Michael Reuben
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Mad Men: Season Four (Blu-ray)
The cover art invoking Vertigo is an apt image for Mad Men’s fourth season, in which the past weighs heavily on the present and recurrences are common, but always with a difference. By this point, the series’ creative team has abandoned any effort to make their cast of characters stand for an era – a wise move, now that they've entered a period in which American society began to splinter and polarize (just to what extent is still hotly debated). Having acquainted us in such depth with so many distinctive personalities, the show used its fourth season to focus intently on a handful of them, particularly lead ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who ended Season Three with his private life in a shambles and his professional life beginning a new chapter. It’s a fitting direction to take for an age that promoted individuality and self-expression above all things.
Or did it? This was also the age when electronic media began to homogenize society, and commercial interests, led by the ad business, began perfecting the science of parceling each of us into readily identifiable categories. “Nobody wants to think they’re a type”, says Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono), the intriguing research psychologist hired by Draper’s firm to conduct focus groups and do market research. Draper disagrees with her whole approach to advertising, but by the end of the season he ends up confirming the validity of her work.
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: NR
Film Length: app. 611 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
HD Encoding: 1080p
HD Codec: AVC
Audio: English DTS-HD MA
Subtitles: English; English SDH; Spanish
MSRP: $49.99
Disc Format: 3 50GB
Package: Keepcase with lenticular cover
Original Airdates: July 25-Oct. 17, 2010
Blu-ray Release Date: Mar. 29, 2011
The Episodes:
People tell you who they are, but we ignore it, because we want them to be who we want them to be.
Don Draper
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! Familiarity with Seasons One through Three is assumed. I will do my best not to reveal major plot developments of Season Four, but if you haven’t seen the first three seasons, you shouldn’t read further.
The end of Season Three saw Don Draper split from his wife, Betty (January Jones), move into a Manhattan apartment, and start a brand new agency, all in the shadow of the Kennedy assassination in November 1963. Season Four opens a year later, in what actor Jon Hamm calls “a reboot” and series creator Matthew Weiner calls “a new pilot”. The new agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (“SCDP”), is the scrappy upstart in town, and it’s been getting attention for the innovative approach that made Don a standout at his old firm. Still, resources are stretched thin. The firm has taken offices at a classy midtown address, but it can’t afford a table for its conference room or an office for Bert Cooper (Robert Morse). Competition for clients is fierce, and the firm remains far too dependent on a single client, Lucky Strike cigarettes, whose top executive, Lee Garner, Jr. (Darren Pettie), is well-known for casual cruelty. (In private, Don calls him “der Fürhrer”.)
Don’s life in Season Four alternates between the office, where he projects an air of confident energy and an intense work ethic, and the small downtown apartment into which he staggers every evening. According to Weiner, the apartment set was carefully designed to be realistic in layout and scale, and people from the advertising world told him they recognized the place. It’s a lonely, dark habitat where Don regrets his marital failures and misses his children. The latter sensation is made all the more painful by the rituals of scheduled visitation. Men in Don’s position often discover that they have no idea how to deal with children on their own, and Sally and Bobby Draper (Kieran Shipka and Jared Gilmore) often find themselves deposited in front of the TV or left with a babysitter while their father goes out. When I’m alone with them, says Don, I don’t know what to do, and as soon as I drop them off, I miss them.
The former Betty Draper, now Betty Francis, has a much reduced role in Season Four, because the focus is on Don and his agency. We see her primarily as she relates to Don and the children. Having leapt from one marriage directly to another, Betty is desperately trying to maintain a surface appearance of continuity by remaining in the same house with the same life, just a better husband. But feelings aren’t so easily tamed, and even the new husband, Henry (Christopher Stanley), is beginning to spot that Betty has unresolved feelings about Don. Henry’s own family doesn’t hesitate to point out Betty’s “issues”, and her daughter brings them right to the surface, because Sally is getting old enough to challenge her parents. She’s also forming friendships of which her mother doesn’t approve.
Don may not have remarried, but he’s too eligible to remain without female companionship for long. An array of romantic options presents itself in Season Four, whether brokered by well-meaning acquaintances, supplied by the workplace or flung by chance in Don’s path. Ultimately, Don’s choices in women involve who he wants to be for the rest of his life, and that, in turn, means dealing with his secret past as “Dick Whitman”, the discovery of which caused Betty to end their marriage. In Season Four, Don’s former identity continues to resurface in unexpected ways. As his past becomes more and more of a burden, especially now that Don is responsible for the future of SCDP, he starts considering whether there’s a way to resolve it once and for all.
