As the third season premiere was fast approaching a few weeks ago, it seemed like I found Mad Men wherever I looked. My sister was sending me daily e-mails with 1960s versions of her friends, herself, and me from the “Mad Men Yourself” feature on the AMC website. On every street corner in New York there was a poster of Don Draper sitting and smoking serenely in his water-filled office. The New York Times Dining and Wine section featured an article entitled “Sixties Accuracy in Every Sip,” focusing on the drinking in the series.

 

I was pretty excited for the third season myself, and I found myself sneaking “So, do you watch Mad Men?” into everyday conversation. I asked friends, family, acquaintances, pets of acquaintances, people off the street… okay, I talk about Mad Men a lot. But the range of what people find interesting and noteworthy in the show continues to amaze me, so I bring it up often.

 

I’ve had more than one 20-something male filled with envy excitedly mention how “awesome” Don Draper is and “Oh my god, did you see the scene where him and Roger ate plate after plate of oysters and the waiter just kept bringing them Old-Fashioneds and then they ate cheesecake?” One older man explained to my parents how he couldn’t watch the show because it painfully reminds him of how he used to treat women. And my own mother loves to talk about how every detail she remembers from her childhood is perfectly portrayed on the small screen, remarking especially on the around-the-world themed dinner party Betty throws for Don’s business associates. 

 

Despite the variety of interpretations of the show’s audience members, it’s clear that Mad Men elicits enthusiastic responses that most historical representations do not. In twenty-first century culture, the past is everywhere. Vintage fashion is commonplace. Colonial Williamsburg is a popular tourist destination. It’s hard to turn on a news channel without a segment about how a current issue is related to some historical event: Obama’s first 100 days were nothing like FDR’s first 100 days! The swine flu could be like the bubonic plague! How does what Joe Biden eats for breakfast compare to what Thomas Jefferson ate for breakfast?! So it’s not the simple fact that Mad Men presents America’s past that excites viewers.

 

One place where historicism hasn’t flourished, however, is in serial television. Typically, stories of the past have been presented in the form of miniseries. You watch people live through a certain event or era and then, after a few hours, you’re done. And when the rare historical television show does make it on the air, it’s typically unsuccessful or—let’s face it—just really bad. I’ll begrudgingly admit that I watched NBC’s American Dreams, but really, how did that one family live every single aspect of the ‘60s? Oh of course you have a son with polio and another son in Vietnam and your daughter dances on American Bandstand and your wife is experimenting with birth control pills and meanwhile there are race riots happening all over your city.

 

What’s unique about Mad Men as a historical television series is that it revolves around people who happen to live in the ‘60s. They are absolutely affected by their setting, but they are not living the ‘60s as we learn about them in 8th grade American history. They are living their normal lives, they do mundane things, and they make awkward small talk. It’s hard to picture Don Draper suddenly saying, “Oh, feminism’s a thing now? Okay, guess it’s time to stop cheating on Betty and let her get a job instead of guilt-tripping her into staying home all day!”

 

And, unlike in the miniseries, the viewer is able to watch the character slowly grow and progress (and sometimes, more interestingly, not progress). It borrows ideas from other popular and well-received cable dramas, most vividly The Sopranos, to create a modern way of representing the past on TV.

 

One aspect of this unique representation is how the show plays with the audience’s knowledge. In one way, this knowledge lends us a feeling of superiority. Watching Betty scatter her trash from a family picnic all over a lush grassy hill provokes the viewer to want to scream, “We use trashcans now, lady!” Similarly we look twice when we see a pregnant Betty having a drink at a party and we absolutely want to cringe during a long sequence of Roger singing in blackface at his extremely white garden party.

 

If this were the only version of the past that Mad Men gave us, it would quickly grow old. As enjoyable as these tongue-in-cheek embarrassing moments are, some of the show’s most chilling scenes are those where the audience realizes what hasn’t changed. Sal’s anguished, closeted homosexuality recalls the disappointment that so many Americans experienced when Proposition 8 passed. When we watch Joan attempt to go back to life as normal after being raped, it’s hard not to think about how many people remain silent about sexual assault. And when Don and Roger walk into the Sterling-Cooper office to find the entire staff silent, scared, and huddled around a radio, each viewer remembers where they were on 9/11.

 

The interplay between our knowledge of what has changed since the ‘60s and our recognition of what hasn’t creates an incredible tension in Mad Men. It’s also important to realize that in addition to this complex view of the past and the present, the show is truly about the characters. Every character is deeply flawed. Each character is at once retrograde and modern, in the same way that no character is presented as villainously evil or angelically good. And sometimes it’s the moments between characters that exist outside of time that have the most impact. I, for one, will never forget my favorite serious and sometimes prudish secretary-turned-copywriter proclaiming in last week’s episode, “I’m Peggy Olson and I want to smoke some marijuana.”