The Future of Mad Men?

NOTE: This post contains spoilers from Season 3 of Mad Men so if you're like DME and have not seem Season 3, stop reading. But with Mad Men recently ending, I'm not going to wait for all blog authors to finsih watching Mad Men before discussing it with out loyal readers.

One to start off, Betty Draper was awful on SNL a few nights ago. It's a shame because January Jones is so fucking hot, but it makes me wonder how she can get through a 40 minute script if she can't get through a seven minute sketch...

Anyway, the future of Mad Men. Season One of the show was amazing. It was amazing because 1) The dichotomy and depth of Donald Draper 2) How these characters interect with each other and the times and 3) Fan-fucking-tastic writing. But after watching Season Three, I'm not quite sure about how the greatness of one and two will continue.

First, the character of Don Draper. Part of what made Don Draper such a fabuluous character is because of this double life he led. He was a crazy womanizer and would cheat constantly on his wife, yet come home and try to be the loving family man. But he never quite mastered his family man life (see him not coming home after running out to get his kids birthday cake in Season One). But now that Betty has left him (and hopefully for good because this on again off again relationship would just get annoying), who cares if he womanizes? You watched how he interacted before with girls like Racheal Menken and Bobby Barrett and you were disgusted yet intregued with this character. You couldn't stop watching because you were compelled by this double life this man was leading. And the mystery of him being Walt Whitman also enetred into this dichotomy. But after Season Three, none of that seems to matter. After Season One, the Speilberg-esque mystery of Walt Whitman didn't matter anymore. The episode in which he told Betty eveything was fantasitc because she was the one person who he was keeping this secret from. But where can the show go from there? There's no mystery, no suspense, no nothing anymore. And now that Betty is gone, there's no mystery or suspense or depth to Don Draper anymore. All the characterics that made you hooked to the character of Don Draper through Seasons 1-3 won't be there in the future.

In fact, from my perspective, I've already started to not care what Don does. I should be pissed that he was sleeping with Sally's teacher, but I just didn't care. The fact that Don had to sign a contract should have been a huge deal. But the second that happened, I was just like "eh:. The show spent the first half of its season being shitty to set up the amazingness of the second half. But all it really did was make me (and I feel others as well) become less interested in the character. And the ENTIRE subplot of Conrad Hilton did nothing. I feel like it's only purpose was to legitimately set up a reason to force Don to sign a contract, and considering how much time was spent with the Hilton account and how little signing the contract feels, all the time the show wasted with the Hilton account seems like wasted, boring time.

Next, the other charcters. It was nice at the very end that all the main charcters from Seasons 1 and 2 will now be the focal point of at least Season 4. The fact that Pete and Peggy share a desk will hopefully bring up some of the tension that we loved in the first two seasons. How Roger interacts with people, and especially Joanie, will now be more prominent- which is a very good thing. But I don't kow where they can go. Things seem to be resolved between all these charcaters. Pete's finally getting his, something that made for nice conflict in Seasons 1 and 2, Roger isn't cheating anymore, and the gang of Pete and Paul and Kenneth aren't going to be there anymore. Now obviously, the change of the 60's is coming so my interest is piqued for what's to come (especiially considering the last time we saw Sal he was at a homosexual park), but I'm not looking forward to how these characters interact with each other.

Lastly, I don't like how the show doesn't develop its sideplots. It never developed the drama between Kenneth and Pete, the one between Peggy and her family, the one Peggy and her lovers (Duck and random dude), really Peggy in general wasn't developed in Season 3, and everything with the Head of TV dude seems dumb. I hope they develop the relationship between Joan and her husband and he'll probably die in Vietnam, but after he raped her, what happened next? Nothing really. Mad Men, especially recently, introduced these really interesting subplots and then does nothing with them (i.e. all of Entourage last season.) So why should I be interested in anything the shows tells me to do anymore? I just think Mad Men isn't doing as good of a job as it did in its first two seasons.

Now I'm still going to watch Season Four of Mad Men, but I'm not looking forwards to it as much as a was looking forward to Seasons Two and Three.