We’re supposed to root for a guy to sell cigarettes??
Believe
The wealth of meticulous period detail creates a very believable world.
We don’t get much detail about Don’s life yet. The show is intentionally hiding the specifics of his life from us, which it can get away with to a certain extent by giving us a co-hero in the form of Peggy, introduced in her own storyline.
He doesn’t just drink, he likes old fashioneds and rye. He smokes Luckies. Everything is specific.
We love that he keeps a stack of pressed shirts in his desk for when he spends the night at a girl’s apartment.
Care
He’s having a crisis of confidence, “Midge, I’m serious, I have nothing. I am over, and they’re finally gonna know it. Next time you see me, there’ll be a lot of young executives picking meat off my ribs.”
He’s got a deadline: “Sterling’s having the tobacco people in in nine hours, and I have nothing.”
Invest
We can tell when he quizzes the waiter that he’s good at his job. Later, when Midge jokingly says “Don Draper is the greatest ad an ever and his big, strong brain will find a way to lead the sheep to the slaughterhouse,” we can sense she kind of means it.
ii. He pauses to look at his purple heart medal, and we don’t suspect yet that he’s an imposter.
Five Es
Eat: Well, he certainly drinks like a fish.
Exercise: He uses one of those bizarre chest stressing devices in his office (while smoking).
Economic Activity: He’s obsessed with his work problem, writing ideas on a napkin when we first see him.
Enjoy: He enjoys having sex with Midge, finally seeming relaxed afterwards, and asking her to marry him (We won’t find out until the end of the episode that he’s already married.)
Emulate: We will eventually learn that “Don’s” (which is to say Dick’s) life is all about emulation, but we don’t suspect that yet.
Rise above
Not yet
Kind
I’ve taken “high five a black guy” off the list, but this is a big example, which is very important for a period show. He chats up his black waiter, who instantly gets yelled at by his white boss, but Don shoos the boss away, then says to the waiter, “You obviously need to relax after working here all night.”
In Rushmore, at what point does Max Fischer finally turn a corner, get a girlfriend, and vow to make peace with everyone? Well, we don’t know, because we don’t see it. Instead, we see just the opposite.
We do get to see some personal growth: He finally apologizes to Dirk (spontaneously) and Margaret Yang (when prompted), he starts his first new society at his public school, he reaches out to Blume and exchanges medals with him. He reaches out to Miss Cross again with another aquarium scheme. But then, after that falls apart, we see him ordering dynamite and heading off to Rushmore with a rifle: “I have one more piece of unfinished business.” We then see him in a window aiming the rifle at his bully. To our relief, he just shoots him with a potato gun, then gives him a script for a play.
Nevertheless, as the next scene begins, somewhat-ominous drum music plays and we see that Max has gathered all of the characters from the movie, both friends and enemies, in one room for his play. Of course, we soon realize that, while his Vietnam play is far from safe, his intentions are entirely positive and this is a different Max: He’s got a girlfriend, he’s introducing everyone to his father, and he’s implicitly making peace with everyone he’s wronged.
This is tricky. Audiences do like going back and forth, sometimes getting ahead of the characters (we know what’s going to happen to them but they don’t) and sometimes falling behind (we can’t figure out what they’re doing for a few scenes), but this movie features falsealienation: Intentionally making us doubt our trust in the main character, only to please us by re-affirming it.
In this case it works: it adds a little tension and excitement to an ending that might otherwise be anticlimactic. Yes, it’s a little disappointing that they have to skip over some of Max’s personal breakthroughs, but it’s a comedy, not a drama, and we’d rather get an nervous final laugh than a heartfelt catharsis.
In other cases, it doesn’t work: There’s a moment in the first season of “Mad Men” when Matthew Weiner decides to create the false impression that Don is preparing to kill his half-brother (instead, he’s going to pay him to leave town, which, as it turns out, causes him to commit suicide.) It’s essential to build identification with anti-heroes: We can’t sympathize, but we can at least empathize. By breaking identification in those scenes, Weiner briefly pushed our already-limited tolerance for Don past the breaking point, and struggled to get it back. When I recommended the show to people after that first season, I warned them about that episode: “At times the show will seem darker than it really is, but stick with it.”
As much as I love the 1960s, I’m an even bigger aficionado of the 1860s, so I had high hopes that I might enjoy “Copper” and “Hell on Wheels” even more than “Mad Men”. Unfortunately, like most critics, I found both shows to be uninspiring. Both commit the cardinal sin of period pieces: they assume that we’ll only identify with heroes who are just like us.
As with most post-Civil-War stories, the hero of “Hell on Wheels” is a confederate veteran (because that’s “romantic”), and yet he quickly gets a co-equal black sidekick to prove that he’s not one of those confederates. At least on “Copper”, they give us a Union-vet hero for once, but otherwise it’s typical. Once again, he constantly defers to his black best friend, a scientific genius who has single-handedly invented all of the forensic advances that will appear in the next fifty years.
