Mad Men Watch: For the Love of Pete
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this, put some slipcovers on your couch and watch Mad Men.
AMC
So: Pete--not a total unsympathetic worm? Who knew? Four episodes in, Mad Men is showing an intriguing ability to change itself up from week to week. The first two episodes handled the plot in the usual serial style, bouncing among the various running threads to get them established. Episode 3 started that way, then halfway through, shifted scenes and pace to give us Don Draper in depth and at home. And last night the show took an almost anthology approach, getting up close and personal with Sterling Cooper's oiliest junior staffer. (Giving some service, to be fair, to the Helen and Rachel Menken storylines.)
Last night's episode explained Pete rather than rationalizing him, and it did so by going into another area I can't recall being handled by series TV: the hoary and bizarre world of Manhattan WASP old money. Seeing Pete casually denigrated by his Bermuda-shorted father ("We gave you everything. We gave you your name. And what have you done with it?") and Don ("Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich") explained how he both resents and lives up to his world's expectations of him. He loathes the idea of being the unctuous glad-hander useful for his contacts, and yet--when it comes to deviously making the Bethlehem Steel sale--he'll be that guy, because that's the only guy who's ever gotten anything done for Pete.
To me, it's less important what the episode said about Pete than the fact that it said it, and managed to suddenly flesh out what could have been a stock character. It says a lot for the show's potential. In my TV worldview, anyway, a show that has one or two strong characters who are much better developed than everyone else is doomed to be at best good, not great. (This is my concern this summer, for instance, with Damages and Saving Grace.) A great TV show has a whole world of characters it knows down to the core; that goes for obvious greats like The Simpsons or The Sopranos or The Wire and for less-obvious greats like Roseanne or King of the Hill. (I'm sure there are exceptions--say anthology shows like The Twilight Zone--but they're just that, exceptions.)
I'm not declaring Mad Men great after four episodes, but it has the potential, and I'll take that for now.
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1
James,
You didn't mention the running theme of this week's cable shows: the creepy son.
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2
Yeah, I expected the spoiler alert to say "Before you read this, lock your bathroom door and watch Mad Men."
And does Glen seem more or less creepy when you consider he's played by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's son? I say more creepy.
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3
Glen was certainly creepy. And I can't believe Betty actually gave him some of her hair.
I was glad to see Pete's character deepened and explored in this episode, even if it didn't make me like him more - and actually kind of made me like him less, though I did feel bad for him a little.
On another note, I think the point about having one or two characters much better developed than anyone else is part of why I'm not that interested in Saving Grace. I'm interested in Damages still, but I can see your point there.
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4
For me, the most interesting thing about this show is that there's not one single character I love, and not one single character I hate. They're all flawed (although, admittedly, some more than others), but they all redeem themselves at times too. I think that kind of complexity is incredibly rare for a TV show. I guess Sopranos and Six Feet Under acheived it to an extent, but even in those, there were some characters who were obviously pure evil.
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5
My favorite character is Don Draper. He's the only one I can relate to. Now shut up and give me a beer, Suzy.
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6
I love The Twilight Zone! And I really liked the Pete story this week. January Jones needs to learn how to say No. That simple action would save her countless hours and dollars spent on therapy.
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7
Least favorite character: the closed captioner, who every week finds new ways to violate the show and the English language. Can we start a "shame on you" campaign against AMC, please?
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8
James: Unrelated request for you--any chance you can get the tech people to add a side scroll listing various shows, so we can click on a link to read your postings on that show (a la Mo Ryan's blog for the Trib: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/). Like many, I don't usually watch shows the night they air--I actually like to watch most shows two-episodes-at-a-time--so I end up having to troll through several pages of entries to locate your posts after I watch episodes.
Just an idea.
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9
@Bemused: Preaching to the choir. I (and other Time bloggers) would like this too. I believe it's the time.com staff's first priority right after all their other first priorities. But it may help if The People Are Demanding It.
@jon88: I used to leave closed captioning on all the time to facilitate note taking, but it's been a while. It's unusual for a scripted show to have such poor CC, I assume because they usually have access to a script. Sounds like in this case they're doing it live, perhaps?
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10
I like the show, but let's be honest...it takes the whole, "we all lead lives of quiet desperation" thing a little too far. It's so damn bleak all of the time, I think it will start to wear thin over time. It is very reminiscent of Desperate Housewives, which has been bleeding viewers for two years.
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11
@jon88: I forgot to mention that, but the CC drove me crazy. "Should of"? "Should OF"? Argh!
And if it does indeed help for The People to Demand It, I'll put in my vote for categories. I caught up on Flight of the Conchords because you were saying it was good, but I then had trouble finding those posts once I watched the episodes.
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12
Not to get too inside-baseball, but isn't AMC owned by the save-every-penny Cablevision company? Maybe they assigned one of the summer interns to captioning duty. If there's a script involved in the process, then that tells us something dire about the show's writers.
On the other hand, I have to thank them for my new e-mail sig: They should of dropped the bum on Brimmare.
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13
I'm going to agree with Ad Wizard. This show is took bleak and for a show about Advertising it sure seems to be more about how miserable these people are. And while the show looks great and the characters seems real enough they are all just so unlikable. I mean how are we supposed to get into a show when all the main characters seem to have almost no redeeming values. I guess I found this show to be like Studio 60, i wanted to like it but i was just kinda bored through most of it.
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