No Sophomore Slump for AMC's Mad Men

I felt a twinge of nervousness when I popped in the screener for the first episode of the much-hyped second season of AMC's Mad Men.

Having just racked up 16 Emmy nominations, including a nomination for Best Drama, the show had Hollywood abuzz. With such an abundance of accolades, I was worried that my own love affair with Mad Men was due to all the good press, and thus, that season two couldn't possibly make good on all the hype.

So I was downright giddy to see that Mad Men's whiz-bang debut last year was no fluke. This masterful drama has not only hit its stride, it has become an even more layered examination of the human condition than I'd previously thought.

The show opens on Valentine's Day, 1962 (though the finale left us 14 months earlier in 1960), and the country is fully engaged in its love affair with the new young president and his beautiful young wife and their two young children. Youth -- the loss of it and the loathing of it -- is what this episode is all about.

The opening scene has a bedraggled Don Draper (Emmy-nominee Jon Hamm) stripped out of his corporate uniform and taking an insurance-mandated physical. He says he "eats a lot of apples" and doesn't need the visit, but after his blood-pressure proves too high, his doctor warns him. "Don, you are 36. You need to take this seriously." Later that night, Don's wife Betty (January Jones) expresses her relief over being married. "Can you imagine dating, at our age?" asks the twenty-something mom on her V-day date with Don. Could it be old-age setting in?

Earlier that day, Roger Sterling (the very fine John Slattery, also an Emmy nominee) debates whether to bring new blood into the company. Sterling, already cranky about his multiple heart attacks and breakup with zoftig Joan (Christina Hendricks), says the world "is rotten with young people." But Don assures him they aren't a threat. "Young people don't know anything, especially that they are young." One-liners aside, and there are many in this episode, the show sends a clear message: These formidable ad men are starting to feel the sting of Madison Avenue's revolving door.

Funny enough, Betty is actually the highlight of this episode. Jones has managed to transform this fragile, adolescent woman with the Grace Kelly looks into the show's most unexpectedly complex character. And she's funny, too! When her daughter tells her that everyone in her class got the same number of valentines, Betty wonders, "What is the purpose of that?" And at the top of the show, where we see Betty riding and jumping horses -- a signal that her frailty from last season has been replaced by brazenness - her friend wonders if she's worried about tracking manure into her car. "Little children," deadpans Betty, her flaxen hair fitted into a perfect bun. "What's the difference?"

As for the cliffhanging plot-points from last season, we are pleasantly kept in the dark, for now. Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) has slimmed down and is cutting her teeth with the copy boys while they continue to conjecture about her sudden weight loss. "Fat farm. I thought we had verification?" says Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), whose own theory -- that Don knocked her up -- is a lovely cloak for his own denial, or utter cluelessness.

There are no new revelations about Don's true identity and the long-lost brother who popped up last season. In fact, the mystery only deepens in a scene involving a collection of poems by the American poet Frank O'Hara, "Meditations in an Emergency."

I was curious about the significance of the book, knowing full well that for a former Sopranos man like Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, there are no accidental details. (Remember Tony Soprano's obsession with "The Art of War?")

So I looked up Don's poet, Frank O'Hara, and it seems he died of a ruptured liver at age 40 in 1966. A creative life cut short in its prime. Perhaps from the drink? Or perhaps simply because bad things sometimes happen to young people, as they happen to that young president and his young wife and his young children.

It's a reality that even the buffed and polished ladies and gents of Mad Men can't stave off with a well-crafted ad slogan or expensive fur coat, and one that makes season two of this addictive drama already so enticing.

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