Basically, the heroes of both of those shows say to their fellow white men, week after week, “Hi, I’m from 2013, and I’ve come back to set you people straight.” That’s what makes them the heroes.
Historian professors like to warn their students against “the myth of progress”: This refers to the belief that everybody in the past was trying to reach the pinnacle that is us, so every time they became more like us they were moving “forward”, and every time they became less like us they were going “backwards”.
On “Copper” and “Hell on Wheels”, bad is defined as “how they did things then” and good as “how we do things now.” Both shows shy away from the possibility that the past might have an ironic relationship to the present.
The “Mad Men” pilot slyly dangles this possibility in its opening scene. In the first scene, our hero initiates a friendly chat with a black busboy, only to have the busboy’s white boss come up and grumble, “Is he bothering you? He can be a little chatty!” Sure enough, Don gets his back up and barks, “No, we’re actually just having a conversation, is that okay?”, and when the boss slinks away, Don says to the busboy, “Well you obviously need to relax after working here all night.”
“Okay, great,” the audience thinks, “this guy is going to be just like us!” But before the scene is over, we realize that this isn’t the case. Don quizzes the man about what might get him to change cigarette brands, then, at the end of the conversation, the busboy says, “Reader’s Digest says it’ll kill you.” Don ruefully chuckles, “Yeah, I heard about that.” But then the busboy gives a tiny eye roll and says something that’s music to Don’s ears: “Ladies love their magazines.” Don may have ten times more power than the black man, but at least they share a chuckle about how unimportant the views of women are.
We quickly realize that Don is nothing like we want him to be. Yes, because of his dirt-poor background, he has some respect for black suffering, but he couldn’t imagine himself having any black friends. Don’s an upper-middle-class white man in 1960, with all (or at least most) of the reflexive bigotries that that entails.
The tease of the show is that we keep rooting for Don to finally wise up to the flaws of his era and just start thinking like us already, but creator Matthew Weiner is always happy to yank that football away.
This led up to a delightfully ironic moment at the end of the first season, when Don, after taking no offense at several horrific things, finally arrives at the one injustice he can’t accept…when Joe Kennedy steals the 1960 election from Richard Nixon. Only now does Don get fed up with the fact that the system is unfairly rigged against the little guy!
“But… but…”, the audience sputters, “That’s one historical injustice that we’re totally okay with! That one was for the best! That’s one little guy who deserved to have his rights taken away!”
“Mad Men” actively strips us of our modern morality and sends us spinning head-over-heels into the past, unable to find secure footing. We’re in Don’s world now, and we’re never sure where we stand in relation to him. The better we come to understand his skewed morality, the more we come to doubt our own certainties. The show is steeped in irony, which is why it’s so meaningful.
One thing that “Mad Men” has always been great at is the subtle build to an upheaval, where a momentous thing seems to happen with no warning, until we realize that we’ve seen signs slowly piling up all season long. They pulled this off with Peggy’s in-denial pregnancy in season one, Don’s impetuous marriage at the end of season four, and Don’s firing at the end of season six.
Throughout season six, a funny thing happened in the print and online commentary about the series: there were several articles along the lines of, “Gee, Don’s misbehavior is no longer charming, and I don’t know why.” As it turned out, they were having exactly the reaction they were supposed to have: Weiner wanted to show what happened when Don’s charm finally soured on his perpetual victims, but a side effect of Don’s failing magic touch probably did the most to sour the audience’s reaction: they were subconsciously reacting to the fact that Don was no longer good at his job.
These baffled critics had failed to notice something that’s gospel for every network exec (and something that Weiner knew full well): It’s very hard to care about a TV character who isn’t good at his or her job, even if --especially if-- you disapprove of that job.
This was true of all of the antihero shows that arose in that period: “The Sopranos”, “The Shield”, “The Wire”, “House”, “Breaking Bad”, etc. The more ambiguous the morality of the show, the more unambiguously talented the hero had to be.
They were breaking all the rules of TV...except the big one.
We watch “Mad Men” on several levels: on one level, we contrast our current “enlightened” era to the bad-old-days of good-old-boys, and we archly disapprove of Don’s terribleness, but while we do that, we’re also inside of the world of the show with him, and we’re rooting for him to run circles around his fellow creeps.
One of Don’s many ironies is that he’s not able to see the larger futility of his lifestyle, but he is able to see the faults and hypocrisies of his contemporaries much better than they do, and sometimes even better than we do, even with our greater perspective. And we love that.
Just look at the pilot: Only Don can solve the cigarette problem, because only he has accepted the meaninglessness of the emotions they’re selling. It’s dazzling to watch him explain the hidden nature of advertising to his co-workers and his clients, because this is our favorite type of tradecraft: news we can use. Even though we see his world so much more clearly than he does, and judge him harshly for his blind spots, he’s also explaining our world to us in a way that we’ve never understood it before.
