Source: National Post
Date: August 12, 2009
By: Chris Lackner

A time portal exists just north of downtown L.A on an unassuming floor in a non-descript studio building. One minute you’re standing outside in the Californian sun, the next you’re standing in the office of 1960s New York ad agency Sterling Cooper.

That ’60s world is honed down to every single detail. The antique ashtrays on every desk are half full, as if the finely dressed men and their “girls” just locked the doors for the day. Half-written documents in the typewriters bare company letterhead and are dated to the time. Rotary phones and old family photos adorn the desks, and dated memos and receipts line the cubicle walls. Every window in the office also reveals an artificial New York skyline that feels so real you contemplate a stroll down Madison Avenue, or maybe taking in a Yankees game to see the legendary Yogi Berra and Roger Maris.

You don’t see an bras or lacy underwear discarded in any of the men’s offices, but most are highly skilled at hiding the evidence of their sexual escapades — as any Mad Men viewer will attest.

Creative director Don Draper’s office bears even greater attention to detail. A March 1963 note hangs on the wall from Canada Dry thanking the ad man for his “great work and attention.” On another wall stands a marketing board with different Campbells soup slogans: Can Do, The American Can Do Can, The All American Can Do Can. Another corner of the office proudly displays framed American advertising guild awards from ’57, ’58 and ’59.

The cast of the show are expected to leave their 21st century gadgets and mindsets behind when they come to this set; when they are here, they must feel like they really do work for Sterling Cooper. They really are Mad Men.

And their mysterious, secretive Mad Hatter is Don Draper, played by the Golden Globe-winner Jon Hamm. A notorious womanizer who stole his identity from a dead soldier in the Korean war, Draper is both the show’s hero and anti-hero. The audience roots for him even if it doesn’t always understand the motivations behind his actions, or even agree with them.

Given his character’s track record, Hamm isn’t sure why so many women love Don.

“He makes it hard to love him, or at least stay in love with him because he makes so many curious decisions,” Hamm said in interview during a break from filming on set. “I don’t know, I think there’s something that at least our culture has moved away from in the sense of masculinity that Don Draper has brought back: this sort of brooding, mysterious intensity. I think a lot of people find that mysterious, very masculine sense of self sexy in a lot of ways.”

The series’ Season 2 finale was set in 1962 and saw Draper fending off a business coup, recovering from a mental breakdown and attempting to reconcile with his pregnant wife Betty after a period of reckless extramarital affairs. Meanwhile, Sterling Cooper faced a potential merger with a British ad agency, and America itself was dealing with the fallout of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As the drama unfolds in Season 3, the series has shifted ahead to 1963 to show the fallout of the agency’s merger crisis, Don and Betty coping with a young baby, and the other main characters engrossed in their ongoing personal battles.

Can Don reform his cheating ways and make his marriage work?

“Does he fundamentally change?,” contemplates Hamm, his hair slicked back and draped in period-appropriate grey suit and thin tie. “I think he tries to do what he thinks and what society thinks and what the expectations are of being a good father, a good husband, a good boss, or a good employee. I think he tries to change, and I think that very often he backslides to his actual way of being in the world. That continues this season. He is trying to be a better person, trying to be a better husband, trying to be a better father, trying to be a better man. And maybe he’s not cut out for that.”

As the series moves into the ’60s, the advertising gods on Madison Avenue — including the savvy Draper — must wrestle with massive generational changes, a new counter-culture and a rapidly shifting social and political order.

Their key challenge for the Mad Men will be determining how to tap into the new youth culture, Hamm says.

“Don is very much set up as a bridge between the old Eisenhower era, World War II crowd and the young kids who are coming up who will be the Vietnam era kids and the counter culture, Baby Boomer generation. He’s very much right in the middle of those two worlds… So I think he’s trying to find that middle ground, trying to find where he fits in the hierarchy, with varying degrees of success.”

In other words, the self-made man and ad guru may, for once, not have all the answers.

Meanwhile, other Mad Men are facing their own challenges. Roger Sterling “pays the consequences this season” for leaving his wife for a young secretary, which put him in the financial position of having to give up control of the company his father founded, says actor John Slattery.

