Robert David Sullivan

Mad Men: Keep it to yourself

Spoilers from “Out of Town,” the third-season premiere of Mad Men, ahead:

Unless the two-headed accounts department storyline wraps up very quickly, a major theme in Mad Men’s third season will be Pete’s struggle to keep his childish and petulant personality from sabotaging his career. Almost every TV series makes the argument that you can’t really change your personality; what makes Mad Men more intriguing is the idea that you can still change your behavior (and outward appearance) so as to keep your true personality under wraps.

Don Draper, of course, is a master at reinventing himself, at least on the surface, and he’s tried to teach his inscrutability skills to Peggy (who actually seems a lot more sophisticated than Don in toughening her exterior without becoming a blank wall) and now, it seems, to Sal, who’s in real danger of outing himself inadvertently before he’s come to terms with his sexuality.

(I’ve seen some back-and-forth about whether Don is ahead of his time in reacting so coolly after discovering Sal in a compromising position with a bellboy. I think Don has a natural affinity with anyone who has a double life, but given his own moments of self-loathing, there’s nothing in this episode to indicate that Don has any kind of enlightened attitude about gay people.)

Pete would be Don’s biggest challenge as far as teaching someone to keep his emotions under the surface. But Don may indeed be interested in this challenge: He clearly thinks that Pete has talent (think of their trip to California last year) and that Pete would be well-served by adopting a personae that doesn’t scream Boy’s Life.

In this week’s episode, Pete barges into Don’s office, obviously to whine about having to share his promotion with Ken, but stops short when he sees Roger there. In a sitcom, Pete wouldn’t be able to stop himself from a tantrum (think of Michael Scott from The Office, who would briefly recognize the danger of making an ass of himself before doing it anyway). In Mad Men, Pete is able to turn on a dime and act like a team player. He’s never going to lose that chip on his shoulder, but I’m can’t help but hope that he’s able to distract people from it this season.

Mad Men: father issues

At left: Salvador Dali shills for Mohawk Airlines.

Spoilers for Mad Men ahead.

There are some prosaic reasons for the raft of television characters that have difficult relationships with their fathers (as in Lost, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, etc.). One is that TV writers generally have to work in New York or Los Angeles, so a lot of them have left the places where they grew up and, consequently, have distant fathers in at least the literal sense. Another is that major characters' fathers are often played by "guest star" actors who are then unable to make return appearances, and, in fact, the actor who played Pete's impossible-to-please father on Mad Men last season has since died, so it's not surprising that the writers have given us the ultimate dissolution of the father/son relationship.

But almost every TV drama has gone over this territory, Mad Men did come up with its own twist. After Pete's father dies in the crash of an American Airlines jet, he volunteers to head up an advertising campaign to salvage AA's reputation, and even suggests that his own tragedy makes him uniquely qualified for the job. (Think of Hamlet proving his worth not by murdering Uncle Claudius, but by enthusiastically offering to help improve the new king's poll numbers.) Maybe "something good" can come out of the crash, Pete tells a simultaneously horrified and intrigued AA executive.

This is slimy behavior, but it's understandable. After hearing the news about his father, Pete immediately goes to Don Draper (the man he tried to blackmail last season!) to ask "What does one do?" in such a situation. Pete's wife, mother, and brother are too self-absorbed to provide moral support, so when he's approached to work on the American Airlines campaign, the only one he can think of confiding in is Don, who pretty much tells Pete to shut up and grow up. (Don is pissed off that the ad firm is going to dump one of his prized clients, Mohawk Airlines, to try to win the AA account.)

Mad Men was created by Matthew Weiner, a writer on The Sopranos, and  I'm getting deja vu reading blog comments to the effect that Mad Men moves just too damn slowly. But I like seeing exactly how Pete ended up doing something that may seem cold-hearted and even vengeful. As Jess Oppenheimer, the head writer for a very different series called  I Love Lucy once explained, "If you motivate your audience in a series of small steps, you can go to absolute heights." (Forgive the altitude metaphor.)