I am in love. I am in love with the most repulsive, most vile, most arrogant, most self-righteously shallow people who have ever appeared on television. Adultery, alcoholism, back-stabbing, blatant disregard for basic human decency: these are the things that make my heart swoon when I lose myself in the cool blue glow of my living room television set every night. I can’t help myself. I have become one with these characters, and despite their failings, I am their family. They are my brethren, and they can do no wrong. I can’t help but sympathize with them. I can’t help but want to reach out and console these people. I can’t help but long to let them know that everything is going to work out in the end. My love is unconditional. No matter how revolting or how despicable or how egotistical these people get I will still be there with my arms and heart and soul wide open longing for their tender embrace. I love them. And so does everyone else.
In 2008 when Mad Men emerged onto the scene and won Golden Globes for Best Drama Series and Best Actor and Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing among others, my reaction was simple: “Wow, good for them, but what the hell is this show?” I simply knew nothing about it as I don’t often pay much attention to a television series on AMC, but it didn’t take me long to become hopelessly immersed in all things Mad Men and equally enthralled by the lascivious nature of the series. It is as though out of nowhere came this show that blew the roof off of the antiquated concept of the Dick Van Dyke or Mr. Ed versions of the middle of the 20th century where nothing really goes wrong and no one really gets hurt no matter how many times Van Dyke trips over the ottoman in his living room. Mad Men reminded us that while chain-smoking Luckys in the comedy writer’s room, it would have been realistically feasible for Rob Petrie to be cheating on Mary Tyler Moore with Sally Rogers while Wilbur sells Mr. Ed to the glue factory when times get tough.
The 1980’s version of the 1960’s was about Kevin Arnold coming of age in a tumultuous time known as The Wonder Years. Though Kevin was a suburban junior high/high school student living at home for the duration of the series the time period of the late 60’s and Kevin’s life were never mutually exclusive. Kevin, Wayne, Winnie, Paul, and everyone else in The Wonder Years were an inescapable product of their surroundings and acted as a microcosm of the affects of Vietnam, Nixon, Woodstock, civil rights, and Sgt Pepper getting high with a little help from his friends. Anything really bad that happened on the show (which nothing really ever did short of the pilot episode where Winnie’s brother was killed in Vietnam) was easy to justify because 1) it was kids being kids 2) the show was designed as a retrospective look at a previous period of life as narrated by Daniel Stern and 3) all the characters and situations were themselves victims of the outside world. The show was more of a critique of the affect of the outside world on suburban adolescence and the blossoming of culture along with the blossoming of the new youth generation. The Wonder Years was, more than anything else, an examination of the innocent and, by extension, ignorant youth in the turbulent, often enlightened world. Kevin, Wayne, Paul, and Winnie were Michael, Sonny, Tom Hagen, and Kay Adams respectively in the rough and tumble world of the Corleone family.
Mad Men is different. Mad Men doesn’t have the excuse of being “of the time” even though it is. It doesn’t have the excuse of offering itself as a portrayal of men who are affected by a changing world, even though they are. It doesn’t have the excuse of fictitiously portraying fictional characters and hypothetical situations even though it does. Mad Men isn’t about men in the jungles of Nam fighting a losing battle for their country. It is not about stoned hippies tuning in, turning on, or dropping out in the mud of upstate New York, and it is not about political insiders in DC as so many productions about the 1960's are. It is not about a budding culture of an evolving world or a retrospective glance at a fascinating cultural time and place. It is about men and women in an office building working for an ad agency in New York City. The way the show is produced, the outside environment has little or no affect on the inner-office life (apart from three subplots about the 1960 presidential election, the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the assassination of JFK respectively). In fact, because they are an ad agency responsible for designing, building, and selling the products that defined the time, they are responsible for impacting American culture by feeding on what the world wants and exploiting it. They are not products of the 1960’s, they are the 1960’s. And that 1960’s is one devious world.
The men on the show are truly appalling people. Chain-smoking and rampant alcoholism aside, the men are guilty of extramarital affairs, racism, homophobia, and antisemitism, but not in a devious detached sense, nor in a villainous antagonizing way, but rather in a very real, accepted, protagonist fashion. The cheating, racist, homophobic, anti-Semites are not the evil flawed rogues who were given these traits for audiences to hate, but instead they are made to be the classically cool and sophisticated central protagonists who audiences are meant to love and envy. These men are not the Grinches who stole Christmas as we should consciously think of them. They are the cool-hand Lukes, they are the James Bonds, the Han Solos, the James Deans, the George Cloonys of the world. They are the coolest guys on the planet except that they are the most repulsive men imaginable. They are the guys everyone wants to be even though they are the guys that no one would actively associate with. As much as we like to look at them as cool and sophisticated, they are in actuality shallow and socially vile by any of today’s standards. But loving them is excusable, because the times they are a-changing, and time heals all wounds.
