HTF Blu-ray Review: MAD MEN: SEASON TWO

Mad Men: Season Two (Blu-ray)

Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: NR
Film Length: app. 616 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
HD Encoding: 1080p
HD Codec: AVC
Audio: English DTS-HD MA
Subtitles: English; English SDH; Spanish
MSRP: $49.98
Disc Format: 3 50GB
Package: Keepcase
Original Airdates: July 27-Oct. 26, 2008
Blu-ray Release Date: July 14, 2009

Introduction:

As a latecomer to AMC's hit series Mad Men, my first encounters with the two existing seasons
have been on disc. But even before I'd seen a single episode, I'd already heard that the second
season was considered something of a disappointment by fans of the first. Having now worked
my way through this very fine Blu-ray presentation from Lionsgate, I understand that reaction,
but I don't share it.

Expectations must have been unbearably high after the nine-month wait between seasons. And
when Season Two finally arrived, it turned out to have a very different sensibility than the one
that had captured viewers' imaginations the year before. The first season of Mad Men was set in
1960, the final year of the Eisenhower administration, and in countless ways the end of an era. It
presented a certain stratum of 1950s American society at its peak, just before history was about
to draw a line under it and say, "on with the show".
 

The election of John F. Kennedy, with which Season One concluded, ushered in the age in which
we begin to recognize elements of ourselves. For better or worse, that age effectively leveled all
the certainties and landmarks on which the universe of Season One depended. In Season Two,
the characters of Mad Men don't yet realize that the world as they know it is ending. The
earthquakes haven't yet hit, but the tectonic plates are shifting, and they can feel the tremors
beneath their feet. A palpable sense of uncertainty, even dread, hangs over the season, which
concludes, appropriately enough, with the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.

The Episodes:

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! Familiarity with Season One is assumed. I will do my best not
to reveal major plot developments of Season Two, but if you haven't seen Season One, you
should not continue reading past this point. 
 

Season Two opens about fifteen months later, on Valentine's Day 1962. That evening, vast
numbers of Americans sat transfixed before their TV sets as First Lady Jackie Kennedy took
them on an unprecedented tour of the White House. This was Camelot at its brightest.
 

Meanwhile, at Sterling Cooper, signs of change are everywhere. One of the male staffers has
grown a beard (a truly shocking sight after the aggressively clean shaven Season One). A huge
Xerox machine, the legendary 911, is delivered one day, presenting office manager Joan
Holloway (Christina Hendricks) with the challenge of finding a room in which to put it. It
ultimately comes to reside in the office occupied by the firm's first female copywriter, Peggy
Olson (Elisabeth Moss), whose mysterious two-month absence a year ago remains unexplained,
though office gossip says her promotion was a payoff for having Don Draper's "love child". It
takes several episodes to discover the full story of what happened to Peggy after her sudden
delivery at the conclusion of Season One. Only the viewers and her family really know about the
baby, and only viewers know that the father is Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser).
 

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is still living the hard-charging life of a high-powered ad man, but there
are warning signs. At an insurance physical, a doctor warns him to slow down, but he does it
with the resigned air of someone who knows his advice is falling on deaf ears. At the office,
Draper routinely locks horns with "Duck" Phillips, the tee-totaler who showed up at the end of
Season One, and who thinks that "creative" has entirely too much say over the business of
Sterling Cooper. On the creative side, Draper has to contend with clients who want to go after the
youth market and insist that he hire younger copywriters - people that Draper has trouble taking
seriously.
 

While Draper's conflicts at work are running plot devices throughout Season Two, they are only
devices. As we know from Season One, Draper's real issues come from a deeper place. Try as he
might, he cannot settle comfortably into the picturebook-perfect life represented by his gorgeous
wife, Betty (January Jones), ensconced in their suburban home with their two children. As his
previous pursuits have shown, Draper cannot resist the allure of women who are just the opposite
of Betty: independent, exotic, ultimately unavailable. In Season Two, he falls for a true femme
fatale in the person of Bobbie Barrett, the wife and manager of a comic that Sterling Cooper
employs for one of their ads. She's played by Melinda McGraw. Who knew the actress previously
best known as Dana Scully's sister had this hellcat in her? Bobby is the kind of woman who
enters a room with a virtual neon sign over her head flashing "Trouble!", and Draper can't resist
her. This involvement leads him to dangerous and surprising places that, by the end of the
season, reveal even more about Draper's mysterious past.
 

