“Severance,” the first of the last seven episodes of Mad Men, arrived on critics’ doorsteps recently along with the usual request from creator Matthew Weiner that we not reveal what year the new episode takes place in. I’m honoring that request here, partly because it’s not that significant, partly because some of the show’s fans care deeply enough about the secret, and partly because that secret is really a red herring.
See, the truth is, the new episode of Mad Men (which returns April 5) does not take place in any one year. Mad Men never does.
Mad Men is about a lot of things: history, business, love, family, sex, secrets. But its ultimate subject is time. In the first season’s finale, “The Wheel,” Don Draper said something about Kodak’s slide projector that has become a sort of an elevator pitch for Mad Men itself: “It’s a time machine.”
And sure it is, but not just in the Sherman-and-Peabody Wayback Machine sense. Mad Men is a complicated, quantum time machine that doesn’t go in a single direction or even exist at a single point in the continuum. It moves us backwards then takes us forwards; it delves into the history of its own history; it tells us that we are all live simultaneously in our past, our present and our future.
On the one hand, over seven seasons, the show’s simple but radical premise has been to say: Here is what it looks like, how it feels, for life to pass, in something close to real time. Most TV series distend time, deny it, cheat it. M*A*S*H took 11 years to fight a three-year war. Bart Simpson is still in grade school after 25 years.
Mad Men, on the other hand, has covered about a decade of its time in about a decade of our own. (The pilot, set in spring 1960, was shot in 2006; when we left the halls of SC&P last year, it was July 1969.) We see hair grow longer, hemlines shorter. Paul Kinsey’s blazers give way to Stan Rizzo’s fringe jackets. The children grow up (including four—count ’em, four—actors playing Bobby Draper). The colors get more saturated, the social mores more extreme, the cultural power shifting toward youth. Characters get prosperous, get fat, get lost.
It’s a potent effect: Just like in life, you don’t notice the gradual changes until you look back and—Jesus Christ—how far have they come? How far have we? Where has the time gone, besides into the creases of our foreheads?
At the same time, Mad Men‘s sense of history is so subtle and rich–and remarkably free of period clichés–because it’s constantly aware that the past has its own history. It’s Don Draper, flashing back to his impoverished life in the 1930s and his wandering days in California. It’s Conrad Hilton, dreaming of a hotel on the moon, yet driven by his memories of growing up in territorial New Mexico. It’s Betty’s dad, in 1963, pouring Don’s expensive alcohol down the sink because he thinks it’s still Prohibition. It’s Bobby Draper, in season six’s “The Flood,” tearing at his bedroom wallpaper to get at the wallpaper underneath. On Mad Men, history is a palimpsest. There is always wallpaper under the wallpaper.
Mad Men gets something essential about being human: we experience time both as a linear one-way trip forward and as a nonlinear four-dimensional space, where it’s always today and 20 years ago and every year you’ve ever lived through. Old people know this: the elderly will describe how a memory of a half-century ago can be more vivid than something that happened last week. It’s a perspective you rarely see in TV, as concerned as the medium is with youth, plot and the immediate moment.
That Mad Men has built a show around this awareness–what another era might just call “wisdom”–is one reason it’s both one of the greatest TV series of its period and one of the least successfully imitated.
In “Severance,” that dual consciousness of time is more prominent than ever. The first half of season seven ended with Don saving himself once again, engineering the sale of SC&P to McCann-Erickson. It was the kind of resolution you might expect to see in a series finale: America is on the Moon, the partners are now rich, Bert Cooper is soft-shoeing off to the afterlife and everyone else, like Peggy, has come a long way since we met them. Good job, everyone! Cue up the Beatles’ “The End” and let’s call it a wrap!
