Mad Men Season Four Premiere: “Public Relations”

By Jennifer Baldwin. The Boomers love making TV shows and movies about the 1960s; it fulfills their narcissistic desire to relive their own adolescence and young adulthood – and it makes their generation seem “important,” the most important generation of all. Naturally, most of these shows and movies about the turbulent 60s approach the era from the point of view of young people: teenagers, college students, the youth movement and the hippie scene.

The reason AMC’s original series Mad Men was such a sensation when it debuted four seasons ago, and what continues to make it one of the best shows on TV, is that it approaches the 1960s from a somewhat different angle. It’s the angle of men in suits, women in tasteful and elegant clothing, cocktails and business meetings – in other words, the world of grown ups. This is the 1960s from the point of view of the adults. What makes the show so brilliant is that by focusing on the adults of the era it shows where the real breakdown of society occurred in the 60s:  not with the kids, but with their parents.

Kids will always rebel, in any era, in any time period. It’s part of our adolescent development to test boundaries and question our world. But it’s up to the adults in a society to maintain civilization in the face of this adolescent upheaval. Where the 60s went wrong – where the rot set in – wasn’t that the youth started tuning out and turning on, it’s that the adults did as well.

At the end of the third season, there was quite a lot of upheaval in the adult world of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his cohorts: JFK was assassinated; Betty (January Jones) went to Reno to divorce Don and remarry Rockefeller Republican Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley); British firm Putnam Powell and Lowe were preparing to sell Sterling Cooper; and in perhaps the most exhilarating finale of the show’s entire run, Don, Roger (John Slattery), Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), and English newcomer Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) all joined forces and left Sterling Cooper to form their own advertising agency (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) – taking Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan (Christina Hendricks), and Harry (Rich Sommer) along with them.

Season three ended with the show going through such a radical change that fans have been anxiously waiting to see just where things would pick up in season four. Would Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce still be in existence and would they be successful? Would Betty finalize her divorce and marry Henry? Would Don be happy in his new role as bachelor and big shot creative director and face of the company at his new “scrappy underdog” agency?

In the season four premiere, “Public Relations,” Matt Weiner has jumped ahead one year in the story – to Thanksgiving, 1964 – and the changes we witnessed in the last episode of season three are now in full bloom. Weiner doesn’t reset anything. Don is living the bachelor life; Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is now an established agency (though not without the headaches and anxieties of being a small upstart); Betty is remarried to Henry Francis; and Don Draper is faced with a new professional challenge: promoting himself.

In the past, Draper has always emphasized that the goal of advertising is, first and foremost, to sell the product. An ad may be cute or clever, but if it doesn’t sell the product, it’s worthless.

Now in season four, Don is confronted with a new paradigm. He’s not just selling other people’s products; he must sell himself. It’s an uncomfortable role for a man who has stolen another man’s name, a man who has spent most of his adult life constructing a new identity for himself. As we open the episode, a reporter for Advertising Age is interviewing Don, asking him, “Who is Don Draper?” Don can’t/won’t answer that question. He says he’s from the Midwest where he was taught that it wasn’t polite to talk about oneself. Don’s trying to be modest, to remain the man behind the scenes who is just doing his job.

But when the article comes out mid-way through the episode, the reporter has mistaken Don’s modesty for aloofness, his humility and professionalism for coldness and mystery – and mystery is a killer for someone who is trying to be a salesman. It’s a huge misstep for Don, because as Roger and others point out, Don is the agency’s biggest asset – he needs to sell himself to the world in order for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to get more business.

The thematic counterpoint to this storyline is the plot with the Jentzen bathing suit executives, who make two-piece bathing suits (not “bikinis,” as the prudish executives are always pointing out) and who want to sell their suits without resorting to salacious sexiness the way their bikini-making competitors do. Again, the theme here is modesty. Whether it’s modesty in dress or modesty in terms of humility, this first episode is drawing a contrast between the traditional way of thinking and the new, more “authentic” way of thinking. The world is becoming more sensationalized, more in your face. It’s about not holding back anymore when it comes to your wants and desires. It’s about, as Don puts it to the Jentzen men, “would you rather be comfortable and dead, or risky and possibly rich?”   In other words, standards, decorum, modesty – these are the things which must be sacrificed in order to stand out in the world, and standing out in the world is what will get people’s attention, and getting people’s attention is the key to success.

