Mad Men
American period drama television series (2007–2015) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mad Men is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, with seven seasons and 92 episodes.[1] It is set during the period from March 1960 to November 1970.
Mad Men | |
---|---|
Genre | Period drama Serial drama |
Created by | Matthew Weiner |
Starring | |
Opening theme | "A Beautiful Mine" (Instrumental) by RJD2 |
Composer | David Carbonara |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 7 |
No. of episodes | 92 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Production locations | Los Angeles, California |
Running time | 45–57 minutes |
Production companies |
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Original release | |
Network | AMC |
Release | July 19, 2007 (2007-07-19) – May 17, 2015 (2015-05-17) |
Mad Men begins at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, and continues at the new firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (later named Sterling Cooper & Partners) in the Time-Life Building at 1271 Sixth Avenue. According to the pilot episode, the term "Mad men" was coined in the 1950s by advertisers working on Madison Avenue to refer to themselves, "Mad" being short for "Madison". (In reality, the only documented use of the phrase from that time may have been in the late-1950s writings of James Kelly, an advertising executive and writer.)[2]
The series's main character is charismatic advertising executive Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), who is initially the talented creative director at Sterling Cooper. Though erratic and mysterious, he is widely regarded throughout the advertising world as a genius; some of the most famous ad campaigns in history are shown to be his creations. In later seasons, Don struggles as his highly calculated identity falls into a period of decline. The show follows the people in his personal and professional lives, most notably Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who is introduced as Don's secretary but soon discovers her passion for copywriting. It also focuses heavily on the characters of Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Betty Draper (January Jones), Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), Roger Sterling (John Slattery), and in later seasons, Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka).[3][4][5][6] As the series progresses, it depicts the changing moods and social mores of the United States throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.
Mad Men received widespread critical acclaim for its writing, acting, directing, visual style and historical authenticity. It won many awards, including 16 Emmys and five Golden Globes. It was also the first basic cable series to receive the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning it each year of its first four seasons (2008–2011).[7] It is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time and as part of the early 21st century Golden Age of Television.[8][9][10]
Conception
In 2000, while working as a staff writer for Becker, Matthew Weiner wrote the first draft as a spec script for the pilot of what would later be called Mad Men.[11][12] Television showrunner David Chase recruited Weiner to work as a writer on his HBO series The Sopranos after reading the pilot script in 2002.[11][13] "It was lively, and it had something new to say," Chase said. "Here was someone [Weiner] who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism."[13]
Weiner and his representatives at Industry Entertainment and ICM tried to sell the pilot script to HBO, which expressed an interest, but insisted that David Chase be executive producer. Chase declined, despite his enthusiasm for Weiner's writing and the pilot script. HBO CEO Richard Plepler later became a fan of the show and congratulated AMC on their success with it. In 2017 he named passing on Mad Men as his biggest regret from his time at HBO, calling it "inexcusable" and attributing the decision to "hubris."[14][15][16]
Weiner then moved on to Showtime, which also passed. Lacking a suitable network buyer, they tabled sales efforts until years later, when a talent manager on Weiner's team, Ira Liss, pitched the series to AMC Vice President of Development Christina Wayne.[17][18] The Sopranos was completing its final season, and the cable network was in the market for new series programming.[13] "The network was looking for distinction in launching its first original series," according to AMC Networks president Ed Carroll, "and we took a bet that quality would win out over formulaic mass appeal."[11][lower-roman 1]
Influences
Weiner cited Alfred Hitchcock as a major influence on the series' visual style, especially the film North by Northwest.[19] He was also influenced by director Wong Kar-wai in the music, mise en scène, and editorial style. Weiner noted in an interview that M*A*S*H and Happy Days, two television shows produced in the 1970s about the 1950s, provided a "touchstone for culture" and a way to "remind people that they have a misconception about the past, any past." He also said, "Mad Men would have been some sort of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if not for The Sopranos."[20] Peggy's "psychic scar for the entire show, after giving away that baby," Weiner said, is "the kind of thing that would have never occurred to me before I was on The Sopranos."[21]
Pre-production
Tim Hunter, the director of a half-dozen episodes from the show's first two seasons, called Mad Men a "very well-run show." He said:[22]
They have a lot of production meetings during pre-production. The day the script comes in we all meet for a first page turn, and Matt starts telling us how he envisions it. Then there's a "tone" meeting a few days later where Matt tells us how he envisions it. And then there's a final full crew production meeting where Matt again tells us how he envisions it ...