19 Real-Life Ads from the "Mad Men" Era
Volkswagen, April 11, 1960 Early in Season 1, Don Draper comes across this Volkswagen ad in an issue of LIFE Magazine. He tells his colleagues he doesn’t know what he hates more, “the ad or the car.” But after discussing Volkswagen's strategy at length, he’s forced to concede, “Love it or hate it, we’ve been talking about it for the last 15 minutes.” VW’s Lemon ad, along with its “Think Small” campaign, was widely considered some of the most innovative advertising of the 20th century for its honesty, irony and freshness.LIFE MagazineCoca-Cola, April 11, 1960 Although Sterling Cooper never counts Coca-Cola as a client, Coca-Cola nearly counts Betty Draper as a model. The ad she models for, later ditched when the agency decides to go with an Audrey Hepburn look over Betty’s Grace Kelly countenance, is a shot of a picture-perfect picnicking family, a counterpoint to Betty and Don’s troubled real-life family. This real Coca-Cola ad from the same year focuses not on familial love but on innocent romantic love, with words by a copywriter who dealt heavily in exclamation points.LIFE MagazineMaidenform, May 16, 1960 One of Sterling Cooper’s clients in Season 2 is Playtex, whose executives are envious of the head-turningly sexy ad campaign by their competitor, Maidenform. Sterling Cooper comes up with an equally sexy campaign that shows the two sides of every woman, at least as contained within the male fantasy: her Jackie Kennedy and her Marilyn Monroe. In its real ads at the time, Maidenform did, in fact, play up the sex factor, though they also included a substantial amount of copy touting the materials and construction behind the seductive product.LIFE MagazineAmerican Airlines, May 16, 1960 Sterling Cooper pitches American Airlines in Season 2, ultimately failing to win the account. Though the pitch meeting is never shown, some of the ideas appear in the meetings leading up to it. Taglines include the rather generic “American flies the world,” “Let’s fly away” and “This is American Airlines,” the latter accompanied by a watercolor of a plane taking off against a darkening sky. This real ad from 1960 tugs at the heartstrings, playing up American Airlines’ role in bringing families together when it counts, at great speed and an affordable price with stewardesses that “keep you feeling at home.”LIFE MagazineLucky Strike, December 12, 1960 Lucky Strike is one of Sterling Cooper’s most important clients throughout the series. The pilot episode focuses on the challenges of advertising for cigarette companies amidst a growing public awareness of the health risks associated with smoking. Don proposes emphasizing the taste and unique quality of a Lucky Strike cigarette (“It’s toasted!”). This real ad similarly focuses on taste, promoting the pleasurable experience of smoking as a distraction from the health-related drawbacks.LIFE MagazinePlaytex, June 30, 1961 Though Playtex is a client of Sterling Cooper’s, we only see the agency’s work for the company’s undergarments division. In 1960, Playtex began selling tampons, baby products and other goods. This ad for disposable diapers takes a different approach from Sterling Cooper’s usual strategy, attempting to blend in with LIFE Magazine’s content by taking the form of a pictorial essay. The arrangement of photos and captions mimics the layout of a reported photo essay, making it easy for a reader to miss, at first glance, the fact that he or she is looking at an ad. LIFE MagazinePepsi, August 31, 1962 In Season 3, Sterling Cooper produces a commercial for Patio Cola—rebranded in 1963 as Diet Pepsi—in which an Ann-Margret look-alike sings “bye bye sugar” to the tune of “Bye Bye Birdie.” This real print ad for Pepsi, from the same year that the episode takes place, relies on the same youthful glow Sterling Cooper was hoping to achieve by alluding to newly crowned superstar Ann-Margret. Youth, the ad suggests, is less about one’s age than one’s attitude (assuming it’s accompanied by a bottle of Pepsi).LIFE MagazineLufthansa, June 28, 1963 Whereas Mad Men’s pitches for airlines tend to focus on the planes and the journey, many aviation companies put their stewardesses (or at least the models playing them) front and center in their ads. This 1963 ad for Lufthansa advertises flights to “darkest Africa,” where Bob Hope had recently completed shooting the film Call Me Bwana. The flight attendant, or so the ad would have its target audience believe, is prepared to treat customers with the same gentle touch as she does George the chimpanzee and Tony the lion.LIFE MagazineBethlehem Steel, June 28, 1963 Don’s pitch for Bethlehem Steel is a picture of the Manhattan skyline with the tagline, “New York City, brought to you by Bethlehem Steel.” The company’s real-life ads also advertise not the steel itself, but things that can be made from it, in this case, soda cans. Whereas Don’s idea played on the notion of reverence for the modern metropolis, the real ad is more lighthearted and playful, imagining a day at the beach made easier by replacing bottles with lighter, smaller cans. LIFE MagazineSamsonite, July 12, 1963Mad Men’s pitch for Samsonite coincides with the legendary Muhammed Ali vs. Sonny Liston fight for World Heavyweight Champion. Don’s last-ditch idea is to play off the photo of a victorious Ali that appeared in newspapers across the country following the fight, comparing the suitcase to the boxing