“He’s not satisfied; none of these people are satisfied,” Slattery says of the show’s characters. “They’re all looking for satisfaction one way or the other and none of them are getting it. That’s what is so appealing about the show, these people — they are just as dissatisfied as everyone…. Roger is afraid of what everyone else is afraid of — being alone, being not in love with someone, not wanting to die.”

Meanwhile, the machiavellian Pete Campbell continues to wrestle with his own insecurities and bottomless ambition, as well as his love/hate relationship with Don. In a surprise moment in the second season finale, Pete warns Don of an internal power play against him.

But Vincent Kartheiser, who plays Pete, wasn’t shocked at the move; he believes Pete is a “survivalist” and chose Don because he thought he would win.

“I think he loves him, and I use that in a very loose term,” says the hyper-energetic Kartheiser. “I think men and egos — it’s a weird thing for men, especially in the workplace. With friends and enemies and higher ups, there’s always this level of love-hate, jealousy and competition, but I think at the end of the day, he loves him and respects him and just wants his approval.

“I think he sees Don Draper as someone who is self-made. He watches everyone else and how they react to Don and I think he wishes he was treated like that. So he aspires to be Don, but in his heart of hearts he knows he can’t be. So for that reason, he hates Don. But he hates Don out of jealousy.”

As the show moves into the more familiar era of the ’60s, Hamm says the challenge for series showrunner Matt Weiner is to depict events happening — such as Kennedy’s assassination and the British Invasion — from a different perspective than audiences have seen before.

“Roger Sterling doesn’t give a sh– about the Beatles — they’re a bunch of idiots to him, they do not resonate for him,” Hamm explains. “Don probably will realize that the Beatles are a significant thing and then will have to wrestle with how they impact his world. Pete, Paul and Harry and Peggy — they’re going to have their minds blown. Bob Dylan is going to be a huge thing to them and it will mean less to people that are older. So I think that’s Matt’s first job — is to stay true to these characters and how they behave.”

The second season saw Don’s coughing fits increase and Roger come to grips with his mid-life heart attacks, and viewers can expect the ad men’s lifestyle to increasingly be put under the microscope.

“The sense of Don’s health changing for the worse is a very real concern for the show and for this person,” Hamm says. “These guys live hard and they have to deal with the ramifications of that lifestyle… It was a badge of honour to be able to go out all night and show up the next day, ready to go, shaved and looking good. But some people… couldn’t do it and it cost them — professionally, physically, mentally and everything else.”

Don also continues to deal with the the biggest question of his life — whether he made a false pitch to himself when he chose Betty to be his wife.

“Don kind of bought his own bill of goods when he got involved with Betty,” Hamm says. “She is the perfect wife: she’s beautiful, she’s got the whole package, they’ve had children together, and they are sort of this model couple. Somebody in Don’s place especially should know that the packaging sometimes hides the flaws, and I think that’s what the last five years of their life has been — him realizing that.

“And then realizing, does he want to put the time in, does he want to put the work in, does he wants to put the effort into maintaining that?… that is a question that will begin to be answered this season — do you really want to do this work? It’s not easy.”

Despite its modest ratings — the average episode drew in 1.8 million U.S. viewers last season — the show has become a cultural juggernaut, inspiring modern fashion such as Banana Republic’s new Mad Men line, and garnering 16 Emmy nods for Season 2. Everyone seems to have their own theory as to what Mad Men is about and why it connects with people, but Katheiser may sum it up best.

“For me, it’s about a man who has this identity that he’s trying to come to terms with — it’s the human condition — the idea of gaining everything in the world and still not knowing yourself,” Katheiser says. “There’s no bigger failure than success. And in some ways, that’s Don Draper. Everyone wants to be him. All the girls want to sleep with him. He’s a partner. He has stacks of cash. He has a perfect wife, or seemingly perfect wife. He has great kids. It’s not enough. He can’t find himself. He can’t understand attachment to the world. It’s the true human drama. It’s the fact that we all fall asleep alone at night, every night.”