It is acceptable to love the characters in Mad Men because we have evolved as a society, right? We no longer think, act, or live the way Don and Roger do, right? We no longer live with the same sinister mentality as was commonplace in 1960, right? We are enlightened, right? Times have changed, right? Wrong.
The characters of Mad Men are not Frank, Dean, and the Rat Pack. The cast of Mad Men are really nothing more than The Situation, Paulie D and the cast of Jersey Shore.
While Mad Men has been critically acclaimed across the board and honored by virtually every English-speaking television authority on the planet since its inception, Jersey Shore has survived a polar opposite fate, and has established itself as a cultural low-water mark by every source that has crossed paths with it. Jersey Shore has become the butt of late-night jokes, fodder for internet comedy, a dark premonition for all parents of young adult children, and has even specifically been targeted by the Governor of New Jersey. But despite being viewed as a joke within itself and an abysmal display of a severe lack of human decency, Jersey Shore remains hugely popular among America’s youth for the exact same reasons that Mad Men remains popular among affluent intellectuals.
While Mad Men is darkly sophisticated, cerebral, and intellectually taut and a brilliant critique of modern man, Jersey Shore is base, vulgar and exploits the absolute worst of youth culture. Jersey Shore is the local strip club to Mad Men’s Metropolitan Opera House. Kanye West to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Teen Beat to Time Magazine. McDonald's to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Starbucks to good coffee. Everything that is great about Mad Men only further illustrates that which is disgusting about Jersey Shore. Yet the similarities of the two shows are hauntingly similar. Scripted television versus “reality” television aside, both represent the worst of American culture. Both rely on the dark nature of mankind. Both highlight the self-centered, egotistical, shallowness of humanity, and both stand as televised cornerstones for their respective demographics.
More haunting yet, the characters of each show are striking parallel. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino with his leadership role despite his total lack of disregard to anyone but himself and his own success is really Roger Sterling. Snookie, the easily mocked break-out success within the show’s own reality, is really Peggy Olsen. JWoww, a strong independent woman who has no hesitation standing up to anyone regardless of consequence, is really Joan Holloway. Paulie D, consciously stylish and highly respected among the rest of the group despite his constantly answering to The Situation, is really Don Draper. Sammie, an attractive and sought after yet emotionally driven young woman with a penchant for stirring up conflict when circumstances don’t suit her, is really Betty Draper. Vinnie, with his seemingly clean-cut, intelligent, and charming exterior but who has a seedy dark side and who doesn’t appear to belong with the rest of the group, is really Ken Cosgrove. Angelina, the least respected of the group despite her naive and childish ambitions and total lack of hesitation to sell-out anyone and everyone for her own benefit, is really Pete Campbell, though I am not sure if that is a bigger insult to her or to Pete. I have a difficult time placing Ronnie in the Sterling Cooper clique, but that is mostly because I can’t get a sense of Ronnie beyond his natural ability to grossly over-compensate for his own insecurities with arrogance and thinly veiled romantic desires which I suppose makes him like Sal Romano.
As a character analysis, Jersey Shore is really Mad Men mixed with alcohol, debauchery, and an almost Godly sense of pride except that Mad Men already has alcohol, debauchery, and an almost Godly sense of pride. Jersey Shore really is Mad Men and Mad Men really is Jersey Shore. The only real difference between the two, again, apart from scripted versus “unscripted,” is that those who love Mad Men also love to hate Jersey Shore and probably vice versa. And in a rather ironic twist of fate, those who hate Jersey Shore will continue to hate it for the exact same reasons they love Mad Men. The differences are not the two shows, the differences are us, the audiences. The difference is that television that is about a destructive, disgusting, and socially challenging society from the past is only considered brilliant whereas television about a destructive, disgusting, and socially challenging society happening in the present is considered exploitation the inevitable moral decay in the fabric of American youth culture. Time makes all the difference, and time heals all wounds.