champion. This real Samsonite ad mentions the luggage’s durability in the copy (“dent-resistant body, strong magnesium frame”), but visually prioritizes its value as a handsome fashion accessory to take on exotic trips.LIFE MagazineHeinz, February 14, 1964 Don, Peggy and the team throw around a lot of ideas for Heinz, a hard-to-please client, from “Home is where the Heinz is” to “Heinz beans: some things never change” to “Heinz. The only ketchup.” This 1964 Heinz ad is much less sentimental, though the images it uses emphasize familial togetherness with Heinz at the center. Here, it’s the notion of variety, and the excitement of a dual-identity brought about by multiple ketchup flavors, that’s used to entice customers.LIFE MagazineAccutron, September 11, 1964 In the first episode of Season 7, Don pitches Accutron, using Freddy Rumsen as a mouthpiece. His tagline: “Accutron. It’s not a timepiece. It’s a conversation piece.” The pitch is meant to suggest that the watch makes its wearer interesting. This real Accutron ad from the mid-1960s favors simple design and a briefly stated plug for the watch’s best feature: its accuracy. The copy describes the technology that elevates the watch to best-in-class for timekeeping, so sophisticated that even the government relies on it for satellites.LIFE MagazinePhilip Morris, January 29, 1965 Philip Morris is a recurring player in Mad Men, a desirable client due to its sizable share of the cigarette market. In Season 5, Peggy is asked to brainstorm ideas for a top-secret ladies cigarette, and later, the partners pursue Commander, a Philip Morris brand. This 1965 ad, echoing both Don’s Lucky Strike pitch and real-life Lucky Strike ads, places flavor at its center. Targeting women, it sends the dual message that Philip Morris cigarettes are simply enjoyable and flavorful.LIFE MagazineSunkist, July 2, 1965 When Sterling Cooper & Partners pursues Sunkist during Season 6, Don makes a big push for advertising on color TV, which he believes will be the most effective way to advertise a fruit whose name itself is a color. This real Sunkist ad, though it’s in print rather than on television, uses bright color to its advantage to snap readers’ attention into focus. From bright orange lettering to the shiny oranges to the use of a redheaded model, the ad creates a visual counterpart for the experience it’s meant to sell: “real citrus excitement.”LIFE MagazineHonda, August 13, 1965 Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce only pretends to shoot a commercial for Honda Motorcycles, so we never see any completed work on the show. Honda’s actual campaign at the time took a friendly approach. This ad’s copy suggests that nice people ride Hondas, which the well-dressed couple in the photo reinforces. Playing up its ease of use (“Almost anyone can handle it”), the ad conveys the message that motorcycles are not just for those who prefer leather—white gloves and a knee-length skirt will do just as well.LIFE MagazinePond's, August 22, 1965 In the show, results from a focus group suggest that the best way to target potential Pond’s buyers is to play on young women’s dreams of getting married. This Pond’s ad from 1965 targets a slightly older demographic, as the model, French actress Jacqueline Huet, was a married mother. The visual choices contribute to a sense of elegance and maturity, not least of all the use of a Parisian backdrop, European architecture and a sophisticated gown. The ad is imbued with a slightly modern sensibility, appealing to busy working mothers.LIFE MagazineJohn Deere, April 7, 1967 When remembering the Season 3 episode featuring John Deere, viewers will think first of the gruesome office accident involving a lawnmower. We never actually get to see the agency’s work for the company. The company’s real advertisements, later in the decade, sold lawnmowers by emphasizing how little time those who bought one would end up spending on it. It’s a bold way of circumventing the problem that the company’s product, for many customers, is something they need but don’t necessarily want.LIFE MagazineChevrolet, October 27, 1967 Sterling Cooper & Partners works long and hard in an attempt to secure Chevy’s business, but the company proves a tough customer. This two-page spread from 1967 takes on a lot a once: It introduces the next year’s models, targets a specific demographic (youthful, affluent) and uses significant copy space to tout its use of computers, explain new features and highlight safety, including a brand new safety measure: the seatbelt. LIFE MagazineHeineken, September 12, 1969 Don pitches Heineken on targeting suburban housewives by advertising in grocery stores. Conversely, this ad from the late 1960s is explicitly aimed at men, and not just any men: the model is bespectacled (intelligent), suited up (a businessman) and bejeweled (married). In contrast to ads like Chevrolet’s that rely on ample text, this one is simple, offering two straightforward takeaways. First, that Heineken’s product is distinguished from its peers. And second, that it simply tastes good.LIFE Magazine
But the story is still going on for another half season, and “Severance” finds several characters facing the fact that they’ve gotten a decade older. We saw this in last year’s outstanding “The Strategy” as Peggy grappled with turning 30: every choice you make, every opportunity grasped, means other opportunities and choices you’ve passed up forever.