As the show progressed, we sometimes unambiguously wanted Don to succeed, as with his inspiring pitch for slide-carousels, and other times we were disgusted by his success, as with Lucky Strike, but either way, we were glad that we were on the winning side. Whether he used his power for good or ill, that power made him our beacon. We followed him down a dark path, but he was the brightest light on that path, so naturally we clung to him for illumination.
Don began season six by reading “Dante’s Inferno” while attempting to relax in paradise. For six seasons, he has been our Virgil, the most enlightened ghost from a pre-enlightened era, and therefore our ideal guide to this hellish world. But now he’s grown both weary and wary of that role. Even the smartest guy in hell is still in hell.
Going into the final season, the question is whether or not Don can once again rebuild a better life from scratch. He’s sick of being that lone torchbearer heading down that dark path (even if he wanted to continue, he can’t, because his flame has now been snuffed out) so he’s decided to crawl out towards daylight instead. Some casual viewers see this and roll their eyes: “Hey, that’s no fun!” But for fans of truly great TV, the show has never been more powerful and electric with possibility.
“Mad Men” broke the rules in any number of ways, but let’s look at two of the less-remarked-upon risks the pilot took:
It doesn’t establish a fixed way to enter the show every week:
It’s very common to begin a show with a fixed point of entry: the roll call on “Hill Street Blues”, the listening kids on “How I Met Your Mother”, even the recurring image of the opening eye on “Lost”. I’ve only managed to come up with two exceptions, albeit major ones: this and “The Simpsons”.
In this case, it speaks to the show’s malleability: episodes can cover one night or several months, have different lead characters, totally ignore other characters, occur entirely inside or outside the office, etc. This is all very risky. Almost every episode of “Hill Street Blues” took place within one day, so the writers could get into the habit of creating stories of that length, and always be sure that each subplot would line up to all the others. On “Mad Men”, with everything shifting, only certain subplots will fit together, which makes beautifully interwoven episodes like the one mentioned here all the more remarkable.
The pilot short-shrifts several members of the ensemble:
This is most obvious with Betty, who is only introduced in the final moments of the show as a shock reveal, but Harry, Paul, and Ken also get little chance to differentiate themselves despite getting a fair amount of screentime in the pilot. This is indicative of another big risk: the secondary characters can remain undefined for now because the primary drama on this show will be created by the hero’s internal conflicts, rather than by his interactions with others. (This was also true of “The Sopranos”, whose pilot also short-shrifted many characters.)
This is inherently an anti-dramatic choice (ever moreso here than in “The Sopranos”, where Tony at least had a psychologist to discuss his inner conflict with). Simply put, it requires a genius level of writing to pull off: there is not one easy way to dramatize internal struggles, so the show deftly uses every trick in the book at different times. It’s a tightrope walk, and it has been for all six seasons, but so far it’s pulled it off beautifully.
Next we’ll look at some rules this pilot exemplified...
Cocky Don Draper is an advertising copy writer in 1960 trying to find a way to sell cigarettes now that it’s well known that they cause cancer. Shy Peggy is his new secretary, getting trained in by worldly secretary Joan, who is secretly having an affair with Don’s boss Roger. Don must work with slimy account executive Pete, and his equally slimy sidekicks Harry, Ken and Paul. In the pilot, Don nails the pitch, asks his mistress to marry him, then goes back to his wife. Peggy finds out that she’s to be sexually harassed, gets birth control, then agrees to sleep with Pete.
PART 1: IS
THIS A STRONG CONCEPT FOR AN ONGOING SERIES? (14/20)
The Pitch: Does this concept excite everyone who
hears about it?
Does the concept satisfy the
urges that get people to love and recommend this type of series?
Not really.It
was unlike anything ever seen, and had to build an audience based almost
solely on good reviews and word-of-mouth.
Does
the series establish its own unique point of view on its setting?
No.We enter the story from a different angle every week.
Is
there a central relationship we haven’t seen in a series before?
Yes,
competing ad men.Secretaries as
friends.
Does
the ongoing concept of the series contain a fundamental (and possibly fun)
ironic contradiction?
Yes,
we’re rooting for characters that we know are doomed, enjoy their
transgression and also enjoy being horrified by them.
Does
the concept meet the content expectations of one particular intended network,
venue, or audience?
Yes,
it invented the template for AMC: smart, morally ambiguous, boldly shot,
concerned with unintended consequences.
Even
if the setting is unpleasant, is there something about this premise that is
inherently appealing? (Something that will make the audience say, “Yes, I
will be able to root for some
aspect of this situation to recur episode after episode.”)
Yes,
we don’t like Don much, but we cheer for his opposition to Pete.We root for Peggy more.We’re not convinced that we’re going
to like the ad writing, but we love the sex.
Series Fundamentals: Will this concept generate a
strong ongoing series?
