Sunday night's unveiling of the fourth season of AMC's period drama "Mad Men" was an exhibit of new beginnings, of shifting roles and power plays on virtually every level of the story.
Director Phil Abraham expertly eased us back into the '60s-era cauldron of melancholy and simmering tension with deceptively gentle strokes at the onset, building to a captivating plot pace that waited until the third act to truly take off. Rather than picking up events from the moment season three leaves off, what we find instead is a new paradigm, several months along since we last parted ways. There's a new company, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, which has since moved out of the hotel room we last saw them in and into an office building. Under Don Draper's direction the agency, though just getting on its feet, is still on the razor's edge of its field, carrying the esteemed tradition of the Sterling Cooper that was.
To say that roles have shifted in both professional and personal spheres would be an understatement. Former receptionist Peggy Olson is no longer the pensive, self-doubting wallflower we were first introduced to; now a career woman with an office of her own, she even has an assistant/protégé in Joey, which helps occupy her time and give a much-needed spark of girlishness as they moan “John!” and “Marsha!” to each other — a reference to a then-popular routine by Stan Freberg.
With the public relations world entering a new renaissance, Peggy and Pete Campbell hatch a little theatrical scheme - unbeknownst to Don - where two women fight over a ham in a grocery store to help spawn an exciting Thanksgiving ad campaign for the ham company. The gimmick works - but with unfortunate consequence: the fake fight turns into a real one, and both are arrested. The damage is minor, but Peggy's had her first taste of the rogue approach, a sign that we can expect to see rear its head a more in future episodes.
Mr. Draper is, at a glance, the typically slick and polished Don we (think we) know, cool and collected - though edgier than we remember, and rightfully so. It's been months since he's moved out of the home he shared with Betty and their children, and with the creepy Henry Francis in his place, sleeping in his bed and fathering his children, the discontent shows in every corner of his dingy, depressing apartment and increasing workplace irritability. He's fed up with allowing himself to be taken advantage of by paying the mortgage on the house when Betty's agreed to vacate, but doesn't have it in him to throw her things in the street the way the old Don may have.
For as warmly as he embraced the womanizing lifestyle during his marriage, Draper's clearly having a hard time adjusting to single life. An awkward date with a sparky twentysomething girl leaves him dissatisfied, while he finds release through an aggressively physical encounter with a whore. He is adrift, but doing the best he can to keep the train rolling - after all, it's what he does best.
Nevertheless, this isn't the smooth, collected Don Draper we know. At the onset of the episode he gives a bad, dodgy interview, resulting in an unflattering portrait of the elusive man behind the fledgeling ad firm. This in turn leads to the loss of a significant - if not crucial - client, putting Don in the rare professional position of being the man holding the ass end of the stick. Even the lovely Joan's only central appearance in the episode was to tell him "It'll pass," after a fierce rebuking from Cooper and Sterling.
Betty Draper's certainly not in heaven herself, either. While her husband spent Thanksgiving paying a hooker to beat him up, she was busy clinging to her substitute's arm during a failed Thanksgiving dinner with Henry’s family.
Her reflexive cruelty to daughter Sally's dinner table antics didn't go unnoticed among the elders, and the cloud of disapproval wasn't quickly erased from Henry's mind.
One gets the feeling that Betty's drastic actions aren't made in confidence, but are rather the hasty movements of someone brittle and confused, desperate for some return to the veneer of normalcy amidst the mess her life has become. We find ourselves rooting for a reunion when Don waits at the house when returning the children before Betty and Henry return home from a date, and cursing her to hell when she doesn't tell Henry to go upstairs as he'd offered.
Just as we began to dwell on just how badly Don is twisting in the wind without his family, we're taken to the climax of the episode in which a specific client seeking Draper's help. The conservative bathing-suit makers were demanding a wholesome way to sell two-piece bathing suits. Don offers a diehard pitch, which they're firmly opposed to. They want restraint and family values in a bathing suit ad, despite entering an age where sex is all that truly sells. They represent big money, a firm return to good standing for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, but it's in this moment that Don realizes his true grit.
He doesn't need these people, he decides – they need him. Draper kicks them out of his office with all the grace of a bar bouncer, and immediately makes an appointment with a writer at the Wall Street Journal to set up a new interview. It's one among many moments throughout the series where Jon Hamm's acting prowess shines bright enough to carry the entire series alone.
As we close, we're finally witness once again to the Don we remember. Irrepressible, hypnotically persuasive and dashingly confident, he went for the editorial jugular in the lion's own den, explaining with the world's greatest poker face and visionary grace how he abruptly quit his last position and quickly launched the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce company, gleaming with promise of a new tomorrow.
If it were the final scene in the entire series, it could've been enough.
CraveOnline Rating: 9.5 out of 10
