Madmen Season 3 Finale- Let the Sixties Begin

I'm probably the last fan/blogger on the planet to give his take on the season finale of AMC's Mad Men, the episode entitled "Shut The Door. Have A Seat". It takes place less than two weeks before Christmas in 1963, about three weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and about three weeks before a couple of deejays in New York started playing a song called "I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND" by s musical group from the UK that was creating just a little bit of pandemonium in Britain.

One era had ended, and another was about to explode in America. Nothing was to be quite the same ever again for the country. And even more so for the characters of Sterling Cooper Draper.

Don Draper's marriage to Betty was over. After consulting a divorce attorney with her new romantic interest (Henry) Betty decides to head to Reno for a quickie divorce by episode's end. There is a heart wrenching scene where Betty and Don sit down with little Bobby and Sally to tell them that Daddy is moving out of the house. Sally reacts with anger, while Bobby initially blames himself because he lost his father's cufflinks. We have to wonder about Betty's future- does she really think that Henry will marry her after a divorce, something that could sabotage his political career? After all, New York Governor Rockefeller was involved in a similar situation in that same time period, having left his wife and subsequently marrying a younger woman- an incident that was alluded to in the episode but never spelled out to the viewers.

But even more cataclysmic changes were in store. Sterling Cooper Draper's parent company, PPL, was going to sell SCD to a rival. It was Don, tipped off by Conrad Hilton, who set the wheels into motion. Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper, and Don Draper would have no part of being chattel in this sale. They engineer a plot with new ally Lane Pryce to have themselves terminated from their contracts from PPL- with the provision that Pryce become a partner- and they set out to form a new ad company, tentatively called Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (to be referred to in this entry as SCDP for the duration). The four principle partners begin to assemble a team to take with them, all done clandestinely over the weekend, to be accomplished by Monday morning while the office was said to be closed for extensive "carpet cleaning".

SCDP needed the accounts of the weasely Pete Campbell, who was playing sick that particular Friday to arrange a job interview with a rival. But as conniving and oily as Pete is, he is a bit of a visionary, and he can relate to changes in the marketplace and in society much more readily than the older members of SCDP- and the fact that he would bring a dozen influential clients with him made it imperative that he become part of the team.

The not so bright Harry Crane was added to the mix- they needed someone to handle the media department- but only after the elderly Bert Cooper threatened to lock Harry in a closet if he said no.

Don's protoge Peggy Olson was added- but not until she initially turned Don down. Peggy, tired of being Don's punching bag and of watching Don get credit for her work and her ideas needed to hear Don tell her that he values her. After a trip to Peggy's apartment for a second shot of getting her on board, Don tells Peggy that if she turns him down again he would ...."spend the rest of my life trying to hire you".

After hearing that, Peggy signed on.

Lastly, Joan Harris returned as the office manager of the new SCDP- now the office was nothing more than a rented hotel suite, with Harry Crane's art and media department relegated to the bedroom. Joan was the glue that held Sterling Cooper together, the person who always knew what to do and when to do it, who to call and how to weather a crisis. The fact that Joan and Roger still have more than affection for one another probably played into this as well.

You could tell that the "times, they are a changin'" when working in the new "offices" of SCDP when Roger asked Peggy if she could get him some coffee. Peggy never looks up from the project she is working on and says no. All Roger does is shrug his shoulders and go back to work. These people are no longer part of a Madison Avenue royalty- they've become like partisan guerillas, all for one and one for all. They all need each other for numerous reasons, and all are smart enough to know it.

Back at the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper- Ken, Paul and the rest of the old staff come in Monday to find a offices striped of furniture, typewriters, and certain accounts. They at first think the office has been burglarized, but soon start to comment the dots- the brains behind Sterling Cooper have bailed out. All that remains is the second tier braintrust that the leaders of the old team didn't really want or need.

I left this episode wanting more. Was there a more perfect way to end a season, and an era, then what writer/creator Matthew Weiner gave us on Sunday night? Its going to be very interesting to see where the start point of season 4 will be. American pop culture was turned on its ear in 1964- within months the music industry would be all things British. Only a handful of American musical acts made it past the first few years of the British Invasion- The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, the Motown stable. But it wasn't only the music that changed, it was film as well- in 1964 young actors from the UK began having an impact; Michael Caine, Terence Stamp, Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave. Fashion and Carnaby Street became inseparable.

The British Army played "The World Turned Upside Down" when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington's Continental Army (and their French allies) in 1781. In 1964 the Brits returned...and America was turned upside down by this new invasion. And Don Draper and his new crew at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce will likely be at its epicenter.

Here's a link to Jace Lacob's interview with Mad Men's creator Matt Weiner in The Daily Beast.

And for a really insightful column (and viewer comments) about the series click for Alan Sepinwall's take on this episode.

MAD MEN and November 22, 1963; The End of The World ( As We Knew It)

Last night the penultimate episode of AMC's Mad Men aired and answered the question most fans have been asking ourselves for months; how would writer/producer Matt Weiner handle the most significant event of 1963, and of the decade of the 1960's, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, on November 22.