Is
there one character (or sometimes two, in separate storylines) that the
audience will choose to be their primary hero (although these heroes should
probably be surrounded by an ensemble that can more than hold their own)?
Two
heroes: Don and Peggy
If
this is a TV series, is the hero role strong enough to get an actor to
abandon a movie career, come to work in TV for the first time, and sign a
five-year contract before shooting the pilot? (And even if not for TV, is the
hero role still that strong, simply for narrative purposes?)
Maybe it could have, but Weiner did
the near-impossible: he convinced a network to hire two virtually unknown
American actors for the leads, who are both insanely good.
Is the
show set in an unsafe space?
Very
much so: They prey on each other and there are none of our office workplace
protections.
Is
this a setting that will bring (or has brought) different economic classes
together?
Yes,
the agency is an uncomfortable mix of poor secretaries, self-made-men and
silver-spoon-men.
Will
trouble walk in the door on a regular basis?
Sort of: A different client every
week, but that won’t always be the source of the trouble.Sometimes the trouble will be as
simple as some memory from the past that wells up to bother one of the
characters.
Will
the heroes be forced to engage in both physical and cerebral activity on a
regular basis?
Sort of.They aren’t required to be physical, but their machismo
keeps getting them up on their feet.
Are
there big stakes that will persist episode after episode?
Sort of.We won’t always care about the pitch, some weeks we’re
just worried about their souls, or their victims,
Will
the ongoing situation produce goals or mini-goals that can be satisfactorily
resolved on a regular basis?
Yes:
sell the pitch.
The Pilot: Will this pilot episode be marketable and
generate word of mouth?
Does
the pilot contain all of the entertainment value inherent in the premise
(rather than just setting everything up and promising that the fun will start
next week)?
Yes, lots of drinking and sex, money is made, morality
is compromised, eras are contrasted, etc.
Does the pilot feature an image we haven’t seen before (that can be used
to promote the show)?
Yes, great clothes, smoking men, painted 1960s ads.
Is
there something bold, weird, and never-before-seen about this concept and/or
pilot?
Yes,
the people are meaner, colder, and more lost, the historical irony is
foregrounded, the period recreation is shockingly good.
Is there a “HOLY CRAP!” scene somewhere along the way in the pilot (to
create word of mouth)?
Sort of with Pete and the stripper, Peggy letting Pete in.
Does
the pilot build up potential energy that will power future episodes (secrets
that will come out, potential romances, etc.)?
Yes,
who is this wife?Does she know
about all the affairs?
Even
if this is episodic, is there a major twist or escalation at the end (though
sometimes this twist will only be new to, or only revealed to, the audience)
that will kick future episodes up a notch?
Yes,
although it’s only a reveal to us: this promiscuous monster has a family.
PART 2: IS THIS A COMPELLING
HERO (OR CO-HEROES IN DIFFERENT STORYLINES)? (15/16)
Believe: Do we recognize the hero (or co-heroes) as
human?
Does
the hero have a moment of humanity early on? (A
funny, or kind, or oddball, or out-of-character, or comically vain, or
unique-but-universal “I thought I was the only one who did that!” moment?)
Don,
fair: stands up to busboy’s boss, funny: story about Old Gold weevils, Peggy:
we identify with her first-day nervousness, empathize with her
humiliation.She doesn’t do much
to make us like her, but really all she has to do is not be as horrible as
everybody else (even the busboy!)
Does
the hero have a well-defined public identity?
Don:
Yes, the best and coolest guy there, the lothario. Peggy: Yes, the innocent
new girl.
Does
that ironically contrast with a hidden interior self?
Don:
Yes, he’s miserable, wants to run away, re-marry. Peggy: Yes, she ambitious
and open to sexual advances.
Does
the hero have three rules he or she lives by (either stated or implied)?
Don:
Be the best, “live like there’s no tomorrow”, dominate others, Peggy: Be
good, take whatever opportunity comes,“I always try to be honest.” “I really am a very responsible person”
Does
the hero have a consistent metaphor family (drawn
from his or her job, background, or developmental state)?
Don: a mix of immaturity: “I don’t want to go to
school tomorrow” “He doesn’t know I’m sleeping in here, does he?” and
paternalism, “Sorry about Mr. Campbell, here.He left his manners back at the fraternity house”, Peggy:
Secretarial school
Does
the hero have a default personality trait?
Don:
Arrogant, Peggy: Humble
Does
the hero have a default argument tactic?
Don:
Let’s you talk, then lays down his judgment and leaves, Peggy: Avoids
conflict
Care: Do we feel for the hero (or co-heroes)?
Does the hero have a great flaw
that is the flip side of his or her great strength?
Don: pathological liar, callous,
Peggy: overly humble, bad taste in men
Does
the hero feel that this flaw cannot be resolved until it’s time to abandon
the world of the show?
Yes,
Don feels like has to be both for the job, and he’ll be proven right. Peggy
feels the same, but she’ll be proven wrong)
Does
the flaw resonate with the theme and/or setting of the show?
