Things We Learned About Being A Man From "Mad Men"

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Betty: "I'm sure your father's given you a beer."
Sally: "My father's never given me anything."

If we starting making a running tally of how many character on Mad Men had screw-up dads, we could easily write a 600-page thesis. Pete Campbell's father squandered the family fortune then died in a plane crash, leaving Campbell to rely on his controlling father-in-law. Roger Sterling's father left him an advertising agency he barely cares about, but uses as his own rich boy bank account to keep himself flush in broads and booze. At the tender age of ten, Don Draper saw his father get killed by a horse, a shed nary a tear. In fact, Draper once said, "My father beat the hell out of me. All it did was make fantasize about the day I could murder him."

And then there is the subject of Draper's own attempt at parenting; sometimes too earnest, mostly just drunk and detached, especially with his sons. Sterling is the same with his daughter; she knows he's a mischievous manchild and accepts him with a socialite's snark. Campbell barely seems to have cared that he had a child with Peggy Olson. And, their children are already suffering. In the last two episodes of Mad Men, Sally Draper finally sees her father for the womanizing monster that he is, and it's a terrifying moment.

If anything, Mad Men taught us that to be a man, you don't actually have to be a man. You can walk around with tender scars from the man who raised you and cope via several decades worth of liver disease, and still not rise above the man you spent a lifetime loathing.

Roger Sterling: "You don't know how to drink. Your whole generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation, we drink because it's good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it's what men do."

An apple a day keeps the doctor away (at least that's what Don Draper told his doctor when he finally had a physical), but a cocktail a day (or several) keeps the demons at bay. Mad Men solution to every grievance is a stiff drink. In pain and pleasure, th men of the show are subservient to the all-mighty master and lord of libation, the great god called Alcohol. Celebrating something? Have a drink! Mourning something? Have another drink! You woke up this morning and managed to put on clothes and pomade your coif? Have three drinks! You deserve it.

Mad Men has taught us that real men are functioning alcoholics. Food is waste of time; alcohol gives true sustenance. A number of times, Draper has been asked if he's hungry, and he replies that he'll have something to "drink." The fragrant allure of alcohol has become even more ubiquitous this season. While the youth smoke their dope and trip on psychedelics, real men like Sterling and Draper cling to the bottle, because acid and hashish are unpredictable. As Sterling once said, real men drink, even if it makes them curl up into the fetal position.

Roger Sterling: “Remember Don…when God closes a door, he opens a dress.”

Over the span of six seasons, Don Draper has slept with about fifteen women. In the ultimate ironic thrust, he even slept with his slimmed-down, cold-as-ice  ex-wife Betty, despite having his hot Canadian wife, Megan, at home. With the many ink wells he dips his pen into, one might imagine Draper doesn't have an actual type, unless you count his consistent hankering for "working girls" and not the kind from the secretarial pool.

He's slept with a prostitute who slapped him, his neighbor Sylvia whom he attempted to treat like a prostitute, and lost his virginity to an actual prostitute. If we had to guess, we'd say Draper's thing for pay-per-boning stems from his abusive mother. It's almost as if sex means nothing to Draper. In his words: "Just because you climb a mountain doesn't mean you love it." Don's only true fetish is his own pain.

Roger Sterling, meanwhile, is one giant walking erection ready to plow through any sweet thing that tosses a smile his way. That cavalier charm has made him popular with the ladies, but has also made it impossible for him to hold down a steady mate. Wives always get the short end of the stick, if they get the stick at all.

If Mad Men has taught us anything, it's that sleeping around is the only way to solve an existential crisis. Therapy is expensive, and, for the most part, sex comes free.

Don Draper: "I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie, there is no system, the universe is indifferent."

The copy room is always buzzing, the secretaries are always clacking away at their keyboards, and, sure, they are often sitting in meetings with clients, but aside from that, what do some of the characters on Mad Men, especially the cooler looking ones,  actually do all day? Draper never seems to do anything but wow clients with his bespoke-suited sex-god swagger, have booze-sweaty intercourse with his mistresses, and take drunken naps. Roger Sterling loves to chase down clients so he can have drinks with them, mostly. Pete Campbell just sits around pouting, looking like a smarmy, petulant toddler. And everyone with a beard? They're high all day long. 

Who is doing all the work at this agency? All the relatively unattractive underlings and the women. While every last name plastered across the doors dodges calls from mistresses and pissed off clients, the women are busy doing damage control.

Mad Men tells us that real men don't do work. A job is merely performance art.

Lane Pryce: “Am I to entertain your ballad of dissatisfaction, or has something actually happened? Because I am at work, dear.”

Compare Lane Pryce's quote above and this one from an earlier season of Mad Men: "Dissatisfaction is a symptom of ambition, it's the coal that fuels the fire." While on a glossy, superficial level, we were originally led to believe that success is spurred by dissatisfaction, recently, Mad Men has taught us that it actually just leads to a violent ennui.

Pete Campbell worked hard to get his slimy foot in the door, but is left with jealousy over his mother's gay man nurse and a box of empty cereal thanks to his narcissistic dalliances. Roger Sterling still has his charm, but now he's aged and finally realizes that his youth could only take him so far. Don Draper is our plastered anti-hero, who used to be able to handle his liquor (and his lies), but now just drowns in a watery world of deep-seated delusion. Lane Pryce, who was always so good at keeping his shit together, dabbled in deception and was so strung out by his sense of dissatisfaction, that he ended his life strung up. 

