The first words spoken in “Mad Men,” Season 4, Episode 1: “Public Relations” are “Who is Don Draper?,” asked by a reporter for Advertising Age. The question is an obvious riff from the opening line to “Atlas Shrugged.”
Spoilers follow.
It’s been about a year since the end of Season Three, and lots of changes have taken place. The new firm, Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price, has offices, albeit a little smaller than the previous suite. The firm is also going through the birth pangs of a new start up, still building up a client list, still struggling to get itself known in the cut throat world of early 1960s advertising. Hence the attempt to whip up a little public relations with a feature on Don Draper, the star of SCD, in a trade journal.
The attempt is a disaster. Don Draper, for reasons that every fan of “Mad Men” knows, is a little reticent about talking about himself. Don Draper’s life is not something that bears close examination.
Don is not a happy man on Thanksgiving 1964. That date is only indicated by a bizarre dinner scene in which Sally, Don’s increasingly disturbed daughter, starts to act bulimic, much to the distress of her mom and dinner guests. The other is a passing reference to the murder of a group of civil rights activists in Mississippi.
Don’s unhappiness is coming from a variety of causes. The divorce is not sitting well, with Beatty and her new husband being tardy about moving out of the house and staying out for all hours. Don Draper’s sex life is, well, a little complicated.
Don goes on a date, arranged by his good friend, the ever-witty Roger Sterling. The woman is a wannabe actress, but she is quite charming, and fends off Draper’s advances with a smile and a promise that her resistance may crumble with time. Don must find this intriguing. However, his needs in the boudoir have become, shall we say, complicated.
Don is now in the habit of hiring call girls to slap him around in the middle of sex. This is something new and, I must say, rather disturbing. Is this one way of assuaging the guilt feelings?
Work is not any happier. Peggy and Peter, in an attempt to boost the bottom line, hire a couple of women to have a public fight over a ham, sold by one of the clients. This gooses up last minute Thanksgiving sales of the ham, but also causes a potential embarrassment when one of the women files charges on the other for assault, causing Don to have to cough up some bail and bribe money. This might have been very embarrassing for the firm.
The thing that causes Don Draper to melt down in rage is a potential client who manufactures and sells two-piece bathing suits (not “bikinis,” thank you very much). The clients would like an ad campaign that is a bit too wholesome for Don’s taste, who believes (correctly I think) that a little titillation goes a long way toward selling ladies’ swimwear. It ends with Draper ordering the clients out of his office.
The episode comes full circle as Don Draper sits down with a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Don has found a way to open up, by telling the fascinating stories of how the staid, institutional firm from the first three seasons has become the scrappy, struggling ad company we see in Season 4. At least there will no awkward questions about who Don Draper is, really. That is the sort of public relations no one needs.
Source:
Mad Men, Public Relations, TV.Rage
