1.1 & 1.2 The Doorway Don’s taciturnity continued throughout the two-hour opening episode, broken only to decry over-use of the word “love” in ad-land (let’s hope he never lives to see that McDonalds campaign) and to chat up his latest fling’s husband, Dr Rosen. The camera niceties may have been guilt-driven of course, but you have to wonder which of the Rosens Don really wants to be close to. Did his affair with with the Doctor’s wife began before or after he witnessed that heroic rescue of doorman Jonesy? How fitting it would be, after all, for the moribund Dick Whitman to be drawn to a man not only able to rescue the dying, but also one who shares his ability to bring people back from the dead. It was a double-episode season opener that took in heaven, hell, and – to quote Arnold Rosen – “the whole life and death thing”, with particular emphasis on the latter. Don had swapped the grey flannel suit for a Hawaiian shirt and a death wish. Having sold laxatives, slide projectors, suitcases, and Jaguars, now he’s hawking oblivion. Again. He really should have thought twice before binning that Freudian research on Thanatos and Eros back in season one. Speaking of darkness, it wasn’t just the new goodbye Grace Kelly, hello Elizabeth Taylor ‘do’ that Betty shocked with, but that casually delivered line about holding down cuckoo-in-the-nest Sandy while Roger rape her. “We’re happy to include you in our family” Betty offered the young violinist over a midnight PB & J. Run to Haight-Ashbury, Sandy, run as fast as those fifteen-year-old legs will carry you. What was it Phyllis Diller called that Vietnam-criticising comic? A sick puppy? That’s our Birdie. Peggy was getting slightly better feedback after the crisis over at Chaough, her new position suiting her as well as that choppy new bob (Mad Men’s hairstyles are its equivalent to rings inside a tree trunk for pinpointing the year). We’ve known the character had the ability to lead since her ponytail days, and The Doorway saw Peggy at her Don-channelling, no-nonsense, creative best. “Talk to Joan, she’ll know what to do” was the one I’d have engraved on my army-issue cigarette lighter, that or the portentous “I can’t imagine it getting any darker than this” – a very naive thing to say on the cusp of 1968… Roger “I don’t feel anything” Sterling had so many of those lines within the two hours that did we not love him so heartily, he – like Don staring back-turned-to-the-camera out of his office window – could be accused of falling into self-parody. “This is my funeral” he declared (hopefully too broad a foreshadow moment even for Mad Men), before sulkily admitting that a silent, vomiting Don “was just saying what everyone else was thinking”. Only the funeral of Livia Soprano could match that scene for bad behaviour, workplace tensions, and ostentatious décor. Since Sterling’s Gold went into circulation, we’ve been bereft of intimate moments between Roger and his Dictaphone, so whoever decided to bring in the therapist’s couch into season six deserves to be poured a celebratory vodka. In the space of half a dozen seasons, Roger’s gone from shrugging off analysis as the latest feminine accessory to tormenting a shrink with sardonic bon mots. Terrific stuff. Finding out that Roger, like Jesus, was baptised in water from the River Jordan explains a great deal about that man’s ego too, wouldn’t you agree? Don’s key line of course, was heard in the New Year’s bedroom exchange between he and squeeze Sylvia (Freaks and Geeks’ Linda Cardinelli). “What do you want for this year?” she asked him. “I want to stop doing this” he replied. “I know what you mean”, she said. No darling, unless you own the season one to five box-set, we don’t imagine you do. It’s not this he wants to stop doing, it’s everything. Don Draper wants out. Yes it’s a bleak position to find him in, but to borrow a phrase from Stan, “That’s what’s so great about it”. The now-characteristic two-hour season opener may be necessary to settle us in to a show like Mad Men, a multi-character slow-burner that skips six months or more at a time between seasons, but it’s also too much too soon. This review’s over before I’ve even touched on ambitious newcomer Bob, those company portraits, the Betty Francis Investigates sub-plot, the ubiquity of weed, Ginsberg’s moustache, Megan’s career, Sally – unchallenged – calling her mother by her first name, or how great it would be if next week saw Trudy Campbell shopping in Bloomingdales and bumping into Sal on his way out of the men’s room. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