The offices of SCDP have a different feel than those of the old Sterling Cooper, and not just because they’re smaller. It’s a younger, more informal crowd. With Roger Sterling (John Slattery) preoccupied writing his memoirs, the lead accounts man is Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser). Having insisted on a partnership in the new agency, Campbell discovers in Season Four that it’s a decidedly mixed blessing. Even when he does everything right, his efforts can be undone by events happening elsewhere over which he has no control. Now that he finally gets to be one of the grown-ups, Campbell discovers that it’s no picnic.
Among the new young faces are the graphic designers who work with Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss). Joey (Matt Long) is a part-timer, who’s not even sure he wants to be in advertising, and Stan (Jay R. Ferguson) is an overgrown adolescent whose big mouth would get him in more trouble if his work weren’t so good. These two form the core of a “boys will be boys” club that’s every bit as sexist as anything you’d find at the old Sterling Cooper, but these kids don’t observe any of the old guard’s boundaries or proprieties. Peggy can handle them (most of the time) – her face-off with Stan over a working weekend in Episode 6 is a season high point – but Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) can’t, because they don’t respect her on any level. Indeed, one could base an entire treatise about women's changing roles on the contrasting situations of Peggy and Joan in Season Four, a disparity made all the more emotional for Joan by the imminent departure of her husband, Greg (Sam Page), for Vietnam and the fact that Roger Sterling has resumed making goo-goo eyes at her. An unexpected encounter between Peggy and Joan became one of the season’s most talked-about scenes.
Historical occurrences do not have the same impact on the season’s developments as, say, the Kennedy/Nixon campaign in Season One or the Kennedy assassination in Season Three. But the characters refer to current events, and the production design, costumes and soundtrack retain the fanatical devotion to period detail for which the show is justly renowned. “The world is so dark right now”, says one of Don’s dates, referring to civil rights violence in the South. Footage from Vietnam constantly plays on TV. Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), still the firm’s head of media, has a photo of Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett in his office. On the street, Don hears the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” (a song largely about advertising), and a pair of tickets to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium becomes an important plot point in one episode. These are just a few examples.
Season Four continues Mad Men’s tradition of experimenting with the format of the one-hour (or, in this case, 47-minute) television episode. For example, Episode 8, “The Summer Man”, is organized around entries that Don writes in a journal he begins keeping in an attempt to get control of his life. The tone of Don’s voiceover, the techniques of the photography and editing, and the style of the music cues, all evoke the mood of film noir and hard-boiled detective fiction. But the only “mysteries” on display are personal. (The quotation at the top of this section is taken from the episode.)
In keeping with the notion of recurrence (with a difference) and the past returning, more than a few familiar faces return in Season Four, sometimes only briefly. I’m not going to spoil the surprise for first-time viewers, but watch for old characters who come back a little different. Even the flashbacks take a new approach. In earlier seasons, we always saw Don in his former life as Dick Whitman. This time, we don’t go so far back. Instead, we get to see how Don met Roger and talked his way into a job at Sterling Cooper. It’s a priceless story.
Video:
As with previous seasons, the first disc contains five episodes, with four on each of the other two discs. The image quality for Season Four is on a par with that of Season Three, which is to say: excellent. Video noise is all but nonexistent, colors are rich and vivid, and blacks are rich and deep (an especially important issue in the dark recesses of Don’s apartment building). As with previous seasons, watching Season Four on Blu-ray represents a noticeable step up from the viewing experience on hi-def cable, and I recommend it.
Audio:
It may not have obvious surround effects, but the sound editing for Mad Men gets more sophisticated with each season. Listen, for example, to the subtle transitions in the episode discussed earlier, “The Summer Man”, between the scenes accompanied by Don’s voiceover writing in his journal and the scenes presented directly. The layering of sound is intended to create the sensation of being inside Don’s consciousness, moving in and out of his thoughts, as his attention wanders in and out of what’s happening in front of him, and the editing is both subtle and effective. The show’s soundtrack is full of this kind of precision work, and the DTS lossless track reproduces it flawlessly. Composer David Carbonara continues to contribute effective scoring, and the choice of musical selections remains unerringly appropriate. (Listen to the punch of “Tobacco Road” at the close of episode 1.)