Some characters find they’ve gotten plenty but it’s left them unsatisfied. Others have to deal with what happens when life, like an inept waiter at a restaurant, brings you what someone else ordered. At one point in “Severance” Don finds himself talking to a colleague who’s suffered a loss but tells Don that he’s decided to take it instead as a sign. “Of what?” Don asks.
“The life not lived.”
That life–all the lives that could have been, the few remaining that might still be–hangs over a lot of characters in this premiere. After Bert Cooper’s death in last year’s mid-season finale, mortality is ever more present. Business goes on at the office–the sale to McCann, unsurprisingly, has not meant the end of problems–but there’s also a sense among the principals of taking stock, looking back at the lives they didn’t lead while they were at their desks, relationships they didn’t establish, risks they didn’t take. More than once, there are references to characters missing airplane flights, metaphorical and literal. Some possibilities have flown, and our SC&P friends can no longer assume they can simply catch the next one.
But even as time flies like a TWA jet, the episode also has a haunting sense of time’s fluidity. Don, in particular, seems to be in a kind of waking dream state, seeing faces and images that vaguely remind him of his past. (There are even a couple of different, contradictory cues as to the date in the premiere, which I would shrug off as meaningless in a show less careful.) Maybe it’s age; maybe it’s all the intimations of mortality in the show lately. Late in the premiere, Don has a conversation with a diner waitress (Elizabeth Reaser)–she reminds him of someone, but who? where?–about an unsettling dream he had. The more he thinks about it, the less he’s certain when he dreamed it–everything’s gone a little fuzzy. “When people die,” she tells him, “everything gets mixed up.” Don exists in the same present as the rest of the characters, but he’s not all there.
It’s a bit sci-fi, as if Don has become unstuck in time like Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim. (Early in the show’s run, Weiner described Mad Men as science fiction set in the past–meaning that it uses its setting, like sci-fi might use the future, to reflect on our own world. And what is the biggest subject of science fiction if not time?) It makes for a slow but haunting last beginning. The final overture is well-orchestrated by Weiner, who wrote Tony Soprano’s extended dream in The Sopranos‘ “The Test Dream” and has always explored the spectrum of consciousness: how dreams and hallucinations can be lucid and waking life can pass like a dream.
So what time is it, when Mad Men returns for the last time? It’s today. It’s the past. It’s the past of the past. It’s the beginning of the end, and everyone is trying to figure out what time it is, before their time is finally up.
The 10 Best Outfits From Mad Men
Betty’s floral dress Her outfit for lunch with future husband Henry is quintessential Betty, with soft colors and a fitted silhouette.Carin Baer—AMCJoan’s pen necklace There are few television accessories as iconic as Joan's pen, always dangling over her chest and eventually insulted by a snarky young copywriter who sees its placement as a power play.Michael Yarish—AMCMegan’s metallic dress
Megan has all the glamour Peggy lacks, with a more fashion-forward sensibility than Betty.Michael Yarish—AMCTrudy’s floral dress
Trudy’s garden party outfit is put to good use when she and Pete impress guests with a mean performance of the Charleston.Carin Baer—AMCPeggy’s pantsuit
Peggy may not be a style icon, but she was well suited for ladder climbing in a loud vest and trouser set at a pivotal moment in her professional ascent.Jaimie Trueblood—AMCMegan’s Zou Bisou Bisou dress
Megan surprises Don and her party guests with a performance as sultry as her little black dress.Ron Jaffe—AMCJoan’s accordion-playing dress
Dresses are like armor for Joan, who wears this form-fitting number while entertaining her husband’s colleagues on the accordion—despite their marital problems.Carin Baer—AMCSally’s go-go boots Sally tries on a very grown-up look for an awards ceremony with Don and Megan, and finds herself in a grown-up situation when she witnesses Roger in a compromising position with Megan’s mother.AMCRoger’s blue suit Roger always looks sharp in a suit, but his sartorial gifts look even more impressive when surrounded by hippies on the farm where his daughter joined a commune.Michael Yarish—AMCBetty’s Italian dress For a trip to Italy with Don, Betty gives herself a makeover more befitting of her days as a model than her life as a Westchester mom.Carin Baer—AMC