Yes,
this is a show about Don’s life, advertising’s lies, and America’s lies.
Invest: Can we trust the hero (or co-heroes) to
tackle this challenge?
Does the hero have a great
strength that is the flip side of his or her great flaw?
Don: great writer, super-macho, Peggy:
Honesty, ambition
Is the hero good at his or her
job (or family role, if that’s his or her primary role)?
Don: Yes, good at ad job, Peggy: Yes,
determined to be good at secretary job
Is the
hero surrounded by people who sorely lack his or her most valuable quality?
Don:
Yes, he’s more blunt, smarter and a better writer. Peggy: Yes, she much more
likable than the other secretaries.
Is the
hero curious?
Don:
Yes, talks to waiters, etc., Peggy: Yes, tries to dope the place out, etc.
Is the
hero generally resourceful?
Don: Somewhat, he will be in later
episodes, but he’s floundering in this pilot, Peggy: Not really.
Does the hero use unique skills to solve problems (rather than doing what
anybody else on the show would do)?
Don:
Yes, uses his experience, Peggy: uses the skills she just learned.
PART 3: IS THIS A STRONG
ENSEMBLE (BEYOND THE HERO OR CO-HEROES)?(11/13)
Powerful: Is each member
of the ensemble able to hold his or her own?
If
this is a network TV series, are there at least two more roles that are
strong enough to get TV veterans to sign their own five-year contracts? (And
even if not for TV, are the characters still that strong, simply for
narrative purposes?)
Yes,
John Slattery signed on for the boss and Vincent Kartheiser signed on for
Pete.
Are
all of the other regular roles strong enough on the page in this first
episode to attract great actors? (ditto)
Yes.The cast
members are all excellent.
Does each member of the ensemble
have a distinct and defensible point of view?
Yes.
Is
each character defined primarily by actions and attitudes, not by his or her
backstory?
Yes.Only
Pete’s backstory is important at the pilot, but it’s not introduced in his first
scene.
Do all of the
characters consciously and unconsciously prioritize their own wants, rather
than the wants of others? (Good characters don’t
serve good, evil characters don’t serve evil.)
Oh yes, very, very
much so.Good and evil are not
in this show’s vocabulary.
Do
most of the main characters have some form of decision-making power? (And is
the characters’ boss or bosses also part of the cast, so that major decisions
will not be made by non-regulars?)
Not enough: As so often happens, they
didn’t want the main boss to be a character, but they had to add him (Robert
Morse) and keep upping his role as the season went on.
Balanced: Do the members
of the ensemble balance each other out?
Whether this is a premise or
episodic pilot, is there one point-of-view who needs this world explained
(who may or may not be the hero)?
Yes: Peggy
Does
it take some effort for the POV character to extract other characters’
backstories?
Peggy isn’t asking any questions yet.Certainly it will take mighty efforts
for anyone to extract Don’s backstory.
Are the non-3-dimensional
characters impartially polarized into head, heart and gut (or various forms
of 2-way or 4-way polarization)?
Don and Peggy are 2-way polarized: the
cocky liar victimizer vs. the humble truth-teller victim.Everyone else is gut at this point,
but eventually the others will polarize.
Does each member of the ensemble
have a distinct metaphor family (different from the hero’s, even if they’re
in the same profession)?
Not all, not yet, but we get
glimpses: Joan: Cosmo “those darling little ankles, I’d find a way to make
them sing!” Pete: Money: “Adding money and education doesn't take
the rude edge out of people.”
Does
each member of the ensemble have a different default personality trait?
Most
of them, Pete: smarm, Roger: smugly jocular, Joan: smart-sex-kitten.The other half the cast will be
better defined later.
Does
each member of the ensemble have a different default argument tactic?
Is
there at least one prickly character who creates sparks whenever he or she
appears?
Yes, Pete, for now.
PART 4: IS THE PILOT
EPISODE A STRONG STAND-ALONE STORY AND GOOD TEMPLATE FOR THE ONGOING SERIES?
(19/22)
Template: Does this match
and/or establish the standard format of this type of series
Does
the pilot have (or establish) the average length for its format?
Mostly, it was written for HBO, but they were able to get
it down to 48 minutes and then ran it with limited commercial interruptions.
If
this is intended for a form of commercial media, does the pilot have the
right number of commercial breaks for its intended venue?
Mostly, they essentially skip the first break, making it a
four act pilot, when it would later be a five-act show.
If
this is intended for commercial TV, does every act end on a cliffhanger or
escalation, especially the middle one (and, if not intended for commercial
TV, does it still have escalations happening in roughly the same places,
simply for narrative purposes)?
Not really, the act breaks had to be
shoe-horned in and they’re somewhat awkward and lacking in suspense.In fact, they’re still awkward on the
show today.Weiner either won’t
or can’t create traditional act breaks.
