Mad Men: Season 5 - Episode 1 "The Doorway Part I"
Vacation, had to get away
Season 5 - Episode 1
“The Doorway Part 1”
Written by Matthew Weiner
Directed by Scott Hornbacher
Setting: December 1967
“Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
- Dante Alighieri, Inferno (1321)
The opening line of Dante’s literary journey into Hell welcomes us to Season 6 of Mad Men.
Is this representative of Don Draper’s descent into the inferno?
Sure...
Yeah, I guess... but this man has been battling demons for five seasons. Most of the eternal tortures of Hell that Dante describes do not come close to Don’s horror at a partners meeting discussing how to limit the amount of paperclips the company uses.
Don may be descending into Hell but so are we. He is our guide, the much drunker Virgil to our Dante. This opening line is a warning that you will bear witness to suffering and be powerless to stop it or avert your eyes.
I refer to Season 6 as a TV show’s “Dracula season.” By this point, most have had their best episodes and explored storylines that were building since Season 1. Everyone watching Season 1 knew that Betty and Don’s marriage was doomed. Now that we have gotten through the divorce and its aftermath, few “prophecies” are left to explore. I call Season 6 the Dracula season because shows embrace insanity in the absence of destiny.
Later seasons have musical numbers, crossovers, animated sequences, and anything to keep viewers (and the writers) interested after years have passed. This happens sooner on some shows and there is nothing wrong with having a little fun... but you can tell the brakes have been intentionally cut.
It is as if the characters themselves have grown uncomfortable on Mad Men and are antsy for the 1960s to end. This insanity becomes quite effective as the show enters 1968, a year of chaos and assassinations.
Look at it this way. Would Dracula be out of place if he walked into Sterling Cooper and ripped Pete Cambell’s heart out with his bare hands to impress Joan? Of course. Would this be less out of place during the Looney Tunes mania of Season 6 than any other season?
Well, who is Bob Benson if not the Dracula of Mad Men?
The feeling of Mad Men’s 6th season is captured perfectly by Don’s disconnection from all aspects of his life after returning from a Hawaiian getaway. When you get back from a vacation, everyday life almost doesn’t feel real. The coarse touch of sand beneath your feet and rhythmic push and pull of the ocean that so briefly filled your ears, that’s life! You breathe differently on vacation. Returning to alarm clocks and traffic feels bizarre.
However surreal this season may become, it works because of its disconnected post-vacation feeling.
Throughout a year marked by the crumbling of 1960s American ideals and professional and personal failure, Don will be tormented by the sound of an ocean that can only fade in his memory.
I will not disrespect anyone who believes this is Mad Men’s greatest season because each episode is FUNNY and full of big swings. Season 6 is an entirely different animal from the other seasons and a big part of that is the humor.
As things fall apart, everyone retains their humor and you’re in for all-timer facial expressions from Jon Hamm. This episode even plays off America laughing at the horror of Vietnam.
What else can we do in madness but laugh?
The negative of madness is that the season is often in chaos and you’ll never feel as if your feet are on the ground watching it.
There is a wider net to throw.
Don is in a new affair, Roger is in therapy, Peggy is at a new agency (which feels so disconnected you’re left counting the episodes until she’ll return to SCDP), Pete is... balding. The episode feels like catch-up for a good deal of the post-Hawaii action and, much like Don, you’ll be wishing you could return to the beach.
Betty didn’t even appear in Season 5’s two-part opener “A Little Kiss” and now a good deal of the story is devoted to her trying to steer Sally’s orphaned friend in the right direction but being odd and creepy about it.
There’s a feeling all of us can relate to in Season 6’s opener.
Turn it off.
So much is happening in the world, so much is horrible, and so many people are not only useless but harmful to a peaceful life.
Just “turn it off!” everyone says. Tune it out! Look away!
You don’t want to hear about what is happening but you can’t help it because the silence drives you crazier.
Vietnam is thousands of miles away until Don brings it home in his pocket.
You can find peace to a degree, but you cannot live with only a memory of the ocean in your ears. Season 6 is the Vietnam of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The battles are unending and those fighting them question why they are even there. There is no outcome beyond suffering and destruction despite everyone saying “please stop this.”
As Roger says in therapy, each doorway just opens to another door.
“The Doorway” is a direct 180 from Season 5’s opener, “A Little Kiss.” Part I of Little Kiss is focused entirely on Don’s birthday and Megan’s iconic Zou Bisou dance. Part II is about the office aftermath of the party and the end of Don and Megan’s honeymoon phase. These could have been entirely different episodes and you would not have been left thinking “this only feels like Part I.”
“The Doorway” is not like this. Part I ends with a nagging feeling that everything you’ve just seen is not only unfinished but possibly unnecessary. The episode’s most memorable moment, where Don gives away the bride at a serviceman’s wedding in Hawaii, comes during the first act. Imagine if “A Little Kiss” had opened with Zou Bisou and spent the rest of the episode coming down from that high.
It’d be jarring!
It’d be sad!
It would have been the insanity that is Season 6 of Mad Men. We had to grow to this point; madness had to be earned.
Don misses the simple beauty of the beach wedding he participated in because it was perfect in a way that only a vacation can be.
All of the bad things in life can be ignored so long as the island sun warms your skin. The serviceman, PFC. Dinkins, who Don accidentally took a lighter from, speaks down upon his bride for being Mexican and only says he is marrying her because it will help his chances in Vietnam.
Don has no reason to have faith in their marriage. The discovery of the lighter is a painful reminder that Dinkins and his bride were real and not some beautiful dream the island conjured up for him.
Dinkins’ name is just another he collected because of a war. A name that is not his but rests in his coat pocket, as unfamiliar as Draper can still feel.
The irony of Don having stolen a man’s name to build an entirely new life is that he hates pretending. He will never respect someone who lies and pretends to be something they’re not even though he does it every day.
Don began the ruin of his 2nd marriage by berating his wife for his birthday party that opened Season 5. He now watches her dance in Hawaii with complete disconnection. He doesn’t have the energy for anger or happiness, especially not for his wife.
The vacation so deeply affected Don not because he was happy but because he was not in his “real” life.
He was another grain of sand on a beach, something perfect that others like PFC Dinkins and his bride would remember as they returned to the cruel, real world.
No matter how beautiful and successful his life looks on the outside, he never wanted to return to it.
It is about to be 1968 in America, past the point of pretending.