I watched the World Series till its conclusion (about midnight), then fought to stay awake until 2:00 am to watch the 12th episode of Season Three (a replay) in its entirety. I'm glad I did. The show, which is set in the early 1960's, moved into the second half of 1963 for these 13 episodes, and answered the question that each of us who were alive on November 22, 1963 have been asked countless times- where were you the day the Jack Kennedy died?

It was an eventful weekend for the staff of Sterling Cooper and their friends and families. Roger Sterling's daughter Margaret was married on the Saturday after the assassination, November 23, in a total disaster of an affair that resembled a wake rather than a marriage; there was no cake, because for all intents and purposes, life stopped for four days in this country. Broadcast news took another step in becoming what it is now, the eyes and ears of a nation. We were riveted to the TV for the ordeal; the events in Dallas, the non-stop coverage of the aftermath, the murder of Officer JD Tippit in Dallas and the subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, the questions that surrounded Oswald's background and his motives that floated all day the Saturday after Kennedy's shooting, and the nagging fear that this somehow was ordered by the Soviets of perhaps Cuban strong man Fidel Castro.

That was not a crazy irrational thought. I remember that Saturday when I attended religious instructions. The nuns took us to church to pray for President Kennedy, and for the country. One nun told us that the nation was in grave danger- remember, this was just a little more than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the US and USSR went eyeball to eyeball....and then we both blinked.

In this episode we saw Peggy and Duck having a rendezvous in a hotel room when they heard the news; they were having an old fashioned "nooner" when Duck turned on the TV and saw the now famous segment where Walter Cronkite announced that Kennedy had died. At STERLING COOPER phones rang as no one answered, all were huddled around the black and white TV watching WNBC in New York as Bill Ryan, Chet Huntley, and Frank McGee reported what they knew when they knew it.

Don Draper's (Jon Hamm) true identity had been admitted to wife Betty (January Jones) previously, and the for all intents and purposes their married life had been based on a lie, or an illusion built by Don. When Don came home to find Betty and children Bobby and Sally watching the news he asked why the kids were watching TV. In what seemed to be an attempt to keep his children from dealing with a harsh and tragic reality, he tried to change the scenario, and was unsuccessful. The next day he and Betty went to Margaret's wedding, Don again trying to live life in the terms of his reality, without realizing that everything was different, that it was a new game, and the rules were changing. The world was no longer his oyster.

The next day, Sunday, was more brick bat reality. Betty was watching TV that morning as Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald, and wonders aloud what was going on in the world. In their apartment Pete and Trudy Campbell ask the same thing- the world has changed before their eyes, and they seem to sense it.

Betty meets with her politician/ romantic interest on the pretext of needing to take a drive, and then comes home to Don. She tells Don that she doesn't love him anymore, and thinks the marriage is over. In a scene that reminded me of the one in GODFATHER, PART II, where Kay tells Michael that its over, Don counters to Betty that she's upset and doesn't know what she's saying, being dismissive of her as a person and as his partner in life. You get the feeling that Don is either in denial about the situation around him, or that he is going through the motions because its the only thing he can do; he has to go on playing "Don Draper".

The next day, Monday, was a national day of mourning. The country was shut down for all intents and purposes. Don got dressed in suit, tie, and fedora...business as usual. He arrived at STERLING COOPER, an empty office except for Peggy Olson, his protege, typing away to change an ad campaign for a hairspray that had unfortunately included a convertible that eerily resembled the limo in which Kennedy had been shot.

The closing credits went on with Skeeter Davis's version of "Don't Let Him Know Its The End of The World"....and it was the end of the world as we knew it. The time from November 22, 1963 to February 9, 1964 probably saw more change in a shorter period then at anytime in human history; February 9 was the day the Beatles performed on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW in front of 74,000,000 Americans. The BRITISH INVASION had begun. American pop culture, and how it related to American life, how we dressed, talked, what constituted art- it was an out with the old, in with the new. The new year brought us further into the Viet Nam War under new President Lyndon Johnson. But Johnson also gave us the Civil Right Act of 1964, which changed the landscape of domestic life, and politics, forever. In 1964 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev fell as the leader of the Soviet Union....and in sports the Yankee Dynasty, which had dominated baseball since the 1920's, began its decline after the World Series and the rise of the National League, which integrated earlier and more extensively, ruled baseball.

November 22, 1963 was indeed the day the universe changed, probably even more so than after 9/11.

And Don Draper, and the rest of those who inhabit the world of the fictional STERLING COOPER, are about to find that out head on.

A Couple of Notes One thing that stuck out for me about this episode has to do with attention to detail. In the episode that took place on November 22 Don was complaining about how hot the office was. I remember how unusually warm it was in the New York area that day for late autumn, probably 70 degrees or more. And then on the following Monday Bobby reminded Don to dress warmly because it was cold out. And it was a cold day- I remember playing basketball at my next door neighbor's house, and the temps were in the 40's with a blustery wind. You don't forget details like that in something as traumatic as the Kennedy assassination.

Check Alan Sepinwall's blog for more on last night's episode of MAD MEN. Alan is the Star-Ledger's TV critic, and does weekly reviews of the series, always insightful, as are the comments of his readers.