Does
the pilot establish the general time frame for most upcoming episodes of this
series?
Yes,
we cover 24 hours and Don and Peggy both take part in the final confrontation
(over Pete stealing the research) and then they both end that day with
shocking (to us) bedfellows.
Do all
of the pilot’s storylines intercut believably within that time frame?
Yes.
If
this is a premise pilot, is the basic premise established by the midpoint,
leaving time for a foreshortened typical episode story in the second half?
Yes, it’s only a premise pilot for Peggy, and her
situation is quickly established.
Pilot Story Fundamentals: Does the pilot
episode have a strong story?
Does
the pilot provide at least one satisfactory stand-alone story (even if that
story is just the accomplishment of a mini-goal)?
Yes,
Don makes the sale.
Is
this episode’s plot simple enough to spend more time on character than plot?
Yes,
as always with this show, there’s on a thin wisp of plot.
Is the
pilot’s challenge something that is not just hard for the hero to do (an
obstacle) but hard for the hero to want to do (a conflict)?
Don: no. It’s hard to do, but not hard
to want to do.Peggy: yes.She’s a good girl but she finds out
that she’s expected to prostitute herself.
First Half: Is the problem established in a
way that reflects human nature?
Does
the hero start out with a short-term goal for this episode?
Don
already has his main challenge: a cigarette pitch.Peggy just wants to survive.
Does a
troubling situation (episodic pilot) or major change in the status quo
(premise pilot) develop near the beginning of the episode?
Don
has no ideas, gets roped into Mencken’s pitch as well. Peggy is in over her
head.
Does
the hero eventually commit to dealing with this situation personally?
Yes,
Don finds out Roger is counting on him on Lucky Strike, agrees to help on
Menken’s, Peggy commits to following all of Joan’s shocking advice.
Do the
hero’s efforts quickly lead to an unforeseen conflict with another person?
Don
finds it hard to work with Pete, Peggy gets humiliated by the doctor and
others.
Does
the hero try the easy way throughout the second quarter?
Don
creates a half-ass Mencken’s campaign, drinks before Lucky Strike meeting
instead of coming up with anything, Peggy tries to make everybody happy.
Does
this culminate in a major midpoint setback or escalation of the problem
(whether or not there’s a commercial break)?
Mencken’s meeting ends in disaster.Peggy recoils from Pete.
Second Half: Is the mini-goal resolved as
the ongoing trouble escalates?
Does
the hero try the hard way from this point on?
Don
pulls Lucky out at the last minute, makes up with Rachel Menken, Peggy
realizes she’ll have to put out, hits on Don.
By
halfway through, are character decisions driving the plot, rather than
external plot complications?
Yes.
Are
the stakes increased as the pace increases and the motivation escalates?
Not really.This show never really escalates.It’s just as likely to ramp down.
Does a
further setback force the hero to adopt a wider view of the problem?
Peggy is rebuffed and criticized by Don, Don meets his
match in Rachel Menken.
After
that setback, does the hero finally commit to pursuing a corrected goal?
Don
goes home to his wife.Peggy
reconsiders her options.
Before
the final quarter of the story begins, (if not long before) has the hero
switched to being proactive, instead of reactive?
Yes
for Don, reaching out to Rachel, and then his family.Peggy remains reactive, but she
becomes more responsive.
After
the climax, does either the hero, the point of view character or a guest star
have a personal revelation and/or life change, possibly revealed through
reversible behavior?
Yes,
Peggy engages in life-creation with Pete, who she rebuffed earlier in the
day.Don does what he should
have done the night before: go home.
PART 5: IS EACH
SCENE THE BEST IT CAN BE? (20/23) Peggy wakes up Don because Pete is
there.Pete hits on Peggy and
they discuss the campaigns.
The Set-Up: Does this scene begin with the essential
elements it needs?
Were tense and/or
hopeful (and usually false) expectations for this interaction established
beforehand?
Yes, we saw Don
fall asleep in his office and wondered if there would be consequences, Peggy
was warned a lot about Don.
Does the scene eliminate small
talk and repeated beats by cutting out the beginning (or possibly even the
middle)?
Somewhat, when Peggy wakes Don up
she’s already been interacting with Pete.
Is this an intimidating setting
that keeps characters active?
Somewhat for Don, your office isn’t a
good place to sleep.Moreso for
Peggy and Pete, who are intimidated by Don.
Is one of the scene partners not
planning to have this conversation (and quite possibly has something better
to do)?
Yes, she has to wake Don up, and he’d
rather stay asleep.
Is there at least one non-plot
element complicating the scene?
Not really.
Does the scene establish its own
mini-ticking-clock (if only through subconscious anticipation)?
Yes, “it’s time for your 11 o’clock
meeting, Mr. Draper.
The Conflict: Do the conflicts play out in a lively
manner?
Does this scene both advance the
plot and reveal character?
It’s both equally.