Peggy and Pete have embraced this principle as well, staging a publicity stunt (hiring two women to fight in a grocery store over a canned ham) in order to drum up business for one of their companies, which is not happy with its sales. The stunt works – it makes the NY Daily News and the ham company is ready to increase their media budget. Of course, there are unintended consequences (as one of the women in the publicity stunt files a lawsuit against the other) and Peggy has to grovel to Don to help her fix it. But at the end of the day, the sensationalism worked and it brought the agency more money. And isn’t that all that matters?

Analyzing this fourth season premiere, I’m beginning to get a sense of where the show is headed thematically. We’ve watched in the past three seasons as almost all of the characters have embraced to one extent or the other the breakdown of traditional, adult society. Roger embraced his mid-life crisis in the third season and divorced his wife to marry his pretty, young secretary. He claims to be happy, but what will his decision mean down the road? Will the happiness last? And if not, then what?

Betty has now been ‘liberated’ by her divorce from Don, shedding the ‘perfect housewife’ role she felt so constricted by in earlier seasons, even as she continues to play at being the wife with her new husband (but there’s a hint in the premiere that this new marriage isn’t exactly permanent either). She’s certainly abandoned her pretense of being a good mother. She’s embraced her selfish, self-centered tendencies. What consequences lie ahead for her and her children?

Don too has seemingly gotten everything he wanted professionally. He’s the big draw at the new agency, the one everyone in the office wants to please (as Peggy puts it to him later in the episode). He’s free and living his life without any guilt, free to finally be “Don Draper.” But at what cost to his personal life and what cost to his own emotional health? We see him in this first episode spend Thanksgiving with a prostitute. It’s a scene both perverted (Don likes it rough … evidence of his deep-seeded need to be punished?) and pathetic. He gets to spend a little time with his kids for the holiday, but they are in Betty’s custody it seems for the most part. Is this what it means to be free? Is this what the changing attitudes of the 60s have wrought?

As these characters continue to abandon the standards and responsibilities of traditional adulthood, they illustrate just how tumultuous and damaging the rebellious nature of the 60s was. Season four seems to be ready to explore these changes and breakdowns even further.

The Jentzen executives may be hypocrites, but their goal is not necessarily a bad one. They are trying to maintain some standards of modesty, even as they sell the skin-bearing, two-piece bathing suit. Yes, it’s hypocritical, trying to have both modesty and sex, but for those of us in the 21st century who have seen the devolution from tastefully (and modestly) sexy advertising to the ugly, trashy, and demeaning stuff that passes for “sexy” these days, it’s not hard to think maybe the Jentzen people weren’t all that wrong.

In the new paradigm of the rebellious 60s, the paradigm of “public relations,” where you have to sell yourself to make money, the hypocrisy of the Jentzen execs needs to be “thrown out” (just as Don angrily throws them out of his office). Welcome to the world of “authenticity,” where being open and honest about everything – and that means telling the world everything about yourself – is the new standard.

At one point in the episode, Don says, “My job is to write ads, not talk about who I am.” But this is precisely the world that’s coming, where talking about who you are is the ultimate ‘liberation,’where putting it all out there for everyone to see is the new standard. By the end of the episode, Don has scheduled an interview with the Wall Street Journal and he’s ready to tell all. He’s finally stopped being a hypocrite. He’s not going to play modest anymore just because that’s what he was taught to do. He’s ready to do some bragging.

And so, as the adults abandon the old rules and decorum, the crumbling of society can begin apace. It’s a risk, sure, but it might make them all rich.

Some other thoughts on the season four premiere:

The girl Roger sets Don up with on a date does indeed “look like Virginia Mayo” – actress Anna Camp (True Blood). I liked how her character didn’t fall for Don’s “let me walk you to your door” trick.

An example of the show’s conservatism? Don’s accountant says regarding Don’s financial assets: “Uncle Sam will take a healthy bite.” Don: “He already has.”

I know I just semi-defended the Jentzen guys’ prudery in the article above, but Don’s ad for them was brilliant: “So well built, we can’t show you the second floor.” Also a nice callback to the episode’s running joke that the new office of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce doesn’t have a second floor.

Speaking of the new office: No conference table! I was cracking up at Draper and the other partners in their meeting, just sitting in chairs in a little circle, no table between them. The show’s understated humor is one of my favorite aspects.

Finally, this week’s end credit song: “Tobacco Road” performed by British invasion pop group The Nashville Teens.

Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 7:00pm.