Other men in the firm are also facing change. Roger Sterling (John Slattery), having recovered
from his heart attacks, is facing the question of what to do with the rest of his life. By the end of the
season, he will make several major decisions, each of them fraught with consequences.  Bertram
Cooper is being nudged toward retirement by ill health (the actor, Robert Morse, genuinely looks
ill); he clearly sees Don Draper as his logical successor, but Draper's mind is elsewhere.
Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt), who we learned in Season One is a gay man so far in the closet
that he can't even acknowledge his homosexuality to himself, has made a startling decision that
is only gradually revealed; it too has consequences that I suspect we will not discover in their
entirety until later seasons. Paul Kinsey has thrown himself into the civil rights movement, but
whether that involvement is based on conviction or romanticism remains to be seen. Only the
writer, Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), seems unchanged; he's still working on his stories. (Listen
carefully in the episode where he nervously shares a story in draft; the story's title is explained in
a brief bit of dialogue, but it resonates throughout the season.)
 

Of all the male characters, though, it is Pete Campbell who sees the most change in Season Two:
in his family circumstances, in his situation at the firm, even in his approach to the job. It is a
tribute both to the writers and to Vincent Kartheiser's finely calibrated performance that, for all
his poor behavior, by the end of the season Campbell registers as a sympathetic character.
Born into a blue-blood family, Campbell has always sensed that the world in which he
was raised was a lie, and he set out on his own path in a business his family didn't accept. Now,
even that world isn't making sense, and life keeps pulling the rug out from under him.
Campbell's future direction is a giant question mark hanging over the end of Season Two.
 

Where Season Two really distinguishes itself, though, is in its treatment of the female characters.
Substantially more time is spent on their lives and points of view. Betty Draper has traded the
shrink's couch for the horse's saddle, where she enjoys the attention of a handsome young
admirer (Gabriel Mann). At home, she grows increasingly restive within the confines of the
wifely role to which her husband has assigned her, and the Draper marriage grows increasingly
strained. Like many women married in the 50s, Betty Draper has no conceptual framework in
which to understand or articulate her discontent, and she's batted back and forth between the
proprieties she knows and deeper impulses she can't resist but can't explain. January Jones gives
an exceptional and moving performance as a woman who, even as she is baffled by her own
actions, is determined no longer to remain trapped beneath her husband's thumb.
 

Back at Sterling Cooper, the formidable Joan Holloway is no longer Roger Sterling's mistress,
but she still runs the office like a curvaceous drill sergeant. Every so often, though, she betrays an
awareness that her sell-by date is fast approaching. A generation of hungry newcomers populates
the secretarial pool, like Jane (Peyton List), the new girl who replaces Peggy at Draper's desk.
Too late, Joan discovers that she has more to offer the world than tits, ass and attitude, and
though she has a fiancé by the end of the season, the future she's contemplating is not one that
appeals to her.
 

The most complete and remarkable arc of the season is Peggy's, and Elisabeth Moss pulls off the
nearly impossible job of telling Peggy's story while holding everything inside. Only occasionally,
and only for a split second at a time, does she let Peggy's mask slip. We see her at work
developing ideas and pitching to clients; at home visiting her mother and sister, who has taken
custody of her baby; at church, where a well-meaning but ultimately clueless priest played by
Colin Hanks tries to "save" her (while incidentally getting some free advertising services for
parish functions); and in various unusual situations with Draper, Sterling, Freddie Rumsen (Joel
Murray), the lush who runs the accounts department, and finally Campbell. Quiet though she may
be, Peggy is the polar opposite of Betty Draper, because she does know what she wants. That's
why, at the end of Season Two, she is the woman who is standing on the firmest ground (to the
extent there is any).

Video:

Lionsgate's transfer is generally solid, with deep blacks and good detail. I did notice occasional
video noise, usually on fine patterns (e.g., checked jackets). This occurred more often in the early
episodes, and I wasn't sure if it was a result of overcompression (this set, like Season One, has
five episodes on the first disc and four episodes, with extras, on each of the two remaining discs),
or was simply not obvious on later episodes because of the change in lighting design. Unlike
Season One, which was almost constantly lit brightly so that every set looked like a commercial,
Season Two makes room for darkness and shadow, and this tendency grows more pronounced as
the season progresses. (Don Draper and the Draper household are particularly shadowy subjects.)
Other than this minor flaw, I found nothing to fault in the transfer.

Audio:

The most active portion of the soundtrack is the DTS-HD MA trailer that precedes every episode.
Otherwise, the soundtrack of Mad Men is there to support the story, and sounds are added (as
explained by chief sound designer Jason George in his commentary to episode 12) with the
priority of advancing the narrative and not interfering with the dialogue. The DTS Master Audio
track faithfully reproduces all the subtle sounds of the office environment at Sterling Cooper, as
well as some of the more exotic sounds when several of the characters travel on business to Los
Angeles (an excursion to San Pedro provides some particularly interesting sound cues). Dialogue,
of course, is always clear and distinct, as is the eclectic selection of popular tunes that
accentuates and comments on the drama, as well as closing each episode.