Are one or more characters in
the scene emotionally affected by this interaction or action as the scene
progresses?
Yes,
she’s humiliated.
Does the audience have (or
develop) a rooting interest in this scene (which may sometimes shift)?
Yes, we’re on Peggy’s side at first,
as our POV character, then we switch to Don as she wilts and he stands up for
her.
Are two agendas genuinely
clashing (rather than merely two personalities)?
Yes, Pete wants Peggy, Don wants Pete
to shut up.
Does the scene have both a
surface conflict and a suppressed conflict (one of which is the primary
conflict in this scene)?
Surface conflict: Pete wants to sleep
with Don’s secretary, suppressed: Pete wants Don’s job.
Is the suppressed conflict
(which may or may not come to the surface) implied through subtext (and/or
called out by the other character)?
Yes, Peggy as the job: runs his eyes
up her body, says “I’m working my way up.” He’s referring to her body and his
hoped-for career.It’s really
Don he’s leering at.
Are the characters cagy (or in
denial) about their own feelings?
Peggy clams up and
takes it, but Don and Pete are both pretty direct.
Do characters use verbal tricks
and traps to get what they want, not just direct confrontation?
Not really, they’re pretty blunt.
Is there re-blocking, including
literal push and pull between the scene partners (often resulting in just one
touch)?
Yes, lots. Peggy is
intimidated by him, but she has to wake him up by touching him before he ever
looks at her.
Are objects given or taken,
representing larger values?
Peggy gives him a
water and two aspirin, turning her into his mom, which he very much needs.
If this is a big scene, is it
broken down into a series of mini-goals?
Yes: Peggy wants to wake Don up, Don
wants not to get caught sleeping, Pete wants to fetch Don, Pete wants to hit
on Peggy.
The Outcome: Does this scene change the story going
forward?
As a result of this scene, does
at least one of the scene partners end up doing something that he or she
didn’t intend to do when the scene began?
Don wakes up and heads to the meeting,
Pete’s pursuit of Peggy is shut down for now.
Does the outcome of the scene
ironically reverse (and/or ironically fulfill) the original intention?
Not really.
Are previously-asked
questions answered?
Yes, we finds out
about Peggy’s past.
Are new questions posed that
will be left unanswered for now?
Yes, will Pete
succeed with Peggy?
Is the audience left with a
growing hope and/or fear for what might happen next? (Not just in the next
scene, but generally)
We’re
worried for Peggy, with good reason.
Does the scene cut out early, on
a question (possibly to be answered instantly by the circumstances of the
next scene)?
It cuts out early on Don’s apology to
Peggy
PART 6: IS THIS
POWERFUL DIALOGUE? (13/14)
Empathetic: Is the dialogue true to human nature?
Does the writing demonstrate
empathy for all of the characters?
Not really yet.Harry, Ken and Paul are all quite vague and unpleasant at this point.
Does each of the characters,
including the hero, have a limited perspective?
Extremely
so.
Are the characters resistant to
openly admitting their feelings (to others and even to themselves)?
Very much so.
Do the characters avoid saying
things they wouldn’t say?
Very much so.Nobody stands up for themselves and
says “that’s not right!”They
all know the deal.
Do the characters listen poorly?
Very much so.
Do the characters interrupt each
other more often than not?
Yes.
Specific: Is the dialogue specific to this world and
each personality?
Does the dialogue capture the
culturally-specific syntax of the characters (without necessarily attempting
to replicate non-standard pronunciation)?
Yes.
Does the dialogue capture the
jargon of the profession and/or setting?
Very much so.
Does the dialogue capture the
tradecraft of the profession being portrayed?
Very much so.
Heightened: Is the dialogue more pointed and dynamic
than real talk?
Is the dialogue more concise
than real talk?
Yes.Everything is very pithy.
Does the dialogue have more
personality than real talk?
Yes. Don points at his drink and says
to the waiter: “Do this again.”
Is there a minimum of commas in
the dialogue (the lines are not prefaced with Yes, No, Well, Look, or the
other character’s name)?
Yes, very few names are spoken.
Do non-professor characters
speak without dependent clauses, conditionals, or parallel construction?
The characters are writers so they can
get away with it a little bit: I can’t deny that this is a great line: “Besides, you have to let them know what kind of guy you are. Then they'll
know what kind of girl to be.”
Is there one gutpunch scene,
where the subtext falls away and the characters really lay into each other?
Somewhat: the drink scene with Don and
Rachel: she breaks through, but he only flinches for a second.
PART 7: DOES THE PILOT MANAGE ITS TONE
TO CREATE AND FULFILL AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS? (8/10)
Genre and Mood: Does the series tap into
pre-established expectations?
Does the series fit within one
genre (or compatible sub-genres)?
Not really.It’s a sometimes uncomfortable mix of
drama, comedy, procedural, soap, etc.
Are unrealistic genre-specific
elements a big metaphor for a more common experience (not how life really is,
but how life really feels)?
