For decades, when broadcast television called the shots and dominated the TV landscape, the biggest event of the year was "the fall season," when networks would unveil their new shows and return with fresh episodes of old favorites. But now, because of cable and satellite TV, the fall season isn't the only game in town.
There's the summer season, which used to be nothing but reruns; now it's the time when HBO brings back True Blood,and when AMC, in just a few months, is going to present the final episodes of Breaking Bad.There's the winter season, when we get new episodes of Justified, Girlsand House of Lies —and in which we just finished a batch of exciting new Walking Deadepisodes.
Best of all, there's AMC's 'Mad Men,' which begins Season 6 on Sunday, delivering all the pleasures that today's most ambitious drama series can bring.
Now we come to the spring TV season — which, as in nature, is a time to rejoice in the spirit of rebirth. Game of Thronesis back, with its strongest season yet, and so is Doctor Who.And best of all, there's AMC's Mad Men,which begins Season 6 on Sunday, delivering all the pleasures that today's most ambitious drama series can bring.
Way, way back in the 1970s, NBC used to present a rotating series called Novels for Television,and all the networks then were big on miniseries adaptations of popular novels. These days, the best weekly drama series arethe novels for television. As with the classic soap-opera form, loyal audience members get to know these characters so intimately that subtleties of plot and personality carry echoes not only of recent episodes, but of earlier seasons.
Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men,has established his own narrative rules for his Emmy-winning drama series, the continuing story of advertising executive Don Draper in the 1960s. On Mad Men,the breaks between seasons sometimes take longer than a year — and when the show returns, it doesn't pick up where it left off.
Instead it leaves a gap, and viewers have to start each season as though they're the ones who left — they have to catch up. What year is it? What's the status of Don's marriage? And what's going on with all the other people in and around Don's life?
Those are the very basic questions that, as each season begins, Mad Menis eager to protect. And I'll honor that, so you can tune in Sunday and figure it out for yourself. But my favorite moment from the two-hour season premiere is one that reveals something only about Don, played so sparingly and perfectly by Jon Hamm.
It's in a setting so familiar that it could be any year, at any time: Don, with his advertising team, is pitching a new campaign to his clients. Those who have kept up with Mad Menknow that this is the place where Don Draper thrives and shines — where he can come up with just the shimmery language and images necessary to seduce his clients, like a snake charmer, into seeing and raving about his vision.
This time, the clients own a luxury hotel in Hawaii, and Don has come up with an ad campaign that doesn't show the hotel at all — just a set of footprints in the sand, leading into the water and vanishing. Don spins his magic while the clients react, and Don's colleagues, smarmy Pete and loose-cannon Roger, chime in. But this time, for the first time, Don's verbal seduction doesn't have the desired result.
I'm guessing — and this is only a guess — that this will end up being the primary theme of this new season on Mad Men.It'll be Don Draper losing his touch as the '60s march on. It'll be Don Draper doing, in the show, what his drawn caricature does in the beginning of every episode as the opening credits play: He goes into free fall, surrounded by all the images of happiness and desire he helped create.
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