Mad Men - "The Doorway" - Review

By this point in time, we’re not watching Mad Men to learn about these characters and who they are. We know about as much about Don Draper as we’re likely to know about any character. But Mad Men once again proves that just because you know everything there is to know about someone, doesn’t necessarily mean you have them all figured out.

For most of this episode, Don by all outward appearances looks like a man who’s accepted his marriage to Megan. He’s not completely satisfied by his marriage, but he comes off like a man who has accepted dying on the sword he’s thrust into himself. 

We start this episode in Hawaii: paradise. Hot, sunny, perfect. We end in brutally cold New York on New Year’s Eve. Don is reading “Dante’s Inferno” when we first see him lounging on the beach. As Dante goes further into Hell, we learn that Hell doesn’t get hotter as we head down its many levels, but much, much colder, until the worst sinners are frozen into a sheet of ice.  

The episode is a long descent into the state of being of Don. The more the episode carries on, the clearer it becomes that Don is more out of sorts than ever. Megan was supposed to be his saving grace. The cliffhanger from last season’s finale “The Phantom” has been answered. Perhaps Don didn’t say yes to the question “Are you alone?” right then and there, but now after some time has passed Don has started up his adulterous ways once more (with Lisa Cardellini no less). 

He loves Megan, much as he loved Betty. But she’s become less and less of the ideal woman he built her up to be. She’s continuing her acting career, starring in television shows, and maintaining her generally independent, youthful ways.She has him smoke pot, she makes fondue, and she gets up and dances with the Hawaiian announcer. 

It’s become clichéd to ask “Who is Don Draper?” It’s also become clichéd to say, “Don is a different person to everyone he meets”. But they remain defining aspects that the show continues to mine more and more. Don knows there’s something wrong with himself. His New Year’s Resolution: stop having an affair. An affair he was convinced he could avoid this time around in his second marriage.

Don isn’t the only one questioning their sense of self though. Betty, though she’s lost some weight, is still on the chubby side. We see her snacking at a play (the Nutcracker – I’m guessing there’s some relevance but I’m not sure what it is). Sally has a friend who is a gifted violinist, Sandy, and Betty quickly takes offense when the girl dismisses the suburban housewife lifestyle Betty has taken up in two marriages now. Matt Weiner learned at the feet of David Chase (creator of The Sopranos) and Mad Men has been keen on the idea that people don’t change. Not in real life anyway. They may want to, but damn if it isn’t difficult. Sandy lies about getting into Julliard, and Betty follows her to the city to try to discover where she is. She ends up missing Sandy but she does find her violin case. Though she fights so hard to get the case away from a young man who insists that Betty can’t accept his rebellious ways (Sally Draper ain’t too far off from this guy), she eventually leaves behind the violin case. Betty is like a petulant child at times, and her refusal to take the case is like a pointless act of defiance. 

She does change by episode’s end but it’s in the most superficial way possible. Betty dyes her hair. But that’s not proof positive of change. 

Betty refuses to accept growing old. Her Grace Kelly (now Elizabeth Taylor) good looks will only get her so far (well, I guess with the weight gain, have only gotten her so far). In one of the more bizarre scenes, she kiddingly asks Harry if he’d like to rape Sandy. It’s uncomfortable and messed up, but it speaks again to Betty’s inability to accept aging and her frustration at young, attractive people stealing her thunder. This is precisely why she becomes so set on helping Sandy out.  She doesn’t really want to help Sandy, but she thinks if she can save Sandy, in a way she can save herself. 

One character, Roger, is finally admitting there’s something wrong with themselves even if he has a difficult time confronting his problems. His LSD laden experiences from last season have opened his mind up to how he hasn’t exactly been the best person in life. He’s even started taking therapy but he ignores the most important points the therapist makes, such as the fact that his constant joking conceals a hidden problem. Roger’s mother dies and yet Roger feels nothing. He tells his first ex-wife that he looked at the women at the funeral and all he saw were people he’d disappointed. Roger can only see one thing ahead for himself: death.

Death is a reoccurring theme throughout the episode. Don seems to be obsessed with the notion of death. His fear of death and his infatuation with the idea of death leads him to drink excessively (more so than usual) and puke at the funeral. In his drunken stupor he asks the doorman who recently suffered a heart attack, “What did you see when you died?” The ad Don pitches for the Hawaiian hotel reminds everyone of death and suicide (something Don clearly did not intend for). 

If Don is failing to be good at being Don Draper (or not I guess if you see this self-destructive behavior as typical Don), well, then it’s nice that someone has taken up the mantle of being Don (minus the constant identity crises and necessity for affairs). Peggy Olson has come a long, long way. As previously stated, people tend not to change in the world of Mad Men, but when they do it’s often sudden and drastic, and such was the case when Peggy couldn’t take Don’s continual berating any longer. I’d like to have seen Don run into his protégé, but it’s possible Don’s decline and Peggy’s rise will be paralleled. I’m more surprised that Peggy being a female head copywriter didn’t play a bigger role in her story. Her newly mustachioed, long haired boyfriend Abe says she’s too harsh on her underlings, but otherwise it’s largely overlooked.  

Everyone is largely haunted by their past in this premiere and the real big changes of the 60’s are starting to catch up to them faster and faster than ever before. The sideburns are long, the pot is in abundance, and the violence is on the rise.

Stray Observations:

-Sally is really taking her teen angst seriously. Nicely played by Kiernan Shipka.

-What’s funnier from the scene where the cop pulls Betty over? The officer responding to Grandma Francis awkwardly name dropping Harry with “I work for the state of New York. I have my own boss” or Sally saying “I hate cops” after the fact?

-The Kodak wheel from season one has returned but has lost much of its nostalgic luster for Don.

-Sign of the times: Betty doesn’t care that Sandy is smoking.

-The series has mostly moved away from Betty’s relationship with her mother but here we’re reminded that her mother had a massive and terrible influence on Betty.

-Stan has an incredible beard now. He also keeps in touch with Peggy and overhears her conversation with her boss Ted. He suggests that Ted likes her. Peggy seems slightly infatuated at least.

-Peggy’s co-workers are pretty useless. The one guy re-enacts the Tonight Show act that led to the ad’s re-working but it’s pretty half-assed, and no one can seem to come up with any other information on the specifics of the incident. Her copywriters are lazy and fail to come up with any good ideas.

-The camera operator tells Don “I want you to be yourself”. If it was only that easy!

-Roger flips out after seeing his ex-wife with a new man. Change is not being accepted by Roger even as he nominally admits that something has to change or his life is merely a straight line towards the grave.

-Not sure what to make of Bob who keeps trying to get his foot in the door with members of the ad agency. Without being asked, he provides catering to the funeral. Ken Cosgrove gets to tell him off though, seemingly as an excuse to give the character screen time.

-Joan is giving Roger the cold shoulder.

-Don mistakenly switches his military issued lighter with PFC Dinkins's, the man he meets at the bar, and spends much of the episode worrying and fixating on it. The other lighter said "Dick Whitman" on it.

Grade: A-