Something is all wrong about Don Draper with a tan.
The makers of “Mad Men” have made it their passion to keep everything authentic on the show that returned for its sixth season Sunday. Therefore, they were sure to reflect that the look and tone of 1960s New York was very different than you would find in 60s L.A., and its characters would have the pallor of Manhattan as well.
Instead, on a paid trip to the Pacific to check out a new client, the Royal Hawaiian, Don and his wife are sitting in the sun and she’s starting to worry about too much sun because it may not fit with her soap opera character (though I can’t believe soap operas would be as concerned with details).
Don is reading Dante’s Inferno because that’s what ad guys read on the beach in those days (I’m so old I think I have that same paperback edition). The key line from “The Divine Comedy,” read out loud is: “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.”
Straying was one of the questions lingering from last season: Would Don adjust to his newly married life or would he assume his old ways and stray? Last season ended with a woman asking if he was alone and, like so many times on the series, Don didn’t answer at all. (Spoilers ahead)
It as unclear in the long, somewhat rambling two hour premiere of “Mad Men” Sunday what exactly he would do. But it was a clear shock that he ended up with the Italian wife of a doctor who lived in the building, with whom he and the missus had been spending New Year’s Eve.
Like Pete’s fling last season, this was no ordinary stock character, it was Linda freakin’ Cardellini of “Freaks and Geeks” fame, no longer in her Army jacket, but in a 60s hairdo so distracting you’d never know it was her. Was he getting back at the doctor for some reason, jealous of his ability to handle life and death matters daily? It was the doctor who first appeared in the episode reviving someone unseen (was a character already dying unexpectedly seconds into the new season?). No it was the doorman Jonesy, whom the doc saved and is chagrined to have to be greeted grandly by him ever since.
The doc is just as interested in Don’s career and asks him about a camera that is his client; Don says to come by and get one from his office, they’ve got a mess of them.
Earlier, while in Hawaii, restless Don Draper goes down to the bar by himself late only to find a soldier from Vietnam soon to be married. He notices Don’s military issue lighter and sees him as a kindred spirit; Don agrees to give his bride away the next morning and Megan thinks it’s cute when she finds him in the shoreside ceremony the next morning.
Later, Don finds he’s switched lighters with the kid and when asked by a photographer doing portraits in the office to “be himself,” he looks at him blankly: He’s not sure who is real self is, after spending so much of his life hiding his prior identity.
Betty Draper is still in the series, but in completely unconnected drama that involves Sally and a friend of her’s, Sandy, who is lying about getting into Juillard at age 15 and wants to just move there on her own. Betty, still wearing enough of the fat makeup to make her look unnatural, goes down to the city to try and find the runaway and instead finds a squat full of society rejectors who wouldn’t mind if she helped them make stew. Along the way, they make fun of her “bottle blonde” hair, so by the end of the episode she’s dyed it black, freaking her family out a little bit.
The “Mom talks with the hippies” scene in the East Village was easily the oddest scene of the show. I’m starting to worry that the late 60s stuff won’t ring as true as the early part of the decade they got so right (and continue to do so in the beach getups of Meagan). Bringing in pot, mustaches and ridiculous sideburns doesn’t conjure the impending 1968 all by themselves.
Peggy, who is still part of the show after jumping agencies, has her own Vietnam problems: After a comic on Carson jokes about the ears that American fighters are collecting as trophies, she fears her “lend me your ears” campaign for Koss headphones may be doomed. She has to work through the holidays to get it right.
It may be Roger Sterling who had the best moments of the episode, appearing with high hair as he talks to his shrink about the pointlessness of his life just before hearing of his own mother’s death, something that gets to his secretary but hardly phases him. He leads the wake at his mother’s opulent apartment but abruptly calls it off when his first wife brings her current husband. He makes a pass at her later, but she only says he should pay more attention to their daughter (who hits him up for investment funds).
No, Roger only cries when he learns his favorite shoeshine guy died. But that’s a start, emotionally.
Not much happening for Pete this time out except for sideburns — and even worse ones for Harry; and Joan only appears long enough to pose for the office portrait, she blows off the funeral of Roger’s mom altogether.
Don probably should have missed it too; but he shows up late with a drink in his hand and barfs mid-eulogy, an uncool moment for a guy who controls so much of his life. He had a flu bug, they explain. No, says Roger: “He was only saying what everybody else was thinking.’
Glad they finally got around to playing Elvis Presley’s “Hawaiian Wedding Song” over the credits; if there was a guy who personified 1960s Hawaii style, it was the star of “Blue Hawaii” and “Paradise, Hawaiian Style.”