Special Features:
Commentaries. As with prior seasons, every episode features at least one commentary, and most feature two. Since there is no master listing of commentary participants, I am providing one below. As on previous seasons, creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner tends to dominate any track on which he participates, because his enthusiasm for the show is unequaled:
1. “Public Relations”
? By Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm
? By David Carbonara and Jamie Bryant
2. “Christmas Comes But Once a Year”
? By Joel Murray and Alex Alemanni
? By Matthew Weiner and Michael Uppendahl
3. “The Good News”
? By Melinda Page Hamilton and Jared Harris
? By Matthew Weiner and Jennifer Getzinger
4. “The Rejected”
? By Vincent Kartheiser, John Slattery and Cara Buono
? By Matthew Weiner and Chris Manley
5. “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”
? By Matthew Weiner and Erin Levy
6. “Waldorf Stories”
? By Aaron Staton, Jay Ferguson and Danny Strong
? By Matthew Weiner, Brett Johnson and Scott Hornbacher
7. “Suitcase”
? By Elisabeth Moss
? By Matthew Weiner, Tom Wilson and Chris Manley
8. “The Summer Man”
? By Christopher Stanley, Matt Long and Rich Sommer
? By Matthew Weiner and Leo Trombetta
9. “The Beautiful Girls”
? By Christina Hendricks, Cara Buono and Kiernan Shipka
? By Matthew Weiner and Dahvi Waller
10. “Hands and Knees”
? By Vincent Kartheiser and Christina Hendricks
? By Matthew Weiner and David Carbonara
11. “Chinese Wall”
? By Jessica Paré and Cara Buono
? By Matthew Weiner and Erin Levy
12. “Blowing Smoke”
? By John Slattery, Andre and Maria Jacquemetton and Robert Morse
? By Matthew Weiner, Bob Levinson and Josh Weltman
13. “Tomorrowland”
? By Kiernan Shipka, Marten Weiner and Jessica Paré
? By Matthew Weiner and Jonathan Igla
Marketing the Mustang: An American Icon (disc 1) (HD) (27:07). Narrated by authors Bob Fria and John Clor, this documentary uses vintage footage, including TV ads, to examine how Ford developed the Mustang to appeal to the burgeoning youth market, including a canny tie-in with the 1964 World’s Fair.
Divorce: Circa 1960, parts 1, 2 and 3 (disc 2) (HD) (20:29, 28:42, 30:25). CAUTION! This documentary makes liberal use of clips from all four seasons of Mad Men and should not be watched until you’ve finished Season Four. In three parts, this documentary interviews law professors, historians and sociologists to obtain a snapshot of divorce and divorce law in the early Sixties. To enliven what might otherwise be a dull, technical exercise, the interviews are interspersed with clips from both Mad Men and various B&W TV shows and movies. Part 1 covers changing attitudes toward marriage. Part 2 looks at the mechanics of divorce and the legal grounds in the days before “no fault” divorce became common. Part 3 examines the impact of divorce on the various parties involved.
Perhaps the most important point to emerge from the documentary is the relative rarity of divorce in the era when Mad Men is set and the resulting stigma attached to it. This harkens back to an episode in Season One, when Betty Draper and a neighbor clucked disapprovingly over a divorced woman who had just moved into the town. Now Betty is that woman, which explains her desire to repair the tear in her social standing as quickly as possible, regardless of her emotional readiness for another husband.
How to Succeed in Business Draper Style, parts 1 and 2 (disc 3) (HD) (28:22, 28:09). CAUTION! This documentary makes liberal use of clips from all four seasons of Mad Men and should not be watched until you’ve finished Season Four. A group of academics, consultants and ad executives (of which the most famous is probably Jerry Della Femina) discuss the essential elements of success in both leadership and business. Listening to some of these speakers, one often feels as if transported into a self-help workshop for corporate advancement. By far the best contributors are those who actually work in advertising, when they describe how they operate or tell war stories.
1964 Presidential Campaign (disc 3) (HD; 4:3, upconverted) (31:13). This fascinating compilation of video clips presents the Johnson/Goldwater election through excerpts from speeches and dueling television ads (including the famous ad by the Johnson campaign featuring a little girl with a daisy and concluding with a mushroom cloud). It ends with Johnson’s inauguration and complete inaugural address in January 1965.
BD-Live. As with prior seasons, there is no specific entry for BD-Live on the discs, but they are BDJ-encoded and each one gives a message at startup that it is “checking for updates”.
In Conclusion:
With the recent news that Mad Men’s fifth season has been delayed (possibly until 2012) by contract negotiations, fans will have to content themselves with rewatching Season Four and reliving its high points. How appropriate, then, that the season itself was so preoccupied with recapturing the past – and how frustrating that it demonstrated the futility of trying to do so!
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 Acoustics VR-MC center
SVS SB12-Plus sub