Filming and production design
The pilot episode was shot at Silvercup Studios in New York City and various locations around the city; subsequent episodes were filmed at Los Angeles Center Studios.[23][24] It is available in high definition for showing on AMC HD and on video-on-demand services available from various cable affiliates.[25]
The writers, including Weiner, amassed volumes of research on Mad Men's time period, so as to make most aspects of it—including detailed set design, costume design, and props—historically accurate,[12][13][19] producing an authentic visual style that garnered critical praise.[26][27][28] On the scenes featuring smoking, Weiner said: "Doing this show without smoking would've been a joke. It would've been sanitary and it would've been phony."[19] Each episode had a budget between US$2–2.5 million; the pilot episode's budget was over $3 million.[11][12]
Weiner collaborated with cinematographer Phil Abraham and production designers Robert Shaw (who worked on the pilot only) and Dan Bishop to develop a visual style "influenced more by cinema than television."[24] Alan Taylor, a veteran director of The Sopranos, directed the pilot and also helped establish the series's visual tone.[29] To cast an "air of mystery" around Don Draper, Taylor tended to shoot from behind him, or frame him partially obscured. Many scenes set at Sterling Cooper were shot lower-than-eyeline to incorporate the ceilings into the composition of frame, reflecting the photography, graphic design and architecture of the period. Taylor felt that neither steadicam nor handheld camera work would be appropriate to the "visual grammar of that time, and that aesthetic didn't mesh with [their] classic approach"; accordingly, the sets were designed to be practical for dolly work.[24]
Finances
According to a 2011 Miller Tabak + Company estimate published in Barron's, Lions Gate Entertainment received an estimated $2.71 million from AMC for each episode, a little less than the $2.84 million each episode cost to produce.[30]
In March 2011, after negotiations between the network and the series's creator, AMC picked up Mad Men for a fifth season, which premiered on March 25, 2012.[31] Weiner reportedly signed a $30 million contract which would keep him at the helm of the show for three more seasons.[32] A couple of weeks later, a Marie Claire interview with January Jones was published, noting the limits to that financial success when it comes to the actors: "We don't get paid very much on the show and that's well-documented. On the other hand, when you do television, you have a steady paycheck each week, so that's nice."[33]
Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce wrote that sales from home video and iTunes could amount to $100 million during the show's expected seven-year run, with international syndication sales bringing in an additional estimated $700,000 per episode.[30] That does not include the $71[30] to $100 million[34] estimated to come from a Netflix streaming video deal announced in April 2011.
Episode credit and title sequences
The opening title sequence features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of a businessman falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards, accompanied by a short edit of the instrumental "A Beautiful Mine" by RJD2. The businessman appears as a black-and-white silhouette. The titles, created by production house Imaginary Forces, pay homage to graphic designer Saul Bass's skyscraper-filled opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and falling man movie poster for Vertigo (1958); Weiner has listed Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series.[19] In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show's opening title sequence ranked No. 9 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.[35]
David Carbonara composed the original score for the series. Mad Men – Original Score Vol. 1 was released on January 13, 2009.
At the end of almost every episode, the show either fades to black or smash cuts to black as period music, or a theme by series composer David Carbonara, plays during the ending credits; at least one episode ends with silence or ambient sounds. A few episodes have ended with more recent popular music, or with a diegetic song dissolving into the credits music. Apple Corps authorized the use of The Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the Season 5 episode "Lady Lazarus", and the same track was used over the closing credits. Lionsgate, which produces Mad Men, paid $250,000 for the use of the song in the episode.[36] Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice It's All Right" ended the last episode of Season 1.
Crew
In addition to creating the series, Matthew Weiner was the show runner, head writer, and an executive producer; he contributed to each episode through writing or co-writing the scripts, casting various roles, and approving costume and set designs.[11][12] He was notorious for being selective about all aspects of the series, and maintained a high level of secrecy about production details.[11][12] Tom Palmer served as a co-executive producer and writer on the first season. Scott Hornbacher (who later became an executive producer[23]), Todd London, Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were producers on the first season. Palmer, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were also writers on the first season. Bridget Bedard, Chris Provenzano, and writer's assistant Robin Veith completed the first-season writing team.
Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton returned as supervising producers for the second season. Veith also returned and was promoted to staff writer. Hornbacher replaced Palmer as co-executive producer for the second season. Consulting producers David Isaacs, Marti Noxon, Rick Cleveland, and Jane Anderson joined the crew for the second season. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, Cleveland, and Anderson were all writers for the second season. New writer's assistant Kater Gordon was the season's other writer. Isaacs, Cleveland, and Anderson left the crew at the end of the second season.
Albert remained a supervising producer for the third season but Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton became consulting producers. Hornbacher was promoted again, this time to executive producer. Veith returned as a story editor and Gordon became a staff writer. Noxon remained a consulting producer and was joined by new consulting producer Frank Pierson. Dahvi Waller joined the crew as a co-producer. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, and Waller were all writers for the third season. New writer's assistant Erin Levy, executive story editor Cathryn Humphris, script co-ordinator Brett Johnson and freelance writer Andrew Colville completed the third season writing staff.
Alan Taylor, Phil Abraham, Jennifer Getzinger, Lesli Linka Glatter, Tim Hunter, Andrew Bernstein, and Michael Uppendahl were regular directors for the series. Matthew Weiner directed each of the season finales. Cast members John Slattery, Jared Harris and Jon Hamm also directed episodes.
As of the third season, seven of the nine writers for the show were women, in contrast to Writers Guild of America 2006 statistics that showed male writers outnumbered female writers by 2 to 1.[37] As Maria Jacquemetton noted:[37]
We have a predominately [sic] female writing staff—women from their early 20s to their 50s—and plenty of female department heads and directors. [Show creator] Matt Weiner and [executive producer] Scott Hornbacher hire people they believe in, based on their talent and their experience. "Can you capture this world? Can you bring great storytelling?"
- Jon Hamm as Don Draper, the series' main protagonist, the creative director and junior partner of Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency and eventually a partner of Sterling Cooper & Partners. He is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking executive with a shadowy past who has achieved success in advertising. He is married to Betty Draper, with whom he has three children: Sally, Bobby, and Gene. He keeps a lot of things hidden from Betty, including his extensive history of adultery. It is revealed early in the series that Draper's real name is Richard "Dick" Whitman.[38][39] During the Korean War, Whitman assumed the identity of his CO, Lieutenant Don Draper, who was killed during an ambush.[40]
- Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson, who rises from being Don's secretary to being a copywriter with her own office.[41]
- Vincent Kartheiser as Pete Campbell, a young, ambitious account executive from an old New York family with connections and a privileged background. He is married to Trudy (Alison Brie) with whom he eventually has a daughter, Tammy.
- January Jones as Betty Draper, Don's wife and mother of their three children. Raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania and a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she met Don when she was a model in Manhattan and married him soon thereafter. Over the show's first two seasons, she gradually becomes aware of Don's womanizing.[11]
- Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway, office manager and head of the secretarial pool at Sterling Cooper. Throughout the series, she has a long-standing affair with Roger Sterling, which results in their conceiving a son, whose fatherhood she ascribes to her husband, a physician serving as a military officer in Vietnam, whom she later divorces. She eventually rises to the level of partner at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and the following SC&P, and chooses to create her own firm after SC&P is absorbed by McCann Erickson.
- Bryan Batt as Sal Romano (seasons 1–3), the Italian-American art director of Sterling Cooper. He is a closeted homosexual reluctant to act upon his homosexuality. He is married to Kitty, who seems unaware of his sexual orientation, yet begins to realize that something is amiss in their relationship.[42] Later in season 3, Sal rebuffs the sexual advances of Lee Garner Jr., the son of Lucky Strike's founder and a key client. To avoid a scandal, Roger fires Sal to appease the client and keep his $25 million account.[43][44]
- Michael Gladis as Paul Kinsey (seasons 1–3; guest season 5), a bearded, pipe-smoking creative copywriter and Princeton University alumnus who prides himself on his politically liberal views.
- Aaron Staton as Ken Cosgrove, a young account executive originally from Vermont. Outside the office, he is an aspiring author who has a short story published in The Atlantic, a source of envy by his co-workers. His wife is Cynthia.
- Rich Sommer as Harry Crane, a bespectacled media buyer and head of Sterling Cooper's television department, which is created at Harry's initiative. Unlike his mostly Ivy League fellows, Harry went to the University of Wisconsin. He joins his colleagues in drinking and flirtations, though he is a dedicated husband and father.
