Season 2: Episode 1 - For Those Who Think Young
Meditations in a... non-emergency
Season 2: Episode 1
“For Those Who Think Young”
Directed by Tim Hunter
Written by Matthew Weiner
Setting: February 1962
I have to start my review of Season 2 with a little honesty.
Season 2 of Mad Men is my least favorite season of the show. I still consider this spectacular television but 1962 with Don Draper can feel boring and even off-putting… but intentionally so.
I suspect that Matthew Weiner took great joy in the break between seasons 1 and 2 where friends and fans approached him with theories as to what would be revealed in the exciting kick-off to Season 2.
“Peggy will introduce Pete to their child and guilt him into being with her!”
“Roger will die and throw Sterling Cooper into further turmoil!”
“Betty will leave Don for good after his latest affair is uncovered!”
This Valentine’s Day season opener of the steamiest show on television features such sensual scenes as:
Don Draper is unable to get an erection during date night.
A new photocopier has been delivered but Joan doesn’t know where to put it.
Betty’s car needs a new fan belt.
Season two opens with nothing that fans expected to happen. Roger is back and it’s like he never even had a heart attack. You can’t even tell that this is 1962 unless you know what year Jackie Kennedy’s White House tour aired. Hell, more characters are interested in watching Jackie Kennedy than having sex!
The honeymoon period is over for the show.
Season 2 captures the limbo state of the early 60s. Things appeared both perfect and at the same time lifeless. What was so different about 1961 from 1962 anyway? It was still the same President and the same country. People still needed to buy and sell things.
One clear issue that many shows and movies that examine the past suffer from is that they “know everything.” With the power of retrospect and knowing exactly what was right and wrong, writers create characters who do not act realistically for the times. Mad Men clearly states that if these characters don’t know everything then you shouldn’t either. You must learn information with time just as they do.
It is a mediation on earning your place during a moment in time rather than just existing in it. Right now, all of these characters are simply existing. Even young Peggy Olson, who is on the rise as one of the few women in her career, appears lost in the 9 to 5 haze of worker bee life. There is no time to reflect on her past or how she got to this moment because she’s due for a meeting at noon.
I’ve grown to respect what Season 2 is accomplishing through this “waking up to real life” narrative even if it can feel like watching paint dry at times.
While these characters waste their entire day sitting in a silent meeting room that waits on the whims of Don Draper, Soviet and Cuban forces are in communication about arming the island with missiles.
Think of every dull moment of your life where you were doing the dishes or getting an oil change while the world was changing. Everyday life happens even when history takes the front page.
Moments of beauty make you believe you are living in a movie even if it just feels like any other day when your head hits the pillow at night.
Throughout Season 2, Don Draper comes to view every day as an emergency but he handles these emergencies by pretending they do not exist. Don will close his eyes and escape to a place where time does not exist.
As far as we know, Don Draper never read Atlas Shrugged despite being told that he should. He does, however, immediately read the collection of poems Meditations in an Emergency after being told that he would not enjoy it.
Don Draper is a contradiction of everything that he should be. His journey is to become a man who, when told doom is imminent and all will end, says “I believe in tomorrow.”
His great challenge is that he must believe that when he says it.
