the gargantuan sense of entitlement we saw in Season 1—a big step. However, the relief of that burden has forced him to confront its consequences: at home, a marriage he wasn’t ready for; and at work, having to see Peggy as an equal both in his lovelorn eyes and Don’s appraising ones.

So he sits in the office (and, significantly, not at home) clinging to the .22 rifle he bought in exchange for a superfluous wedding present (an puerile and small-calibre attempt to assert his masculinity), both mourning his past and guarding against the immediate future.