I Like to Watch

Oct. 14, 2007 | The American dream, for all of its countless joys, has an inescapable mediocrity woven into its polyester-blend fabric. When you have bills to pay, babbling mouths to feed and a lawn that needs mowing, some essential part of your identity is subsumed by the hungry maw of family life.

Granted, for the most self-involved among us (i.e., me and you), there's a spiritual release that comes from being trapped and tagged. Somehow, through the endless drudgery of whipping up meals and wiping little butts, we're emancipated from the endless drudgery of questioning our worth and purpose on the face of the earth.

For those who didn't spend the first 30 years of their lives on a psychic battlefield of their own creation, though, it's a different story. For extroverted professionals who came to marriage all busy and important, with a clear sense of purpose, puffed up by years of big, satisfying ego gains in the workplace, the American dream is a cold and soupy bog indeed. When you're particularly hip or pretty or stylish or ambitious or well-adjusted, running a bustling human factory to the tireless strains of "Baby Beluga" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" can feel hopelessly demeaning and unspecial. When asked to surrender such luxury items as dignity, pride and personal hygiene, fiercely independent hipsters and extroverted captains of industry alike are known to shiver in their Prada demi boots, then hop the next train to the city in search of high-end call girls and fine Colombian.

Lies become him
This tension, between secure but trapped and free but lost, inhabits the deeply ambivalent heart of the American experience. No matter which path you choose, you'll still feel like you're missing out on something.

This is where we find Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in the waning moments of the first brilliant season of AMC's "Mad Men" (10 p.m. Thursdays). (If you haven't seen last week's episode yet, don't read this.) On top of living the double life of the '60's-era ad exec, drinking and carousing with beautiful women, then returning home to his (almost) happy family, Draper has also been running from a mysterious past, rejecting a long-lost brother who knows him by the name Dick Whitman. Draper represents an extreme case of alienation from those who should be closest to him. Orphaned at a young age and raised by a family that never felt like his own, he escaped his modest roots and created a whole new life and family, only to haunt it like a ghost who's barely there. But then, all of the male characters on "Mad Men" are disconnected from their families, from the most deceitful (Pete Campbell, who navigates interactions with his wife without any real feeling) to the most loyal (Harry, who primly supports his married status, then strays from his wife on a drunken impulse).

In last week's episode (the second-to-last of the season), Draper is sent into a tailspin when Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) reveals that he knows that Draper isn't who he says he is. Anxious for a promotion, Campbell threatens to blow the whistle on Draper, revealing his false identity, if Draper doesn't give him the job he wants.

Still reeling from Roger Sterling's (John Slattery) recent heart attack and brush with death, Draper escapes to the arms of Rachel (Maggie Siff), his lover and the only person he's honest with. Desperate to avoid the mess he's made, Draper asks Rachel to run away with him. But Rachel is very pragmatic, and is shocked that Draper could be immature enough to even consider ditching his family. The scene charts breathtakingly unfamiliar ground: Here we have our steely-jawed hero, proposing a romantic escape from the mundane realities of life, and instead of jumping on-board, his sweetheart is shocked, disgusted and heartbroken.

"What about your children?" Rachel asks.

"I'll provide for them," Draper tells her.

"And live in Los Angeles? My God, you haven't thought this through. I feel sick," Rachel says. "What kind of man are you? Go away, drop everything, leave your wife?"

"People do it every day," Draper responds, weakly.

But Rachel's shock has already hardened into anger, as she sees him clearly for the first time. "This was a dalliance, a cheap affair. You don't want to run away with me, you just want to run away. You're a coward!"

Next page: Pragmatic capitalism prevails