"Mad Men" is Still in a Class By Itself - Ed Martin - MediaBizBloggers

How do Matthew Weiner and his team do it? Their two-time Emmy winner Mad Men is fast approaching its Season Three finale and it keeps getting better by the week. I recently dined with two of the most influential television critics in the country, and while our conversation touched on at least two dozen new and returning shows, it repeatedly returned to one: AMC’s sterling period showpiece about the equally messy personal and professional lives of employees at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency in the early Sixties. We all agreed that it is still in a class by itself.

Indeed,Mad Men is as fresh right now as it was at the time of its July 2007 premiere and its narrative hasn’t even hit the historic milestone viewers have been waiting for since it began (though it’s getting awfully close): The November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That tragedy shook the entire world as it changed the lives of every American citizen old enough to realize what had happened. (This was strikingly detailed in the recent History Channel documentary JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America, one of the very best programs about the assassination and its aftermath I have ever seen.) It will be absolutely fascinating to see how Kennedy’s murder impacts the employees of Sterling Cooper, collectively the most complex collection of characters ever to populate a scripted television drama.

One couldn’t ask for a better build up to what should prove to be the show’s watershed moment than the electric excitement of its endlessly rewarding third season. The shocks have been varied and plentiful: The sad departures from the agency of Joan and especially Sal (and Joan’s surprise return to the canvas as a saleswoman at Bonwit Teller); drunken secretary Lois driving a lawn mower over the foot of visiting British up and comer Guy, now off the scene; the uncomfortable rift between old allies Roger and Don; Betty’s discovery of the box Don keeps locked away, the damning contents of which tell all about his secret past and skillful identity theft. Tellingly, the cavalcade of quieter story ripples that have made Mad Men television’s richest viewing experience have been just as impactful as the occasional titanic swells.

The stories of corporate manipulation (the British), campaigns in crisis (Lucky Strike) and clients in charge (Conrad Hilton) keep Mad Men in the DVR queue of professionals in all areas of the advertising business and all related media, and the myriad machinations of the men who largely controlled the public perception and acceptance of thousands of products consistently provide fresh stimulation for hundreds of reviewers, columnists and bloggers. I’m as riveted by all of that as anyone, but I think it is the continuing drama of the Drapers’ dysfunctional marriage and the toll it is taking on Betty (the hypnotic January Jones) that has been the most consistently fascinating component of the series this season.

Given the enduring popularity of stories about post-sprawl suburban repression, particularly as it relates to women, there would seem to be nothing left of the subject for writers to explore. And yet, as I have watched Betty navigate her miserable existence this season, her story has felt like something completely new. Betty, a woman as perfect on the surface as she is empty on the inside, and one utterly unfulfilled internally by a life that from the outside would appear to be the stuff of happy daydreams, has clearly been a restless soul from the start, shooting birds and awkwardly bonding with a neighborhood boy in Season One, hitting the bottle and sliding into a paralyzing depression in Season Two. But this season her frustration is less showy and therefore more palpable. Betty is being crushed by the confines of her own existence while everyone around her remains oblivious.

All of the female characters on Mad Men have always grappled with the sexism and repression of the period in their own fascinating ways. I wasn’t all that sympathetic toward Betty at the beginning, since she came off so pampered and spoiled while working girls Joan and Peggy were putting up with all kinds of crap at Sterling Cooper. In fact, I don’t think I totally got what was going on with Betty until Souvenir, the episode this season in which she accompanied Don on a brief trip to Rome, where she fully blossomed physically (after a few treatments in a swanky hotel spa), psychologically (playfully flirting with male admirers while waiting for Don to join her for dinner) and sexually (as Don suddenly took as much interest in her as he has his many mistresses). All of that was gone the moment she returned to Ossining.

I don’t think television has ever produced so desperate and defeated a suburban housewife. Maybe something will change for her after the world stops on November 22 (the day before Roger’s daughter will be married) and is then fitfully propelled through the unprecedented political and cultural turmoil of the Sixties as most people remember them. I can’t shake the feeling that Betty’s future looks inescapably bleak, not just because she is trapped in an empty marriage, but because I have lost count of the number of cigarettes we have seen her smoke since Mad Men began. With each passing episode one can sense the coming national health crisis brought on by the escalating popularity of cigarette smoking during the era in which Mad Men is set, and Weiner has said he will eventually address this in his unflinching narrative. It’s one more reason to worry about poor Betty.