Mad Men: More Than Meets the Eye

Rather than a pre-credits teaser, the pilot of Mad Men opens with its iconic—and

Emmy-winning—animated credits and a one-off title card that explains:

From the beginning, we have a sense of the wry tone of the whole series.

Matthew Weiner first conceived Mad Men as a look at American culture through the lens of an ad agency, in particular the eyes of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) at a

Madison Avenue agency from the ’60s into the ’70s, during a time of great cultural turmoil. It was pre-civil rights, pre-feminism, pre-Vietnam, pre-space

1 landing. Various events, icons and products were going to be touchstones throughout the show, but always through the prism of the ad agency—which is all about packaging, putting a gloss on products and always showing them to us in their best light, then taking us behind the scenes to find that not everything is packaged and perfect. There are messy relationships, power struggles and oppression. The show was to be made up of all these aspects playing out in the background.

When Weiner pitched the show to HBO, he had written a draft pilot on spec. But

HBO decided not to make it, even though Weiner had found success on The

Sopranos, one of their flagship shows. And a lot of people passed on Mad Men.

AMC was already showing old movies and was interested in making a vintage show, set in the past. They didn’t mind that it was a period piece; on the contrary, they liked the setting of New York in the ’60s, the characters, exploring marriage and fidelity through this prism. AMC’s one note was: Don Draper needs to have a secret. It came from the president of AMC. Matt Weiner, who’s smart and talented, embraced the note. He gave Don Draper the ultimate secret for an ad man: He is not who he says he is. Don Draper is not in fact Don Draper

—his real name is Dick Whitman. So we have a great central mystery to explore.

!2 While Don Draper is still all the other things that Weiner set in motion and envisioned, just as Olivia and Fitz’s relationship on Scandal became the centerpiece of the show, so did Don’s identity on Mad Men. It adds dramatic tension, secrets, lies; it is a story that leads to more story, with far-reaching tentacles. There are people from Don’s past who unexpectedly—yet inevitably— come in and threaten the sanctity and harmony of his life. It was a wise choice.

So, do we need to create taboo, scandalous secrets for all our characters in all our shows? Of course not: We need to remain fresh and put new twists on things. We do need to have complexity in the backstories, so there is always something new to discover. Audiences like to discover something, just like in real life; everybody has secrets and the reveals can be tantalizing.

Episode Cited

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” Mad Men, written by Matthew Weiner; Lionsgate Television/Weiner Bros./RadicalMedia/AMC.

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