By Michelle Lerner

MAD MEN is a difficult show to get a grip on. I don’t mean that in the sense that I don’t understand what’s going on. It’s more that the plot is less important then the subtle changes in tone and dialogue. Everyday things happen, but some tiny tidbit is revealed and relations between characters roll forward towards clarity or backwards away from it, just a little bit. It’s pretty deep stuff, and makes the show more of a grower then a show-er.

We are used to shows that offer a lot of bang; LOST, HEROES, even THE SOPRANOS, which is what Matthew Weiner, the creator of MAD MEN cut his teeth on. It’s not that there weren’t subtleties in THE SOPRANOS; there were: The home décor at casa de la Soprano, Carmela’s condescending greeting, “What’s going on your little part of the world?” come to mind. But there was usually a bang. Of course there was - it was a show about the mafia.

MAD MEN is about a time when America was changing, fast, hurtling itself forward into the arms of social and economic revolution. We are still feeling the reverberations of those years today. MAD MEN offers us a world filled with secrets of the kind we don’t know how to keep anymore. We are rewarded for confessing every detail of our lives. Lauren Conrad on THE HILLS has a career for being nothing more special then a mediocre girl who tells the camera everything.

So for us to watch a show where there are so many secrets which never come out, is a glimpse into another possibility, another world. MAD MEN believes it’s a sexier world. A place filled with smoke and booze, and forbidden desire floating under the surface.  An executive tells a story about killing a deer to a secretary, and she is so discombobulated that she buys herself a cherry Danish. This week’s episode, finds our ostensible hero, Don Draper, getting strong armed into bringing his boss, and ostensible friend Roger Sterling home for dinner at the last minute. Roger invites himself, Don says “sure” and his picture perfect wife, Betty, eats salad while Roger eats her steak. There’s a lesson here: don’t bring your boss home. Ever. It’s a fifties cliché, turned into feasible drama.


The tension builds while Roger flirts with Betty, while discussing World War II. Don doesn’t talk about his war, the Korean War, and when it comes up. You know that he doesn’t feel like a hero. Roger does, or at least plays the part. He was in the Pacific, and got a medal. And his name as he keeps saying, is on the side of the building. But Roger also drinks Vodka in his milk at breakfast, and you get a sense that he is always trying to compete with the more creative, lower born, more secure Don.

The scene between the two men the next morning, in Don’s office, where Roger apologizes, is much more about Roger reasserting his superiority over Don, by forcing him to be cool with everything, then it is a heartfelt act of contrition. Don doesn’t like it, but Roger is not just his boss, he is a social superior, part of the old WASP club. It’s subtle, but when the scene ends all is right in the world between the two again.


Roger and Don go for a fifty oyster, three martini lunch. Roger loves to dig at Don, again, subtly, about where he’s from. Roger is a classist. At dinner, Roger mentions that Don occasionally drops his g’s, meaning he must be from a farm. Don squirms but doesn’t reply. At lunch, Roger says he doesn’t peg Don for an oyster guy, a little twist of the knife, and Don says he’s acquiring a taste for them. More oysters, more martini’s, and then a race up the stairs, when they are late to meet with Richard Nixon’s team, and the elevator is broken. As they go, Roger’s refined features seemed more etched, and he becomes more cranky and imperious. Don’s strong brow, and large features, become more coarse, in the light of the stairwell. But he wins, running the last few flights while Roger falls, and pretends to lose a tie pin.

The episode ends with Roger, the man with his name on the side of the building, vomiting on the floor in front of Nixon’s people, his partner, Don, and Campbell, an underling. Don sits with him for a moment, but smiles to himself as he walks away. Roger is left sitting on the couch, dabbing his lips with a tissue, scowling at Don’s back. The cold war has started; no bullets have been fired, or words traded, but there seems to be a definite chill on the horizon.