Mad Men teaches us this life lesson: that in order to be successful as a man, you have to get comfortable with being unhappy. Or, you'll have a brief moment of ecstatic tap dancing like Ken Cosgrove—who seems to have it all—before someone shoots you in the face. 

Joan Holloway: “That’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute some secretary’s running you over with a lawn mower.”

Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce, Cutler, Gleason and Chaough. It's a six-word mouthful, but that's sort of the point. In an effort to acquire Chevy, the two rivaling ad agencies realize that bigger is better, and a throbbing, single-focused monster  could bring potential clients to their knees. The issue is that now, instead of having an insidious competition between two well-coiffed sex addict sociopaths, a funky old guy, a now dead guy, and a yippy little dog, they now have boy-next-door Ted Chaough and bespectacled power-playing Jim Cutler to contend with.

Currently, Chaough and Draper are getting juiced up over Sunkist and Ocean Spray, two sunshine-y named beverages that aren't alcohol and are meant to remind us of Draper's morbid trips to Hawaii and California. Draper struggles as Chaough falls in love with the one woman Draper always took for granted that he had by his side, Peggy. 

So, how do you show your worth as a man when the stakes are high? You whip out your manhood, which for ad men is their big ticket accounts, and you rub it in each other's faces. How else to assert power and self-worth? HOW ELSE?

Roger Sterling: "Look, I want to tell you something because you're very dear to me. And I hope you understand that it comes from the bottom of my damaged, damaged heart. You are the finest piece of ass I've ever had and I don't care who knows it. I am so glad that I got to roam those hillsides."

Joan Holloway. She is perhaps the one beacon of light in this snarky debate over men versus Mad Men. Wherever Holloway's delightful derriere goes, we will follow, because she represents everything to a man that he would possibly need. Her sublime femininity shines through like weathered beach glass, smooth to the touch and gorgeously incandescent while still suitable for shanking. She is a single mother, a compassionately stoic friend, a whip-smart agency partner, and a sexpot; she is everything the characters of Mad Men are constantly looking for in their relationships with other women. 

What Holloway teaches us about being a man is that men all generally want the same thing: a goddess figure to benevolently and cool-headedly watch over their childish affairs, someone who gives them the freedom the freedom to experiment with their ever-burgeoning masculinity. But, what Mad Men teaches us about men is that they are often blind or unwilling to accept the everyday deity that lies before them in splendor. 

Don Draper: "You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one."

As the Mad Men offices become more crowded, it becomes even more evident how alone each character is. Solitude and manliness seem to go hand-in-hand. Draper even teaches his son that when they hang out at a movie where they don't have to really engage. Most of Draper's actual work in the office is seen at night while the office is closed up and he's chain-smoking at a typewriter. Roger Sterling seems to be a lone rebel when it comes to wrangling in accounts. People are constantly asking where both Draper and Sterling are. We can only assume Pete Campbell is as good at pushing people away (like Trudy, and every member of his family) because he learned the art of detachment from the best.

Mad Men has taught us that loneliness is par for the course when it comes to being a man. It's totally normal and perfectly acceptable, so stop being a baby and deal with the psychological anguish, because that's what men do.  

Roger Sterling: “You know, we sold actual death for 25 years with Lucky Strike. You know how we did it? We ignored it.”

From the second the intro flashes across the screen, to the struggle with mortality we've seen so many of the characters experience, Death is undoubtedly at the center of Mad Men. Fans hypothesize that the last episode of Mad Men will be Don throwing himself out the window so as to mimic the opening credits, but as the characters chain-smoke their way into uncertain oblivion, it seems that this silhouette is not just representative of one person, but a whole generation's worth of thinking. During a time rife with warfare, nuclear threat, and rioting, death via vice wasn't as prescient as death via bombing, stabbing, or suicide. (Poor Lane).

Don Draper took a dead man's name and brought him back to life in some twisted Lazarus feat. Remember Draper's brother, Adam, who killed himself by hanging after Draper pushed him away and gave him money as a consolation prize? Much later on, Lane Pryce is wrecked with guilt after Draper offers him cash in a sort of sad severance package, and goes the same route as Adam, method and all. No wonder Draper is drawing nooses, reading Dante's Inferno, almost drowning in Los Angeles pools, and creating ad campaigns that glamorize suicide. 

Mad Men has shown us that men, or mankind rather, can't avoid Death. It has a vendetta against all of us. And the harder we try to outpace it, the closer it is on our heels. 

Don Draper: "People tell you who they are, but we ignore it, because we want them to be who we want them to be."

Change is at the crux of manhood. From a pimply-faced, precious young pervert to a philandering professional, man is constantly evolving, and striving for more during his time on this earthly plane. Don Draper is the greatest representative of this; a man who took his happenstance identity of a weak-willed country man raised with whores and made himself into a living legend amongst his peers. He treated himself like a god that could rewrite history.

Like his most famous piece of advice, which he gave to Peggy at the hospital post-having Pete's secret baby, Don has changed the conversation. He has secured himself two beautiful wives, a career that most would struggle their whole lives for, and the coveted spot as alpha male of the agency. Yet, with all the magic Draper has manifested, he hasn't found anything resembling happiness. Draper may have changed the conversation, but his inner-dialogue is still playing the same tape it has since he was a boy, and it's a sad, sad loop.

But, changing the talk around him? Draper has succeeded at that. He doesn't have to live by a code of conceit, but he can if he wants to. Especially if it involves massages, menages, and croissants.