I'd never seen a full episode of Mad Men before. I would catch a few seconds of it here and there when flipping through the channels, and from what I could gather, it's a show about business men in narrow-lapeled, dark flannel suits who drink hard liquor in the office. If there's a story to it beyond that, I have no idea.
There's been a lot of people who have been telling me that I need to follow this show. So I decided to watch the highly anticipated season premire.
It starts out pretty strong, if somewhat confusing. There's some dude boiling milk in a saucepan. Then there's this lady who is either--I can't really tell--in the next room or in a flashback. The lady is either seducing some guy or delivering his baby. She tells him that she is going to cut his d*** off and boil it in hog fat, which is weird in either situation.
There is a midwife who apparently has the just-delivered baby in some kind of pot. She shows the baby to the lady, who now appears to be dying. It isn't quite clear if the baby is alive or dead. Nor is it clear if this is supposed to be a dream sequence or what.
Back to the dude boiling milk in a saucepan. He is being absent-minded and lets the milk boil over. He looks down, and the camera lingers on the image of a saucepan boiling over with foamy milk, like it's a meaningful symbol or something. I don't even want to know.
The midwife gives the baby to some other lady and asks to see her husband. The lady's reaction implies that this is some kind of significant revelation. Or something. The midwife also tells the woman that the mother named the baby "Dick." Ha! Get it? Because the dying mother kept going on about cutting off the (apparent) father's...
Okay, I'm not sure I really get it either. And I never understand what this sequence has to do with the rest of the show.
Later, there are these two dudes on a plane. A stewardess starts hitting on them something fierce. One dude acts surprised that a stewardess would be so desperate as to shamelessly offer herself to a couple of random guys sitting on a plane; the other dude's like, "What? Are you kidding me? This happens all the time."
Then there is some kind of subplot about the Head of Accounting of some business place getting fired, and two other accountant guys get promoted as joint Heads of Accounting in his place. One of the replacement accountant heads is British, and he's all upset that he has to share his promotion with the other accountant. I think we're supposed to hate the British accountant because he's British and (therefore) jealous or something. I know I sure hate him.
That subplot will probably figure big into future episodes, but for now we're back with the two dudes from the plane. One of them ends up with the desperate stewardess in his hotel room, and she's just throwing herself at him as though she knows in the depths of her soul that if she does not have carnal knowledge of this dude she just met on a plane, she will have failed utterly as a woman.
Then we cut to these two dudes making out like they're on Brokeback Mountain and the grizzly bears will eat them if they don't steal Heath Ledger's and Jake Gyllenhall's Oscar nomination. I'm watching this, but what I'm really doing is remembering a simpler, more innocent time of my life, like a half-an-hour ago when I thought it was shocking that basic cable could broadcast a woman repeatedly threatening to cut off some dude's d*** and boil it in hog fat.
In between all this, there's a tertiary subplot about London Fog raincoats, and I learn some titillating information about London Fog. For example, London Fog is only, like, forty years old, but their marketing campaign has convinced every American that London Fog raincoats have existed ever since there was an England. And also, London doesn't actually ever get fog. They only got coal smoke back in Charles Dickens's time, and the legend of England being a foggy isle has branched from that. I have no idea how much of this information I'm learning has any basis in fact.
Back to the story: So the dude who was having an affair with a desperate stewardess goes back home like nothing happened, and it turns out that he has a ten-year-old daughter, and some lady who I guess is his wife. From what I have been gathering over the course of this episode, this guy seems to be the hero of the show, but I have no idea what his name is.
Our Hero is a little angry at his daughter because she broke one of his pieces of luggage. The daughter explains that she only broke her daddy's luggage because she didn't want him to go on trips. Our Hero explains to the daughter that no matter how many trips he takes, he will always come back home. He sound like every skeezy married guy I've ever met who says, "It doesn't matter how you get your appetite, so long as you come home for dinner." Heh-heh. Nudge, nudge. Except that this guy is saying it to his daughter.
The episode ends with the daughter finding the desperate stewardess's wings mixed in with the contents of Our Hero's suitcase. Our Hero then decides to pin the desperate stewardess's wings to his daughter's pajamas.
Roll credits!
I'm probably missing a lot of nuance that would go in to appreciating this show, but I just don't think I'm going to expend the effort to become a fan. All the same, thanks to everyone who told me I ought to give Mad Men a shot!
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