Critically acclaimed cable dramas are not usually the best place to look for fair and non-cheesy portrayals of historical events. Critically acclaimed cable dramas run by white male show-runners are also not usually the best place to look for fair and non-cheesy portrayals of race relations. Aaron Sorkin’s dreadful The Newsroom did a bang-up job during its first season of elegantly and economically reiterating these two points week after week .
That said, I actually thought that both the historical-fiction and race-relations elements were really well done on last night’s Mad Men. Yes, yes, spoilers ahead.
In the middle of the gang’s big ad awards dinner (everyone at both S.C.D.P. and Ted Chaough’s shop is whining about sitting far away), we learn, thanks to a shout-y audience member, that Martin Luther King Jr., has been assassinated. The organizers of the dinner put the program on hold while everyone makes phone calls to family members. (Another real-life historical occurrence.) Peggy’s beau Abe, on assignment for The New York Times, heads to Harlem to cover reactions and riots. Back in the suburbs, Henry Francis, a top aide to Mayor John Lindsay, drives in to help his boss calm the waters. Pete, from his dimly lit one-bedroom in the city, calls Trudy at home and asks whether she wants him to come home. She does not—nor does she seem like she needs half the comforting and company that her husband does. Later, Pete heartbreakingly orders some Chinese food and asks the delivery man whether it’s pretty bad out on the streets. The delivery man, who presumably does not speak English, doesn’t answer. Pete needs human contact; he is not getting it; and he will explode in a fit of anguish and pathos upon the next person who engages him in any real way.
That person ends up being Harry. Pete, doesn’t know quite how to channel his feelings of loneliness and terror, skulks around the office and picks a fight with his colleague, who makes the mistake of daring to talk about business in their place of business during normal business hours. Harry (who is worried about buybacks from advertisers unhappy with TV coverage of the assassination) is not grieving in The Right Way, Pete rages, and accuses him of being callous about catastrophe. Mourning is a very private matter—but when we grieve for public figures, the forms and means of our grief become public, too. This can, and usually does, lead to trouble.
By contrast, note that in the controlled environment of Roger’s mother’s funeral, Roger ran the proceedings and stopped them when he chose to/Don vomited. Public bereavement does not have such rules and limits—Don can vomit all he wants, so to speak, and no one has the authority to hit pause. But Pete, terrified at the lack of order in the world and in his family, tries to impose his own system of values and behaviors onto Harry. Whether he realizes it or not, he’s angry that he can’t change Harry, that he can’t change the fact that no one really wants to be around him, and that he certainly can’t change history.
That the show asked us to view the tragedy through the prism of two ad executives arguing about how sad to be within their Madison Avenue office was actually perfect. What a relief that the series did not take an unearned or clunky turn away from the upper-middle-class white world that is 98 percent of its focus. How easy would it have been to use Dr. King’s death to precipitate a Very Special Race Relations Episode? Sorry to pick on Aaron Sorkin once again, but one of the worst things ever on television was *Studio 60’*s jazzy tribute to Hurricane Katrina. Did a predominantly black band play “O Holy Night” in front of a projected image of a black hand holding a white hand? You’re goddamn right they did.
Mad Men presented what was essentially the intellectual opposite of a black hand holding a white hand: just as Pete and Harry had sentimental and pragmatic responses, respectively, not every black character reacted in the same way to Dr. King’s assassination. Don’s secretary, Dawn, did not want a hug from anyone and just wanted to get back to work. Phyllis, Peggy’s assistant, did want a hug and was relieved when Peggy told her to take the day off.
Everyone’s well-intentioned attempt to Put Things On Hold In The Face of Tragedy was consistently upstaged by Life Going On: Peggy fielded calls from her real estate agent, who was hoping to parlay the riots into a successful low-ball a bid on an Upper East Side apartment; Harry, contra Pete, did have to deal with the preempting of popular sitcoms and the commercials that buttress them; and even Don, very soon after learning of the tragedy during his night out, was like, “What? Are we not going to finish the ad awards?”
They had to finish the ad awards. (Oh, by the way, mazel tov Megan. Another success for which your emotional-terrorist husband will undoubtedly resent and punish you.) The characters had to look for apartments and talk to clients and manage their relationships and pay their bills and take their kids for the weekend and go to bed and get up and do it all again the next day. Life stopped for Martin Luther King, Jr.—it did not stop for a handful of forty-something ad guys who, we don’t doubt, probably did experience very real feelings of misery, grief, helplessness, and anger.
That’s the awful thing about awful things: they don’t displace anything else—they’re just another on top of everything else. *Mad Men’*s graceful, fair, and very poignant illustration of this cruel architecture was one of the show’s most brilliant and impressive achievements.