- Maggie Siff as Rachel Menken (season 1; guest seasons 2 and 7), the Jewish head of a department store who comes to Sterling Cooper to revamp her business's image. She is initially cool towards Don Draper, who bristles at her assertive, independent image, but they warm to each other and eventually begin an affair.
- John Slattery as Roger Sterling (recurring season 1, main seasons 2–7), one of the two senior partners of Sterling Cooper and mentor to Don Draper. His father founded the firm with Bertram Cooper. Roger is first married to Mona (Talia Balsam) before he divorces her in favor of Don's former secretary, 20-year-old Jane.[41] A World War II Navy veteran, he is a notorious womanizer until two heart attacks change his perspective, although they do not affect his excessive drinking and smoking. His primary function is managing the Lucky Strike account, which is responsible for over half of SCDP's billings.
- Robert Morse as Bert Cooper (recurring seasons 1–2, main seasons 3–7), the somewhat eccentric senior partner at Sterling Cooper. He leaves the day-to-day running of the firm to Roger and Don but is keenly aware of its operations. He is a Republican, and is fascinated by Japanese culture, requiring everybody, including clients, to remove their shoes before walking into his office, which is decorated with Japanese art. He is also a fan of the writings of Ayn Rand.
- Jared Harris as Lane Pryce (recurring season 3, main seasons 4–5), the English financial officer installed by Sterling Cooper's new British parent company. His role is that of a strict taskmaster who brings spending under control, in particular by cutting out frivolous expenses. He eventually becomes a founding partner in the new agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
- Kiernan Shipka as Sally Draper (recurring seasons 1–3, main seasons 4–7), the eldest child of Don and Betty; her relationship with her mother is often strained. She develops a friendship with Glen, a boy who lives down the street from her.
- Jessica Paré as Megan Calvet (recurring season 4, main seasons 5–7), initially a receptionist at SCDP, who eventually takes over as Don's secretary and is later a junior copy writer. She begins a relationship with Don and they are married by season 5. Later that season, she leaves the firm to pursue her dream of acting. Originally from Montreal, French is her first language.
- Christopher Stanley as Henry Francis (recurring seasons 3–4, main seasons 5–7), a political adviser with close connections to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the Republican Party. It is later revealed that he serves as the Director of Public Relations and Research in the Governor's Office. He develops a romantic relationship with Betty and they later marry.
- Jay R. Ferguson as Stan Rizzo (recurring season 4, main seasons 5–7), the art director at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Before coming to the company, he worked for Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 Presidential campaign. He and Peggy are often at odds with each other due to his abrasive attitude, although they later develop a strong working relationship.
- Kevin Rahm as Ted Chaough (recurring seasons 4–5, main seasons 6–7), a self-proclaimed rival of Don Draper in the advertising world and partner of his agency, Cutler Gleason and Chaough (CGC).
- Ben Feldman as Michael Ginsberg (recurring season 5, main seasons 6–7), a part-time copywriter by Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce who quickly becomes an essential part of the creative team. Idiosyncratic and socially awkward, he tends to speak his mind, which can be both a help and hindrance to him.
- Mason Vale Cotton as Bobby Draper (recurring seasons 1–5; main seasons 6–7), the middle child of Don and Betty, played by Maxwell Huckabee in season 1, Aaron Hart in seasons 1–2, and Jared Gilmore in seasons 3–4.
Season | Episodes | Originally aired | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
First aired | Last aired | |||
1 | 13 | July 19, 2007 (2007-07-19) | October 18, 2007 (2007-10-18) | |
2 | 13 | July 27, 2008 (2008-07-27) | October 26, 2008 (2008-10-26) | |
3 | 13 | August 16, 2009 (2009-08-16) | November 8, 2009 (2009-11-08) | |
4 | 13 | July 25, 2010 (2010-07-25) | October 17, 2010 (2010-10-17) | |
5 | 13 | March 25, 2012 (2012-03-25) | June 10, 2012 (2012-06-10) | |
6 | 13 | April 7, 2013 (2013-04-07) | June 23, 2013 (2013-06-23) | |
7 | 14 | 7 | April 13, 2014 (2014-04-13) | May 25, 2014 (2014-05-25) |
7 | April 5, 2015 (2015-04-05) | May 17, 2015 (2015-05-17) |
Mad Men depicts parts of American society of the 1960s, including cigarette smoking, drinking, sexism, feminism, adultery, homophobia, antisemitism and racism.[19][45] Themes of alienation, social mobility and ruthlessness set the tone of the show. MSNBC noted that the series "mostly remains disconnected from the outside world, so the politics and cultural trends of the time are illustrated through people and their lives, not broad, sweeping arguments".[46]
According to Weiner, he chose the 1960s because:[47]
[E]very time I would try and find something interesting that I wanted to do, it happened in 1960. It will blow your mind if you look at the year on the almanac. And it's not just the election [of JFK]. The pill came out in March 1960, that's really what I wanted it to be around.… That's the largest change in the entire world. Seriously, it's just astounding. Especially if you look at the movies from the 50s. Once it was acceptable to talk about this idea that teenagers were having sex, which they have been doing, obviously, since time immemorial, there were all these movies like Blue Denim and Peyton Place.… [T]he central tension in every movie that does not take place on the battlefield is about a girl getting pregnant. So all of a sudden that entire issue [of pregnancy] has been removed from society. That was what I was interested in in 1960.
