BRIGHTNESS: Face it, Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) popularity with fans can’t be explained by a few fond memories of bad boyfriends, Linda says. (Michael Yarish/AMC)
Step away from the fawning crowd with your hands up.
OK, but don’t shoot! I have to say something — and it’s Don Draper — the “Mad Men” icon that has so inspired other entertainment writers that they’ve actually gone poetic.
In reality, Don Draper is every woman’s nightmare of a husband and a man. He’s selfish, self-involved and totally humorless, although he does have a keen sense of the ironic — about others.
Don Draper is also a big drunk, a huge bore and an irresponsible louse to everyone who loves him.
He’s the horrible guy most women have dated: a giant pain-in-the-ass who hates himself while thinking he’s better than everyone else —especially the women around him.
I mean, seriously? He’s a guy whose life is devoted to making detergent look sexy.
Yet, oddly enough, Don Draper, despite his ever upwardly mobile success as an adman, rarely comes up with an ad campaign that a client actually likes.
On Sunday’s Season 6 premiere, the client is a hotel in Hawaii, where Don and his tall, toothy wife, Megan, have vacationed and where they get to laze around in undies and swimsuits.
Once Draper’s back in New York after his existential vacation, reading Dante’s “Inferno” while contemplating the meaning of life — his own, that is — he creates an ad campaign for the hotel that is so stupid it leaves the clients perplexed.
We’re supposed to think the clients are just shallow, callous businessmen who don’t get his bril* iance, but in reality the ad concept is just as depressing as he is.
Don is, in short, just a very handsome guy who looks great in a very empty suit — and even better in his not-empty swimsuit.
Now the same can’t be said for his ex, Betty, who continues to compel with her absolute weirdness. Yes, Betty is the real existential brain in that dysfunctional family.
And then there’s Roger — who never pretended to be a deep thinker. He’s here again to provide not just comic relief, but some actual depth. He is my favorite character.
Meantime, the kids are growing up, Betty is growing fatter and bolder, Megan is becoming creepier and sexier and Don humiliates himself at Roger’s mother’s memorial. Well, he’d be humiliated if he were capable of such an emotion.
Wasn’t advertising in the 1960s supposed to be the most fun you could have with your clothes off? It sure looks like no one but Roger ever has any fun.
That said, the ultimate style show is still so fascinating that I couldn’t stop watching, all the while thinking, “Why is this so good?”
Ah ha. “Mad Men” is like Don Draper’s dream ad campaign: It makes us crave even more of what’s not there.