Mad Men: Season 4

Mad Men has always been a great show, but it wasn't until Season 4 that it made the leap - for me - into the "all time great TV drama" discussion. This set of thirteen episodes was easily one of the all time greatest seasons of television I've ever seen. The show has many, many strengths, but I feel like it's strongest element is its characters. Yes, it nails the 1960s look and feel (as best as I can tell), and it's capable of exploring diverse themes about identity, change, and turmoil. But the characters themselves stand as the most compelling part of the show, to the point where even a C-plot in a relatively weak episode featuring two tertiary characters is capable of sucking in all of your attention and leaving you unable - or at least unwilling - to stop watching. That's good TV. For the hell of it, and perhaps for the sake of offering a crash course on the subject, let me now spend some time describing the main characters and their various conflicts. If you haven't seen the first four seasons yet, don't think of these as spoilers; think of them as a way to get up to speed for the upcoming Season 5 premiere!

Don Draper is the show's main character, and is the advertising industry's biggest star. He grew up as "Dick Whitman," the unwanted son of a prostitute in coal-mining country, running away to serve in Korea as soon as the opportunity presented itself. There he served under a man named Donald Draper, and when said officer was killed in action, Dick manipulated the situation into a case of mistaken identity and returned to the States under the identity of "Don Draper." As Don, he married a model, got an advertising job at Sterling Cooper, raised a family, and became the advertising star he is today. But Don has always been haunted by his own shameful origins as well as his stolen identity. He's also prone to drunkenness, extramarital affairs, and, in his darkest moments, taking advantage of his subordinates at the workplace. At his core, though, Don seems to be an ethical man who loves his children, the advertising game, and the reputation he has built up. His web of inner conflict is one of the series' biggest open-ended sources of drama, and where his emotional roller coaster will take him over the next three seasons is anybody's guess.

Roger Sterling is a fun-loving smart-talking womanizer. He is a co-worker of Don's, and is probably his best friend. Roger inherited his status as a partner at Sterling Cooper (and later Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) after the death of his father, an original co-founder of the company. As such, he's always been a wealthy man and hasn't ever actually had to work for anything in his life, aside perhaps from his stint as a sailor in World War II. His job is more or less to schmooze with the bigwigs at the companies SCDP advertises for. Nonetheless, he still manages to lose a huge tobacco account, because as one fellow partner says, "[he] never took you seriously because you never took yourself seriously." Roger is ultimately a pretty easy guy to root for, though, to the point where most viewers' sympathy for him allows them to root for his extra-martial affair with office manager Joan, whose husband is serving overseas in Vietnam.

Joan Harris, as I just mentioned, is the office manager at SCDP. She's an attractive woman with an extremely curvy figure that she knows how to use to get what she wants, for the most part. But Joan isn't just a simple femme fatale, for here in the 1960s there are suddenly young women doing advertising work, and Joan's status as the alpha female among the secretaries is blown wide open by such career-oriented girls. Moreover, as the series has progressed, Joan has aged some five years or so, and gotten married, and now all of the immature twenty-somethings in the office treat her like a mother figure. Her marriage has always been strained and now her husband is in Vietnam. She's now pregnant with Roger Sterling's baby, pretending it's her husband's, and her salary and reputation at work have more or less plateaued. Joan is a woman whose life is in turmoil, one who has suddenly grown "old" overnight and is filled with all sorts of doubts and questions about her family and career.

Peggy Olson started out as Don's new secretary in the pilot episode, but it quickly became apparent that she had a knack for advertising, and specifically for coming up with slogans and marketing campaigns for women's products. Peggy has had to endure all kinds of discrimination and sexual harassment - back before such subjects were even concerns at any workplace - fighting her way to make it an a male-dominated industry. She works longer hours than most of her colleagues, for less pay, and ultimately winds up largely unthanked and unrecognized in spite of all the sacrifices she's made in her personal life. Everyone falsely assumes she only got her non-secretarial job in the first place by performing sexual favors for Don. Peggy's social life also suffers due to her occupation, as several of her young and counter-cultural artist friends mock her for working for "the man," selling cigarettes and breakfast cereals in the name of the almighty dollar. In spite of all of this, Peggy fights on to make her way in the world. She is arguably the second-most important character on the show, behind Don.

Pete Campbell is an up-and-comer in the agency, and as the series begins, he's seen as one of the ferocious young guys nipping at the heels of the established professionals like Don. Pete is initially a pretty immature guy both in the office and at home, at one point even going behind Don's back to expose  the aforementioned Dick Whitman secret. Pete would rather surpass Don by getting him fired or punished than by putting in an honest decade's work. As the series goes on, however, Pete matures into a respectable man who not only does great work for the company, but bites the bullet when told to in order to cover up for mistakes made by Don and Roger. This character growth is more than welcome, as Pete goes from being a detestable blackmailing weasel to more of a meek but respectable mouse. He even begins to stand up for himself and his family's best interests toward the end of Season 4, leading me to expect great things from him going forward.

Betty Francis is Don's ex-wife, and in my opinion is the only main character the show could have handled better. Betty sucks. She's terrible. She's petulant and whiney and a terrible mother. The way she treats her children borders on abuse at times, and she's a ripe asshole to her black nanny, her ex-husband, and her daughter's friend, among many others, simply because that's who she is. It's difficult to sympathize with her, then, even when Don goes off and has multiple lengthy affairs with other women. This shouldn't be the case. We should be able to find something that excuses Betty's behavior, or at least explains it beyond the idea that she had a troubled childhood herself. After all, her utter shittiness makes us root for Don even when Don has been a pretty shitty father and husband. We shouldn't be giving Don free passes just because his ex-wife is so, so terrible.

Lane Pryce is an older gentleman from England who comes overseas to oversee Sterling Cooper when Sterling Cooper is bought by a British company. He's initially seen as stiff, sour, and humorless, much like I imagine any British stereotype would be. After co-founding SCDP, though, Lane begins to open up a bit more and his own troubles - a strained intercontinental marriage, a desire to see his young son more often, an overbearing father - shine through the bland exterior. It becomes apparent that Lane is the guy working his ass off to keep the new company afloat while Don's drinking and Roger's carelessness often get in the way of new business opportunities.

Sally Draper is Don and Betty's troubled daughter. Sally is deeply disturbed when her grandfather dies, and then even more so once her parents get divorced. Her relationship with her mother is tumultuous, and Sally often acts out and seeks her father. She rebels and comes of age in various ways - cutting her hair off, running away from school to her father's office, carrying on a relationship with a boy her mother hates, masturbating at a slumber party - all of which get her in trouble with Betty. It doesn't take a pessimist to wonder how dark things will get for Sally as she enters her teen years in the late 1960s. Something tells me she'll make it out to San Francisco before the series is done.

A number of other compelling characters exist. There's Ken Cosgrove, Pete's big rival. There's Megan, the secretary Don proposes to at the end of Season 4. There's Henry Francis, Betty's new husband. There's Bert Cooper, an original co-founder of Sterling Cooper, an eccentric man who finds himself increasingly lost and useless in his old age. There's Harry Crane, the overweight semi-talented guy who decided to start up a television department at the advertising agency, something that will probably end up making him very wealthy by the end of the series. And there are plenty of notable background characters among the secretaries, copywriters, spouses and love interests, and people from the neighborhood. Great characters, great writing, great show. Here's looking forward to March 25th.