Somewhat: we’ll eventually come to see
that it’s a metaphor for American re-creation, and our ability to create fake
narratives that overpower our reality.
Separate from the genre, does
the pilot establish an overall mood for the series?
Yes: cool-but in a hostile way, smart,
sexy,
If there are multiple
storylines, do they establish the spectrum of moods available within that
overall mood?
Yes: the Mencken’s storyline is more
comic, at least for Don, and the cigarette storyline is more serious.Peggy also has the serious (the
doctor) and the comic (the switchboard)
Is there a moment early on that
establishes the type and level of jeopardy?
Yes, the super-cool opening club
scene, Peggy in the elevator.
Framing: Does the pilot set, reset, upset and
ultimately exceed its own expectations?
Are there framing devices
(flashforwards, framing sequences and/or first person narration) to set the
mood, pose a dramatic question, and/or pose ongoing questions?
The closest thing we get is the title sequence, which
implies that someone will jump out of a window.I don’t know if that sequence predates the episode, but it
seems to foreshadow a suicide, and has ever since, even now that an actual
suicide has come and gone.Every shot of the building in this episode is looking straight down
off a ledge or straight up at the widows.This saved money because it meant they didn’t have to
dress the street, but it also feels like a call-back to the suicidal title
sequence.
Is there a dramatic question
posed early on, which will establish in the audience’s mind which moment will
mark the end of the pilot?
For Don, we start with the question of
what the pitch will be.For
Peggy, Harry says of her: “She might be assigned to one of us.” Which is an
ironic dramatic question.
Does foreshadowing create anticipation
and suspense (and refocus the audience’s attention on what’s important)?
Don talks about the danger of himself
getting fired, not of losing the account, or hurting the firm, etc.
Are set-up and pay-off used to
dazzle the audience, distracting attention from plot contrivances?
Don’s extreme irresponsibility is set
up enough that we’re not surprised that he walks into the meeting with
nothing, which is a somewhat dubious plot contrivance.
Is the dramatic question of the
pilot episode’s plot answered near the end of the story?
Yes, we find out who Peggy is really
“assigned” to: Pete.
PART 8: DOES
THE PILOT CREATE A MEANINGFUL ONGOING THEME? (14/14)
Pervasive: Is the
theme interwoven into many aspects of the show?
Does
the ensemble as a whole have a unique philosophy about how to fill their role
(and competition from an allied force with a different philosophy)?
Yes,
they’re the best and their customer is never right.We don’t meet their competition yet, but we sense that
they’re the alpha dogs.
Does
the pilot have a statement of philosophy and/or theme, usually either at the
beginning or ¾ of the way in. (Sometimes this will be the ensemble’s
statement of philosophy, sometimes this merely be the implied theme of the
series itself.)
Don
gives two angry statements of philosophy in the third quarter: “we sell
happiness” and “love was made up by guys like me to sell nylons”, but the
first scene also counts: when the black waiter admits that he wouldn’t change
(cigarette brands) even if his world ceased to exist, which is Don’s true
s.o.p.
Can the show’s overall ongoing
theme be stated in the form of a classic good vs. good (or evil vs. evil)
dilemma?
Good vs. good: happiness vs. honesty,
pride vs. ambition, pleasure vs. responsibility
Throughout the pilot, do the
characters have to choose between goods, or between evils, instead of
choosing between good and evil?
Yes. Don has to choose between doing
crappy work and getting fired.Peggy has to choose between losing her job and getting pregnant.
Are
the storylines in the pilot thematically linked (preferably in an indirect,
subtle way)?
Yes,
they’re both about selling your soul.
Are small details throughout the
pilot tied into the theme?
Very much so.Don orders an “old-fashioned” in the
first scene, for instance.Every
prop and piece of clothing on this show is heavy with meaning.
Will
the heroes grapple with new moral gray areas in each episode?
Yes,
sell cigarettes even though they’re poison?More similar questions will follow.
Grounded: Do the
stakes ring true to the world of the audience?
Does the series’ set-up reflect
the way the world works?
Yes, everything is astutely observed.
Does the series have authentic
things to say about this type of setting?
Very much so.It’s all about the fascinating
details of this lost world.
Does the ongoing concept include
twinges of real life national pain?
Very much so: How did we get
here?Have our social
transformations been worth the pain we’ve been through?For baby-boomers: Why were our
parents so distant and unhappy?
Are these issues presented in a
way that avoids moral hypocrisy?
Yes.
Do all of the actions in the
pilot have real consequences?
Yes, though we don’t see all of those
consequences in this episode.
Untidy: Is the
dilemma ultimately irresolvable?
Do the characters refuse (or
fail) to synthesize the meaning of the pilot episode’s story, forcing the
audience to do that?
Yes, very much so.Nobody ever has any idea what it all
means on this show.
Does the end of the pilot leave
the thematic dilemma wide open and irresolvable?
