Mad Men starts its seasons with a slow, in-medias-res fade up. There’s usually no instigating incident to kick start the action nor is there some kind of introductory scene to summarize what the year will be about. Instead the first hour is about catching up on where these people have been over the last (in this case) 11 months and seeing what’s changed.
We start with someone asking “who is Don Draper” because it is Mad Men and of course that’s how the season starts. The man doing the asking is a reporter with Ad Age who can’t pry much out of the reserved Don. The idea of taking credit for the agency’s innovative Glo-Coat campaign offends Don’s humble and introverted sensibility, but being interviewed at all is dangerous for some with a secret like Don has (something further emphasized by the fact that the reporter lost his leg in Korea – the place where Dick Whitman became Don Draper).
But Don is not in the same position he used to be in. As the driving force behind Sterling Cooper Draper Price, he can no longer afford to be the genius in creative who lets everyone else worry about the business side nor can he be the mysterious cipher who is content to toil away in the background like he could at Sterling Cooper. He is not unlike the Jantzen executives who attempt to have it both ways by caving to the marketplace and selling a “two-piece bathing suit” but refuse to call it a bikini or agree to an advertising campaign that will sell it. Don wants to build a successful and innovative company but, at first, is unwilling to do what he must do in order to make that happen.
Working in closer quarters, for a more freewheeling, seat-of-your-pants kind of agency seems to generally be pretty good for everyone. Roger is back to his wise-cracking and energetic self (he also gets the line of the night, commenting that Ad Age couldn’t even afford to send a whole reporter) and Bert seems back to his old self, but what is really interesting is to see how Pete, Peggy, and Joan all appear to be thriving with their newfound responsibility. Pete brings in accounts, has no problems collaborating with Peggy and seems shockingly comfortable going to power lunches with Roger and Don. Joan finally has an office and the credit that she deserves for doing all the things she was doing at SC.
But its Peggy who seems to have changed the most over the past 11 months. She has a new haircut and good rapport with newbie Joey (incidentally the two of them are paying homage to Stan Freberg’s “John and Marsha;” Freberg himself was an innovative ad man). The close quarters of SCDP mean that there’s no time for the roundabout zigzagging that usually kept Peggy’s voice from being heard. She has the confidence to try a scheme like the ham stunt and the confidence to take Don’s inevitable abuse much better than in the past (she’s even comfortable enough to directly say to him what Roger, Bert, and Lane all tried to say and couldn’t get across).
Betty, meanwhile, provides a top-notch clip for her Bad Parent Hall of Fame highlight reel. At the Francis family dinner she childishly responds to Sally’s refusal to eat anything by stuffing a forkful of sweet potatoes in her face. It seems that the divorce and her new relationship with Henry have simply brought out Betty’s cruelty and selfishness even more. She treats Sally like more like they’re sisters than mother-daughter (and sometimes like Betty is the younger sister), basically ignores Bobby, and keeps the baby away from Don either as some kind of power trip or because it legitimately did not occur to her that Don might want to see him.
It must be hard rushing into a new relationship the way Betty and Henry have (with the added pressure of the divorce and the fact that there are already three children who need care and attention), but, even this early, it is clear the cracks are forming. Henry’s mother has no problems saying horrible thing about her new daughter-in-law and Henry seems to have started internalizing that. He spends most of the episode trying to hook up with Betty, like he’s trying to remind himself of what enchanted him about her to begin with. And whatever Betty thought would be different with Henry doesn’t seem to have quite materialized for her yet.
Don’s zinger to Henry (“believe me, everyone thinks this is temporary”) probably hit a little too close to home, but Don’s personal life isn’t in much better shape. His apartment is impersonal and a little old-fashioned, especially compared to the vibrant office he now works in. Mad Men is all about subverting expectations, but it didn’t take a great mind to predict that Don Draper: Single Man might not be the 1960s Entourage that some viewers wanted it to be. In an interview, Matt Weiner pointed out that, now that he’s once-again available, women would enter relationships with him with a different set of expectations. When he was married, there was clearly no future and therefore no need for extended courting; but now that Don is a bachelor the rules are different. In order to get what he wants – guilt-filled S&M sex without consequences – he will have to literally pay for it (getting slapped repeatedly by a hooker and then paying Peggy $300 for bail: most depressing Thanksgiving ever?).
Bethany seemed to really enjoy their date and sees Don as someone she could potentially keep seeing, but Don is not interested in all of that. Why doesn’t Don hook up with her? It seems like Don’s old tricks may not work on the slightly more liberated women of 1964, or at least in a context where he needs to make a real connection with another human. It is not unlike the newspaper situation (or the bikini situation): Don wants sex but he is unwilling to surrender his mysterious distance and actually open himself up to other people. Conditions have changed and Don is going to have to reconfigure his values if he wants to thrive.
So, in the end, he puts on a big public show of throwing out the Jantzen people after giving them a pitch that is very obviously not what they asked for. Don can’t afford to be the people making bikinis and refusing to do what it takes to sell them. So he schedules another interview and gives that reporter a carefully crafted, slightly embellished narrative: that of the creative genius who escaped his stifling Madison Avenue cage and struck out on his own. It’s a subtler version of the speech he gave to Peggy in “Shut the Door, Have a Seat” – something changed and the old ways of doing things aren’t satisfying anymore.
In many ways “Public Relations” is season three condensed down to an hour. Don realizes that he will need to be more open and different if he wants to build something. “Public Relations” ends with the hopeful promise of Don constructing a more successful and satisfying professional life – but he’s still a long ways away from restructuring the charred wreckage of his personal life. The same for Betty, whose trade of Don for Henry doesn’t seem to have made her any happier or satisfied. But pour one out for Sally Draper, not even a half-hearted present from her new grandmother can make up for a family holiday that is somehow even emptier and sadder than previous ones. Self-loathing, lying, alienation, and delusion: Mad Men’s back everyone!
Jonah’s Score: 75
TUIW Grade: B+
Michael
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