The gang down at Sterling Cooper got off to an impressive start in the premier of their 3rd season (AMC Sundays at 10:00). After season 2 got off to, in my opinion, a slow start, no time was wasted getting right into the tempest of the personal and professional lives of the crew at the agency.
Things got off on a bizarre note as Don Draper is warming some milk in the kitchen and falls into a dream/hallucination sequence involving the earliest days of his life. As strange as it was, it did squeeze a few drops of insight into the whole Don Draper/Dick Whittman sub-plot. Nothing earth-shattering was revealed, but you can tell that we’re being set up for more twists in this direction later. After Don snaps out of it and delivers the warm milk to a pregnant Betty Draper, all seems right with their marital woes in the previous season, or so we think.
Back at Sterling Cooper, it is anything but business as usual as the whole office is trying to adjust to life after the merger with Putnam Powell & Lowe. Many of the ad men are fearing for their jobs as the dust begins to settle. Burt Peterson, the accounts manager (who I’ve honestly can’t remember being in any other episode) is fired. No loss there, but it sets up what’s going to be probably one of the best intra-office pissing matches between Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove, who are both made co-accounts managers. This move by the writers had me licking my chops in anticipation of the infighting to come, even before Pete Campell threw his obligatory tantrum upon hearing that he has to share his glory. When Pete whines to his wife Trudy, “Why can’t I get anything good all at once?”, it’s just another great moment that makes you want to reach through the screen and slap him. In addition to this bit of office drama, there are so many other potential sources of strife caused by the merger as a whole and the small cultural difference between the Americans and Brits from PP&L, that even without the addition of the characters’ personal stories, you can tell things are going to heat up nicely.
The real meat of this episode happens when Don and Sal take off to Baltimore for a meeting with London Fog. After a classic wooing by Don of the client, he and Don are out on the town with a couple of stewardesses and a pilot from their flight down. Although what happens between Don and the stewardess is not surprising, what happens between Sal and a bellboy in the hotel certainly is. We’re led to believe that the secret of Sal’s small step out of the closet is safe with Don, but like most plot lines in Mad Men, you can tell it will come rushing back later on.
To say that Mad Men picked up where it left off would be an understatement. They definitely hit the ground running after the hiatus and the storyline is just jammed packed with some great story threads and even better, the potential for even greater ones. The first hour was not nearly enough to tackle all the drama leftover from last season. We heard nothing from Duck Phillips since Draper punk’ed him in the season finale and although Peggy makes an appearance, there seems to be no fallout from her talk with Pete Campbell. With this season brimming with drama, I hope the writers haven’t bitten off more they can chew.
Of course no Mad Men review would be complete without mentioning the incredible job done with the re-creation of the period. The thing that got me hooked originally was how each episode brought me right into the early 1960′s. All of the good stuff from the typewriters and phones with bells, to the up-dos and thigh-highs, to the slick hair and grey suits is still there. This first episode really knocked it out of the park as far as not only throwing some great drama at us but also whetting our appetite for what’s to come this fall. You know where I’ll be Sunday’s at 10.
My favorite line (I had to watch it twice to decipher it) was at the end when the young Brit ‘secretary’ whose accent is the only attractive thing about him says to his Brit boss:
“This place is a gynocracy.”
Boss: “I hadn’t noticed.”
That was a great line. The whole dynamic between Joan and Mr. Hooker is going to make for some good television.