Identity and memory
Television commentators have noted the series's study of identity. This theme is explored most candidly through Don Draper's identity fraud during the Korean War, in which he takes on an officer's name to desert the army. Tim Goodman considers identity to be the show's leitmotiv, calling Don Draper "a man who's been living a lie for a long time. He's built to be a loner. And over the course of three seasons we've watched him carry this existential angst through a fairy-tale life of his own creation."[48] As noted by Gawker:[49]
Not only is the agency of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the business of spinning them—or at least warping the truth—to sell product, but the main character, Don Draper, is built on a lie. Just like one of his campaigns, his whole identity is a sweet fabrication, a kind of candy floss spun out of opportunity, innuendo, and straight-up falsehood.
The New Republic writer Ruth Franklin said that "The show's method is to take us behind the scenes of the branding of American icons—Lucky Strike cigarettes, Hilton hotels, Life cereal—to show us not how the products themselves were created, but how their 'very sexy…very magical' images were dreamed up." She went on to say that, "In this way, we are all Don Drapers, obsessed with selling an image rather than tending to what lies underneath. Draper's fatal flaw is his lack of psychological awareness: He is at once perfectly tuned into the desires of America and entirely out of touch with his own character."[50] One reviewer said that "Identity is a key theme in Mad Men, and nobody is ever quite who they appear to be. Each one is filled with thwarted ambitions and frustrated dreams, none more so than Don Draper himself, whose closet, it's gradually revealed over Seasons 1 and 2, is filled with proverbial skeletons."[51]
Gender and sexuality
The show presents a workplace culture in which it is frequently assumed that female employees are sexually available for their male bosses, and in which jokes about the desirability of one's wife dying are told by husbands in front of their own wives. Most of the main characters have cheated on their wives.[52] Marie Wilson, in an op-ed for The Washington Post, said that:[53]
[I]t is difficult and painful to see the ways in which women and men dealt with each other and with power. It's painful because this behavior is not as far back in our past as we would like to think. Our daughters continually get the messages that power still comes through powerful men. And unfortunately being pretty is still a quality that can get you on the ladder—though it still won't take you to the top.
According to the Los Angeles Times:[54]
[T]he sexism, in particular, is almost suffocating, and not in the least fun to watch. But it's the force against which the most compelling female characters struggle, and the opposition that defines them. The interaction with everyday misogyny and condescension—the housewife whose shrink reports to her husband, the ad woman who's cut out of the after-hours wheeling and dealing—gives the characters purpose and shape.