Special Features:

Commentaries. As with Season One, there is commentary for every episode, two for each. I did
not have time to do more than sample them, or this review would have taken another two weeks.
As is generally the case, the writers tend to be more articulate about the intentions and themes of
an episode, while the actors and directors focus on mechanics. Creator Matthew Weiner is by far
the most voluble and enthusiastic commentator. Since there is no master listing of commentary
participants, I am providing one below:

1. "For Those Who Think Young"
   • By Matthew Weiner
   • By Jon Hamm and January Jones
2. "Flight 1"
   • By Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm
   • By Lisa Albert and Vincent Cartheiser
3. "The Benefactor"
   • By Matthew Weiner
   • By Lesli Linka Glatter, Melinda McGraw and Rich Sommer
4. "Three Sundays"
   • By Matthew Weiner and Maria and André Jacquemetton
   • By Elisabeth Moss and Colin Hanks
5. "The New Girl"
   • By Jennifer Getsinger and Robin Veith
   • By Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss and Melinda McGraw
6. "Maidenform"
   • By Matthew Weiner and Jamie Bryant
   • By Phil Abraham and Mark Moses
7. "The Gold Violin"
   • By Matthew Weiner and January Jones
   • By Bob Levinson and Bryan Batt
8. "A Night to Remember"
   • By Matthew Weiner and Robin Veith
   • By Lesli Linka Glatter and January Jones
9. "Six Month Leave"
   • By Matthew Weiner and Mike Uppendall
   • By John Slattery and Joel Murray
10. "The Inheritance"
    • By Matthew Weiner and Lisa Albert
    • By John Hamm, January Jones and Vincent Cartheiser
11. "The Jet Set"
    • By Matthew Weiner, Phil Abraham and David Carbonara
    • By Scott Hornbacher, Dan Bishop and Amy Wells
12. "The Mountain King"
    • By Matthew Weiner, Blake McCormick and Jason George
    • By Christina Hendricks and Robert Morse
13. "Meditations in an Emergency"
    • By Matthew Weiner and Elisabeth Moss
    • By Kater Gordon, Elisabeth Moss and Vincent Kartheiser

Mad Men Season Two Music Sampler (disc 1). A promo for the soundtrack album with brief
selections of songs heard throughout the season.
 

Birth of an Independent Woman, Parts I and 2 (disc 2; 19:50; 23:19). A two-part documentary,
blending interviews with scholars and footage from the show, that traces the birth of the feminist
movement and ties it to social trends emerging from the aftermath of World War II. By providing
a strictly contemporary point of view, the documentary acts as an interesting counterpoint to the
show.
 

An Era of Style (disc 3; 21:44). With narration by the show's costume designer, this
documentary gives an overview of 1960s style, using interviews with contemporary designers
and fashion historians. When they reached the mid-60s, I found myself hoping desperately that
Matthew Weiner concludes Mad Men before we're forced to look at those styles again.
 

Time Capsule (disc 3). This is an entertaining and sometimes useful historical guide, with facts
both significant and trivial. For each of the 13 episodes, it lists two or three historical references
and then provides background, sometimes in the form of text (e.g., excerpts from John O'Hara's
Meditations in an Emergency), sometimes as video (e.g., an overview of Students for Democratic
Society, or "SDS", and the Port Huron Statement).
 

Season Three promo and Clorox ad. Appearing at the start of disc 1, this says nothing about the
third season other than to expect it beginning August 16, 2009. Disc 1 also opens with a brief and
amusing ad for Clorox bleach. You'll understand it when you see it. Both of these can be skipped
with the "next chapter" button.
 

BD Live. There is no specific entry for BD Live on the discs, but they are BDJ-encoded and each
one gave a message on my system at startup that it was "checking for updates". Although none
were found, presumably there may be some in the future.

Final Thoughts:

In Eric Idle's great Beatles parody, The Rutles, there's an interview with the music executive who
passed on the most successful band in history. At the end, the interviewer simply asks: "What's it
like to be such an asshole?" That's what someone should ask HBO about Mad Men. The show is
precisely the kind of profound, gripping and nuanced drama for which HBO used to be known,
but HBO passed, and now AMC - AMC! - has it. The second season of Mad Men isn't like the first,
because creator Matthew Weiner and his team went searching for something even more complex
and difficult. They found it, and (with minor quibbles) Blu-ray delivers it in all its splendor.

Equipment used for this review:
 

Panasonic BDP-BD50 Blu-ray player (DTS-HD MA decoded internally and output as analog)
Samsung HL-T7288W DLP display (connected via HDMI)     
Lexicon MC-8
Sunfire Cinema Grand amplifier       
Monitor Audio floor-standing fronts and MA FX-2 rears
Boston Accoustics VR-MC center
Velodyne HGS-10 sub