We approach the 1960’s with a certain level of learned understanding. We knew it was a troubled time, but we also like to think that it was a simpler time. The world outside was filled with unmitigated chaos with no end in sight, but the home life was dinner on the table at 6:00, manicured front lawns, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and father always knows best. Even if we consciously know none of that is true, we still like to think of it that way. Mad Men is one of those rare shows that takes a look back at a time we thought we understood and plays Chinese ping pong with our emotions and veiled understanding. It is like the first time a 12 year old boy discovers that professional wrestling is staged; for years we believed what we saw, and we don’t like to accept our own gullibility for a false sense of reality, but as time goes on we realize that the reality is vastly more logical than the preferred fantasy. This is one of the reasons why Mad Men is so brilliant. Nothing is more intriguing than a glimpse into realism that challenges our previous perception of the past. But no matter what happens in the world of Sterling Cooper, it was the past. No matter how offensive we find it, we are naturally detached from it. No matter how vile and immoral Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and Pete Campbell appear to be, we are separated from them by 50 years so we are able to justify loving them. The times they are a-changing, and time heals all wounds.
But Jersey Shore is not the past. Jersey Shore is the present. Jersey Shore does not give us a detached glimpse into the reality of a time previously misunderstood, it instead shows us the reality of the immediate offensive present. Mad Men reminds us of how far we have come as a society, but Jersey Shore highlights our current social failings. The only problem is that when broken down to its fundamental base, we are forced to see that in reality not much really has changed. Alcoholism, womanizing, immoral behavior, violence, and general unmitigated debauchery are all phrases that perfectly describe Jersey Shore, and they are all phrases that perfectly describe Mad Men, just as they are all phrases that perfectly describe early 1960’s culture as well as perfectly describing current youth culture. The times really aren’t a-changing, and time has healed no wounds.
Yet, even though they are both vile displays of American culture, they are still loved equally by their respective demographics. It is perfectly acceptable to hate Jersey Shore as it is also perfectly acceptable to hate Mad Men. But it has become common to love Jersey Shore and it is almost expected that everyone love Mad Men. Most who have never fully immersed themselves in it probably do hate Jersey Shore just as those who have not fully immersed themselves in Mad Men feel the same way, but that is what makes these two shows challenging in their own right. Neither show would exist without the human element which is to say the success, and by extension, the existence of both shows is reliant, not only on the exploitation of their vices, but on the illustration of their humanity. From afar, it is easy to look at Don Draper as a one-dimensional character who cheats on his wife and spends his professional life duping the general public into buying products they don’t need, just as it is easy to look at Snookie as a dumb girl who only cares about drinking, clubbing, and picking up men. But television doesn’t work that way. Literature doesn’t work that way. Art doesn’t work that way. There is nothing intriguing about characters that lack depth. There is nothing interesting about watching a show with no arc. And there is certainly nothing compelling about characters for whom an audience has no sympathy. If we wanted that we would still be watching reruns of Cavemen and Theodore Rex would have swept the Oscars in 1996.
There was a moment in each show that captivated their respective audiences and earned them a place in television history; Don Draper’s Kodak Carousel pitch, and Snookie getting punched in the face by a drunk frat guy.
After 12 episodes of watching Don Draper parade around his own immoral private Idaho with little concern about the consequences of his actions on the people around him, and almost no display of the overt humanity we have come to expect from television shows masquerading as more intellectual than they are, he was presented with a new account for the Kodak Wheel. His pitch for the new product was nothing short of brilliant, and it reads as follows:
Snookie, on the other hand, was literally punched in the face and literally wept while the world watched which, like Don Draper, illustrates her own humanity. For 4 episodes, Jersey Shore was little more than a display of shallow self-righteousness from a group of easily ridiculed 20-somethings who seemed to care only about where they were getting drunk and who they were sleeping with next. They were fake, they were plastic, they were one-dimensional. The cast of Jersey Shore was in no way reflections of accepted society until the end of episode 5 when an anonymous drunk guy purposely hauled off and hit a 4’9” Italian girl in the face over a dispute for some shots of liquor while cameras were rolling. The punch heard round the world. Suddenly the show was not about fist pumps, beating the beat, GTL, or grenades. The show was about the sudden display of compassion we had for these characters who had seemed so shallow and invincible. Through Snookie’s pain, we saw Snookie’s humanity and we sympathized. Snookie’s greatest achievement was not that she sold her wild lifestyle to MTV, instead she sold her full range of emotions to the country, and we bought it.
The simple-minded sects of society would say the only selling point for the two shows is that they sell sex as that old cliche is a commonly understood television principle. But the truth about Jersey Shore and Mad Men is that they do not sell sex, alcohol, and debauchery because, contrary to popular belief, that is not what has ultimate selling power. What's more, that theory has been disproved time and time again: Law and Order, The West Wing, Meet The Press, The Simpsons, Jeopardy, Spongebob Squarepants, all shows with enormous followings that have little or nothing to do with sex of any kind. Certainly those vices capture the attention from audiences, but only a limited amount of footage from bars, nightclubs, and hot tubs can keep audiences interested. Just as audiences will only remain intrigued by a retrospective look at the past for so long. Great television is not about racy situations, great television is about characters. And characters need to be complex. They need to have depth. They need to have emotions that contradict our initial impressions of them. In Don Drapers own word: “You are the product. You feeling something, that’s what sells. Not them, not sex.” This has been true throughout the history of film and television. As sure as the sun sets in the West, and as sure as there will always be an English empire, film and television needs provocative characters. The times they aren’t a-changing, and time heals no wounds.
