In the first episode of Mad Men, Don Draper lies back on his sofa staring up at the ceiling. He watches, as a fly scuttles around inside a lighting panel, trapped with no means of escape.
The series has lived on its subtlety - the weight it can hide or reveal in the faces and bodies of its performers. While other shows have become bloated with ever increasing cast lists, Mad Men has stuck by a core cast of truly incredible performers.
I recently read an article crediting a ‘certain dragon-filled show’ with the finest female characters on TV - I care to disagree. Mad Men is built upon a backbone of outstanding female performers. If you need convincing, re-watch this week’s episode. Peggy Olson is one of the most intricately developed female characters on television and Christina Hendricks’ Joan Harris and January Jones’ Betty Francis are barely a step behind. They are characters of depth. They are never used as mere props in compulsory sex scenes, whose only presence, it would seem, is to placate a certain portion of their weekly audience.
If the spine of the show is Peggy, Joan and Betty then its heart is Donald Draper. The most interesting male character television has ever seen. Until season six, enormous parts of Don's character and backstory were black holes and yet we couldn’t take our eyes off the screen. It might sound unusual to talk about the slow unpeeling of a character’s layers as a unique element, but sadly, in mainstream film and television, it is. To watch Jon Hamm perform is to behold a jewel of a forgotten age - an age of subtlety, in which the power of a scene didn’t lie in its bellowing score or needless camera moves, but in the human face.
No television series has ever matched art cinema’s ability to use the power of time and memory, until now. No other series has realised its importance or used it so effectively. Every art form has its defining element , that which makes it unique, and for cinema it is time. Tarkovsky defined it best “...a shot is, (it’s) the fixing of reality, fixing of time’s essence. It is a way of preserving time which, in theory, gives us the possibility of moving forward and backwards freely, for all eternity. No other art form is able to fix time as cinema does. Therefore, what is cinema? It’s a mosaic made of time.”
Time, memory and a character’s backstory have never been so important to a television series and yet, Donald Draper is a character we may never fully know. We should be grateful that is the case, for Mad Men has brought subtlety and enigma back to our screens.
The first half of the final season ended with a surreal dance routine and a trademark Mad Men motif; “The best things in life are free”. Throughout its seven seasons, motifs have defined its big moments and emotions. The fly trapped in a lighting panel may not strike you as a subtle visual metaphor. However, upon remembering its placement in the context of the series (season one, episode one), it grows in strength. It is powerful and arresting even before we realise how representative it is of Don’s own life. Like the fly, one decision will come to define an entire existence. Motifs of this kind have encapsulated feelings and hinted at what is to come. Occasionally, however, like the fly in the light panel, they have encapsulated the themes of the series as a whole.
The Carousel pitch, delivered by Don in the midst of his fracturing marriage and the heart-breaking rejection of his brother and his past life, is perhaps the greatest single illustration of the show’s power. It put a lump in our throats when we first saw it at the end of season one, but watching it back now, with the weight of what follows, it might just be defining moment of Mad Men. The Carousel speaks to more than the incredible subtleties of the characters and their lives. It speaks to its own place in history, to a greater human feeling that no other series has captured. As Don so elegantly puts it; “a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.” Nostalgia.
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