In Salon, Nelle Engoron argued that while Mad Men seemed to illuminate gender issues, its male characters got off "scot-free" for their drinking and adultery, while the female characters were often punished.[55] Stephanie Coontz of The Washington Post said that women "portrayed the sexism of that era so unflinchingly, they told me, that they could not bear to watch." Some women interviewed mentioned that they had experienced the same "numbness of Betty Draper" and witnessed the "sense of male entitlement similar to Don's."[56]
Aviva Dove-Viebahn wrote that "Mad Men straddles the line between a nuanced portrayal of how sexism and patriarchal entitlement shape lives, careers and social interactions in the 1960s and a glorified rendering of the 'fast-paced, chauvinistic world of 1960s advertising and all that comes with it.'"[57] Melissa Witkowski, writing for The Guardian, argued that Peggy's ascendancy was marred because the show "strongly implies that no woman had ever been a copywriter at Sterling Cooper prior to Peggy, but the circumstances of her promotion imply that this was merely because no woman had ever happened to have shown talent in front of a man before," pointing out that Peggy's career path bore little resemblance to the stories of successful ad women of the time such as Mary Wells Lawrence and Jean Wade Rindlaub.[58] In 2013, the U.S. President Obama said "Peggy Olson gave him insight into how his strong-willed grandmother dealt with life in a man's world."[59]
Alcoholism
As the show's time progresses into the 1960s, the show portrays a world of liquor-stocked offices, boozy lunches and alcohol-soaked dinners. One incident in Season 2 finds advertising executive Freddy Rumsen being sent to rehab after urinating on himself. During the fourth season, Don Draper starts to realize he has a major drinking problem. In the sixties, bad behavior resulting from drinking was often considered macho and even romantic, rather than a result of addiction.[60] One reviewer called the fourth season a "sobering tale of drunken excess" as Don Draper struggled with alcoholism.[61]
Ad executive Jerry Della Femina said of the show:[62]
[I]f anything, it's underplayed. There was a tremendous amount of drinking. Three-martini lunches were the norm…while we were still looking at the menu, the third would arrive.… The only thing that saved us was that the clients and agencies that we were going back to drank as much as we did.… Bottles in desk drawers were not the exception but the rule.
Counterculture
The Los Angeles Times opined that Mad Men excels at "stories of characters fighting to achieve personal liberation in the restless years before the advent of the full-blown culture wars."[54] One reviewer was excited that the fourth season, through Peggy, brought "the introduction to the Counterculture (Andy Warhol as the King of Pop and Leader of the Band), with all the loud music, joint-passing, underground movies so present in those times. Peggy's visit to a loft, with a Life Magazine photo editor-friend, placed her squarely in the center of the exciting creativity so rampant in the underground and also so rebellious against the mainstream." The Huffington Post focused on one scene where "Peggy joins her new beatnik friends in the lobby while Pete stays behind with the SCDP partners to relish…his newly captured $6 million account. As they embark on their opposite trajectories, the camera lingers on their knowing glances. Here is where we find emotional truth."[63]
Racism
Critics contend that post-racial beliefs complicate the show by only visualizing people of color at work and rarely in their homes or from their point of view.[64] Several writers have argued that the show distorts history by not showing black admen, noting real-life successful African American advertising executives who got their start in the 1960s such as Clarence Holte, Georg Olden, and Caroline Robinson Jones.[58][65] Latoya Peterson, writing in Slate magazine's Double X, argued that Mad Men was glossing over racial issues.[66]
Slate writer Tanner Colby praised the show's treatment of race and Madison Avenue as historically accurate, especially the storyline in the third season episode "The Fog" in which Pete Campbell's idea to market certain products specifically towards African-Americans is struck down by the company. Slate also referred to the fourth season episode, "The Beautiful Girls", in which Don shoots down Peggy Olson's suggestion of Harry Belafonte as a spokesman for Fillmore Auto, after Fillmore Auto faced a boycott for not hiring black employees. Colby also pointed to an exposé published in a 1963 issue of Ad Age that revealed that "out of over 20,000 employees, the report identified only 25 blacks working in any kind of professional or creative capacity, i.e., nonclerical or custodial." Colby wrote, "Mad Men isn't cowardly for avoiding race. Quite the opposite. It's brave for being honest about Madison Avenue's cowardice."[67]
Smoking
Cigarette smoking, more common in the United States of the 1960s than it is now,[68] is featured throughout the series; many characters can be seen smoking several times over the course of an episode.[19] In the pilot, representatives of Lucky Strike cigarettes come to Sterling Cooper looking for a new advertising campaign in the wake of a Reader's Digest report that smoking will lead to illnesses, including lung cancer.[69] Talk of smoking being harmful to health and physical appearance is usually dismissed or ignored. In the fourth season, after Lucky Strike fires Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce as its ad agency, Draper writes an advertisement in The New York Times titled "Why I'm Quitting Tobacco", which announces SCDP's refusal to take tobacco accounts. The finale finds the agency in talks with the American Cancer Society. In the series's penultimate episode, Betty Draper is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, after having been depicted as a heavy smoker throughout the series. The actors smoke herbal cigarettes, not tobacco cigarettes; Matthew Weiner said in an interview with The New York Times that the reason is that "you don't want actors smoking real cigarettes. They get agitated and nervous. I've been on sets where people throw up, they've smoked so much."[11]