Mad Men – Christmas Comes But Once A Year
If the dominant question from Mad Men’s premiere – “Who is Don Draper?” – is still in effect when reading last night’s episode, then it’s pretty clear that right now, Don Draper is a disgusting mess. The lines between his personal and professional lives, previously so carefully intact, have blurred beyond any reasonable limit, and those disintegrating boundaries result in some of the worst behavior we have ever seen Don Draper display. Somehow, his treatment of Allison is much, much worse than his neglectful, occasionally abusive relationship with Betty, his paternalistic dismissal of Sally’s teacher Ms. Farrell, or even his aggressive, S&M-tinted affair with Bobbi Barrett. Allison was compassionate and impressively competent, and to see Don so out of control that he cannot stop himself from taking advantage of her is to see him at his worst. (At least, I can only hope this is his worst.) Even the one constantly inspiring aspect of Don – his stunning skill as a creative director – is nearly absent from this episode. We see several instances of Peggy struggling with a growing appreciation of her own different advertising perspective, but we never get one of those classic moments where Don’s talent as a piercing social observer belies his own terrible conduct. He is rumpled, drunk, and pitiable.
It’s not hard to see why, and as SCDP’s new consultants quickly note, his advertisements are an excellent starting point for reading Don’s Christmas-fueled misery. Faye Miller, the customer evaluation researcher, points out that Don’s Glow-Coat commercial is certainly about someone’s childhood, and it’s easy to pull that thread through Don’s previous work. His concept for the Kodak Carousel is most obvious, of course, with its overt use of nostalgia and familial sentiment, but you can see it even in the smaller campaigns he develops with Peggy in the previous seasons. The initial idea for Mohawk Airlines is something to do with stewardesses wearing short skirts, and with Don’s direction, Peggy moves toward focusing on the return rather than the departure, away from watching the city disappear beneath you, and toward “What did you bring me, Daddy?” At this point in his career and this place in his divorce, Don has a harder time finding his way back to those nostalgic ideals he once mined for advertising gold, and the family-friendly Jantzen campaign turns into a playful joke about censorship and the risqué bikini. Through his outward actions, it’s easy to dismiss Don as a liar and a cheater, but his ads make it clear how crucial his belief in the possibility of an intact family has been for his perception of himself.
I wrote a lot last season about how carefully this show is tied to the calendar year and to the insistent commemoration of holidays – most importantly for season three, that fabulous Halloween which ended in Sally and Bobby dressed as a gypsy and a hobo while Betty relentlessly peeled back Don’s costume. This is the first Mad Men Christmas, as well as Don’s first Christmas without access to that unrealistic but persuasive image of his loving, stable family. It’s no wonder he’s a mess.
Not that it excuses the way he treats Allison, or explains the full extent of his downward spiral into alcoholism. But even if it’s not excusable, Don’s extreme behavior becomes less unusual inside the context of everyone else’s response to the holiday. Peggy sleeps with her boyfriend, against her initial better judgment, Roger is forced to put on a Santa costume to placate Lee Gardner, Jr., Joan leads the most spirited, sexy Conga line in human history, and in my favorite part of the episode, creepy, too-knowing Glenn returns to give Sally some pointers on being a child of divorce. If Mad Men holidays have always been moments of stress or revelation inside Sterling Cooper, (last 4th of July, some guy’s foot was cut off with a rider mower!), Christmas is a kind of emotional lightning rod. The whole company puts on an elaborate show of cheeriness and raunchy goodwill for the Lee Gardner, Jrs. of the world, playing games where they pass each other oranges under their chins and dressing as Santa, despite the fact that they are all inwardly fuming, disintegrating, or surrendering. Glenn’s vandalism is so satisfying because it gleefully punctures that outer pretense. And as with every holiday on the show, this Christmas is also a marker of larger segments of time passing – SCDP must employ new customer evaluation specialists, Lee Gardner, Jr. shows up at the party expecting something like a “Roman orgy” and then takes everyone’s photos with a brand-new model of Polaroid camera, Bert Cooper shakes his head sadly about impending socialism.
“I don’t hate Christmas,” Don says. “I hate this Christmas.” It is Mad Men’s particular genius that “this Christmas” is both so historically specific and universally human.