The sixth season of Mad Men aired on Sunday to rather a mixed response from critics; Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress probably put it most succinctly when she noted that: ‘The risk for Mad Men is that nothing can be new for Don anymore, while still needing to find ways to make him new for us.’ The lustre of the media and critical darling, which had racked up a stack of awards and accolades, appears to be fading, and some people are disappointed now that the bloom has come off the rose.
This is a series in which nothing in particular seems to happen, even though we’ve watched eight years pass in the lives of the characters, yet not enough metaanalysis is offered to still keep the drama compelling. While some attempt is made at marking landmarks and waypoints (divorces, marriages, affairs, children), Mad Men ultimately turns into a bleary whirl, with affair after affair, alcohol-sodden event after alcohol-sodden event, running into each other, one after the next.
The entire framing of Mad Men revolves around Donald Draper, who started out as an intriguing character: a man with a complex history and past, a man who was restless and unsatisfied with his wife, a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And he’s been held suspended there over the course of eight years and five seasons, waiting for something to give. The fact that nothing has occurred has turned the series fundamentally uninteresting; this is not an artfully crafted, graceful, fascinating exploration of television at its finest, but a hole dug in one episode, then filled again and dug out the next.
It’s not that Mad Men is quiet and slow—Six Feet Under shared these traits as well, with a narrative that was often so subtle, you wondered if anything was happening at all. Slowness is not necessarily a problem when it amounts to incremental change and complex arcs occurring over the course of the seasons, where the characters actually develop, mature, and shift in some way to reveal new parts of themselves and show that they are growing with the landscape.
It would help, of course, if the characters on Mad Men were more engaging and more likable, but even that isn’t required. The issue is that almost none of them are going anywhere, and watching them spin their wheels over the course of multiple seasons grows tiring. The first episode of the sixth season certainly didn’t suggest that the series is destined for radical changes and an adventure for the characters, a chance to see them developing new lives.
Intellectually and emotionally, the women of Mad Men are perhaps the most interesting, and the feminist media that adores the show can’t seem to get enough of talking about them, but how much do they really represent for feminist media? Joan is a silent partner, forced to sell herself to get into that position, in an acute reminder of what she’s had to do so far to get where she is, while Betty’s trapped in yet another iteration of the suburbs, waiting for some kind of meaning to appear in her life, and no, black hair won’t magically solve her problems. Meanwhile, Peggy tries being one of the boys on for size to see if that’ll work for her, wondering if aggressively driving her staff is the way ahead.
In fact, the only woman in the episode with any kind of progressive ideas was Sandy, Sally Draper’s naïve friend who decides to make a break for it and run off to New York, then California in search of a better future. She’s the one who tells Betty she looks fine as she is when Betty makes a comment about wanting to lose weight, and the one who points out that society is shifting and changing. Telling that it’s a teen girl who sends these messages, and that we’re supposed to see her as tragically uninformed about the world around her, thus undermining the validity of the very points she’s making.
After all, she’s just a clueless teen who’d be foolish enough to take off for New York City in the dead of winter, so clearly she’s not a very trustworthy source. Her ideas, and what she believes about the world, are rooted in inexperience and a lack of understanding, and thus should be deemed immediately suspect. Notable indeed that the women struggling to break out of themselves in the show are the mature adults, and the one who seems to have a pretty good, if idealistic, handle on things is the silly teenager.
The name of this episode (‘The Doorway’) as well as Roger’s ramblings about how the doors of opportunity are really just doors that lead down more mazes and corridors until you realise that’s all life is, a collection of more doors and windows and gates and things to be gone through, rather than passages to new worlds, could be a reference to the show itself. Between Roger’s realisation that the world never really presents a clear path and Don’s fixation on death, this was an episode all about going nowhere when you think you’re going somewhere until the day you stop and realise it’s too late.
A ‘jumping-off point’ indeed.
Mad Men appears to have jumped and left the shell of itself behind, but its fate remains uncertain. Has it waded off into the waters, there to sink to the bottom and never emerge? Or is it going to emerge refreshed and renewed, with some kind of coherency, character development, and drive? It would be dramatic and unexpected if it did, since the show has rather backed itself into a corner, and it may have difficulty when it comes to getting out again.