Sad men

I’m not sure why I haven’t written about Mad Men before. I’ve loved it since the very first pull on a violin in the theme tune of episode one. But as we hit the middle of season two – which, by the way, is even better than season one – the overarching theme has become all too apparent. It’s not the vacuity of advertising, or the attractiveness of smoking, or the sexism of the workplace, it’s the melancholy of the human condition. They’re all so sad. So deeply, deeply, existentially, irreparably sad. Don Draper’s sad. Peggy Olson’s sad. Pete Campbell’s sad. Roger Sterling’s sad. Duck Phillips is sad (and now, so is his dog, Chauncey). Duck Phillips’s kids are sad. Betty Draper is sad (or at least, just when she seems to look happy, Don makes her sad, as he did when he called her bikini in this week’s episode “desperate”). Everyone Don has sex with is sad. Any elements of Paul Kinsey that seem happy are quickly reduced to being sad by Sterling Cooper. Ken Cosgrove, always smiling, is sad. Joan also has moments of seeming happy, but she’s sad too. Even with that figure and the fiance. I love it. I love every sad moment of it. And this week’s, Maidenform, was perhaps the saddest episode of all.

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