The following article contains spoilers for AMC’s Mad Men
Last Sunday, Mad Men triumphantly returned to AMC for its sixth season, to an audience of 3.4 million. While down slightly from the fifth season premiere, which boasted an audience of 3.5 million, fans of the show were not left disappointed. Once again, we find our protagonist moving through his borrowed life; sometimes with a fleeting air of grace and distinction, Don Draper being Don Draper at his finest, and sometimes with far less than that; after all this time, we watch him continue to question the value of his own life, and life in general, as he suffers through it.
In the eagerly awaited premiere, entitled “The Doorway”, we see Don Draper in a variety of situations; from (once again) seeming tortured by his own wife’s personality in a Hawaiian paradise, to being berated by Pete for his work/nap habits at the office, to vomiting all over the floor at a funeral. But no matter what, in the boardroom Don is Don: The usual King of arrogance and articulation. The man who invented love to sell pantyhose. But when asked to pose for a promotional photograph, we watch as Don struggles painfully with the simplest command: Just be yourself.
It’s a simple line that could define the entire series. Who is Don Draper? In the opening of Season 6, the writers of Mad Men have pulled back the curtain to reveal a man still disillusioned and flailing, while the world he’s carefully crafted around himself soldiers on. Skillfully, the writers of Mad Men forecast what’s to come in a few specific ways.
The Campaign of the Week: Hired to create an ad for the resort hotel owners who paid for the aforementioned Hawaiian getaway, the results were hardly on par with what Don had up his sleeve for Kodak (Remember that? The days when Don was on point.). Picture an empty suit of clothing, lying abandoned on a beach, while its owner is…where? Dead? Even Don’s slogan, “The Jumping-Off Point”, meant to signify a beginning of transcendence, and an escape from the stagnant life he himself wishes he could literally escape, invoked suicidal imagery. But the metaphor, like so many of Don’s campaigns, is simple and sharp: Don Draper wants nothing more than to “jump-off” and leave the building, while his empty suit of clothes (a metaphor for the image he has created of himself) remains. He wants to find himself, still, and is terrified there’s nothing to find. No light at the end of the tunnel. No reason for any of it at all.
Whether or not the writers intended to foreshadow actual death with the ad remains to be seen, but the message is obvious: this season promises to be profound, complex, and highly symbolic, with Don’s existentialism not only forefront in his own mind, but mercilessly reflected back at us in the writing and dialogue of everyone around him. Whether it’s Roger’s own search for meaning (and subsequent despair when he discovers that his history has created a “monster” even his own family can’t see past), the morbid “suicide” ad, or the enjoyable contrast between two men Don encounters at this crossroads:
The Soldier. Don’s past has always haunted him, but rarely so much as it did in this episode, where he meets and exchanges dialogue with a soldier — Pfc. Dinkins on leave from Vietnam — and seems affected by his sense of purpose and action. Going so far as to give his bride away, it’s clear to the viewer that Don is affected by his simplicity and singuilarity of purpose. Separately, we can also see how the writers, and life, have set Don up for another fall. By emotionally investing in this man, and vicariously living through his potential, if only for a moment, Don will face (once again) the tragedy of that miscalculation. As it was when his brother committed suicide, or when he pulled Lane off the back of his office door, Don will take those scars as his own when he receives the (inevitable) news that this man died in combat. (Historical Note: Real-life Pfc. Dinkins died in Vietnam in February of 1969) In the life of Don Draper, this is how it goes.
The Doctor With The Meaningful Existence. In “The Doorway” we see Don smitten with the integrity and realism of the life of Dr. Arnold Rosen, haunted by his heroism and seemingly bottomless pit of empathy and purpose. As Roger despairs over ever changing his image and finding real meaning in his life, doors behind more doors, we see that Don, too, is searching for meaning. Well, perhaps not searching for it as much as he is lamenting its existence in the lives of other people. And we also see the deep contrast in the way both men, Don and Dr. Rosen, attempt to obtain it. Profundity and purpose in life haunts Don like a near-death experience he had, and never had; like the sound of the ocean crashing in his head while he looks out the window of his high-rise office; like Pfc. Dinkins’ Zippo lighter becoming that thing he can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how hard he tries. Like Dick Whitman, and the real Donald Draper.
Perhaps the most telling (and talked about) scene of the two-hour long episode occurs at the end, when the curtain behind the curtain — or, as Roger would say, the door behind the door — is opened to reveal that Don is sleeping with the doctor’s wife. Who, by the way, recommended the man read Dante’s Inferno (which is, in short, a journey to the center of hell) on his island vacation, as though she actually knew him…we’ll see if she does. But for Don it’s as if escaping to an island paradise, or jumping out of your clothes to fly to unknown lands where life theoretically means something, or snatching and possessing a piece of that reality, can magically transport him into the Doctor’s meaningful and purpose-driven life.
But what Don doesn’t see, and never has, is the thing that keeps him from escaping himself: himself. That his patterns of behavior, the choices he’s made for his life in the face of so much philosophizing, death, and potential for change, will always make him feel like fulfillment is a myth that he himself invented…to sell nylons.
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