Mad Men Won’t Stop Until Everyone is a Sociopath

I’ve always had a curious attraction to Mad Men. It’s a show where almost nothing ever happens in a given week. Campaigns are pitched. Cigarettes are smoked. People look nice wearing vintage clothing. And repeat.

That doesn’t mean it’s not good, however. It’s great, in fact. The acting is only topped by the writing, and I’ve often said it’s a show that I could watch if each episode was ten hours long, not just one. It’s just that engaging.

But as any show heads into its sixth season, the winds can change. And I smell something fowl blowing in after the first two weeks of the new season.

Infidelity has always been a part of the show. It’s harder to think of male cast members who haven’t cheated on their wives rather than those who have at this point, as nearly everyone’s done it. I don’t have any idea if the ’50s and ’60s were actually like that, but this trend, among other reasons, indicate it was a pretty shitty time to be a woman.

That’s all well and good and it’s sewn into the bones of the show at this point so everyone takes it for granted. But now in the interest of keeping things spicy, they’re starting to take their leads to places that are almost to absurd to exist.

After a season of uncharacteristically faithful marriage to his new wife, Megan, Don Draper is back to scumbag mode again. The two hour pilot pretended that everything was alright, and that perhaps Don was having a crises of faith about his career as he lived next to a surgeon who was on call saving lives at all hours of the night.

Nah, he was just banging his wife.

Yes, Don Draper is screwing the surgeon’s wife, played by Freaks and Geeks’ Linda Cardellini who someone apparently woke from cryo-sleep. Also in that episode, Don showed up so hammered to Roger’s mother’s funeral that he threw up in a trash can. The following week, it’s revealed that his own wife, Megan, recently had a miscarriage. Why is he cheating on her again? Because she asked for his help landing an acting role? Come on.

It’s just like all of a sudden they realized Don Draper wasn’t being Don Draper-ish enough, and they had to flip his sleaze dial to eleven and break it off completely. Yes, he cheated on Betty in past seasons, but this scenario, bedding his friend’s wife every time he leaves the house is so scummy it doesn’t even make sense. The show is now quickly trying to explain how Don got so fucked up with women by showing flashbacks of him growing up in a whorehouse watching his mother get screwed for rent. It’s like watching the birth of a serial killer who can’t help but always cheat on his hot wife instead of killing people.

If that wasn’t enough, we have Pete Campbell, also a cheater going all the way back to Peggy Olsen’s secret baby days, but now he too has reached new levels of depravity. He gives a wink to one of his new neighbor’s wives as a housewarming party, and two scenes later he’s making out with her in his secret bangpartment in the city. Another two scenes and she’s knocking on his door with a broken nose, her husband having beaten the shit out of her after learning of her misdeeds.

What the hell Mad Men? These aren’t men, these are sociopaths.

This is starting to be too much for me. I didn’t sign up for a soap opera. I think my distaste for this new direction of the show began late last season when Joan actually slept with that Jaguar fatass in order to land a partnership in the firm. After years of building her character up to be a strong woman that was more than just a pretty face and giant boobs, they completely threw it all out the window with that plotline. It felt like a betrayal of her character.

And so do these recent developments with Pete and Don. Yes, both are flawed and hateable at times, but the show feels like it’s being purposefully inflammatory now by concocting these scenarios that make them the most morally reprehensible people on the planet. What’s next? Peggy has a three way with her young copywriters? Roger tries to seduce Sally Draper? It’s getting hard to put anything past this show. I get that sex sells, but pump the freaking brakes every once in a while.

Even Walter White seems like a good guy compared to this lot, because at least his skin wouldn’t ooze slime when you shook his hand.