In 2008 when Mad Men emerged onto the scene and won Golden Globes for Best Drama Series and Best Actor and Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing among others, my reaction was simple: “Wow, good for them, but what the hell is this show?” I simply knew nothing about it as I don’t often pay much attention to a television series on AMC, but it didn’t take me long to become hopelessly immersed in all things Mad Men and equally enthralled by the lascivious nature of the series. It is as though out of nowhere came this show that blew the roof off of the antiquated concept of the Dick Van Dyke or Mr. Ed versions of the middle of the 20th century where nothing really goes wrong and no one really gets hurt no matter how many times Van Dyke trips over the ottoman in his living room. Mad Men reminded us that while chain-smoking Luckys in the comedy writer’s room, it would have been realistically feasible for Rob Petrie to be cheating on Mary Tyler Moore with Sally Rogers while Wilbur sells Mr. Ed to the glue factory when times get tough.
The 1980’s version of the 1960’s was about Kevin Arnold coming of age in a tumultuous time known as The Wonder Years. Though Kevin was a suburban junior high/high school student living at home for the duration of the series the time period of the late 60’s and Kevin’s life were never mutually exclusive. Kevin, Wayne, Winnie, Paul, and everyone else in The Wonder Years were an inescapable product of their surroundings and acted as a microcosm of the affects of Vietnam, Nixon, Woodstock, civil rights, and Sgt Pepper getting high with a little help from his friends. Anything really bad that happened on the show (which nothing really ever did short of the pilot episode where Winnie’s brother was killed in Vietnam) was easy to justify because 1) it was kids being kids 2) the show was designed as a retrospective look at a previous period of life as narrated by Daniel Stern and 3) all the characters and situations were themselves victims of the outside world. The show was more of a critique of the affect of the outside world on suburban adolescence and the blossoming of culture along with the blossoming of the new youth generation. The Wonder Years was, more than anything else, an examination of the innocent and, by extension, ignorant youth in the turbulent, often enlightened world. Kevin, Wayne, Paul, and Winnie were Michael, Sonny, Tom Hagen, and Kay Adams respectively in the rough and tumble world of the Corleone family.
Mad Men is different. Mad Men doesn’t have the excuse of being “of the time” even though it is. It doesn’t have the excuse of offering itself as a portrayal of men who are affected by a changing world, even though they are. It doesn’t have the excuse of fictitiously portraying fictional characters and hypothetical situations even though it does. Mad Men isn’t about men in the jungles of Nam fighting a losing battle for their country. It is not about stoned hippies tuning in, turning on, or dropping out in the mud of upstate New York, and it is not about political insiders in DC as so many productions about the 1960's are. It is not about a budding culture of an evolving world or a retrospective glance at a fascinating cultural time and place. It is about men and women in an office building working for an ad agency in New York City. The way the show is produced, the outside environment has little or no affect on the inner-office life (apart from three subplots about the 1960 presidential election, the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the assassination of JFK respectively). In fact, because they are an ad agency responsible for designing, building, and selling the products that defined the time, they are responsible for impacting American culture by feeding on what the world wants and exploiting it. They are not products of the 1960’s, they are the 1960’s. And that 1960’s is one devious world.
The men on the show are truly appalling people. Chain-smoking and rampant alcoholism aside, the men are guilty of extramarital affairs, racism, homophobia, and antisemitism, but not in a devious detached sense, nor in a villainous antagonizing way, but rather in a very real, accepted, protagonist fashion. The cheating, racist, homophobic, anti-Semites are not the evil flawed rogues who were given these traits for audiences to hate, but instead they are made to be the classically cool and sophisticated central protagonists who audiences are meant to love and envy. These men are not the Grinches who stole Christmas as we should consciously think of them. They are the cool-hand Lukes, they are the James Bonds, the Han Solos, the James Deans, the George Cloonys of the world. They are the coolest guys on the planet except that they are the most repulsive men imaginable. They are the guys everyone wants to be even though they are the guys that no one would actively associate with. As much as we like to look at them as cool and sophisticated, they are in actuality shallow and socially vile by any of today’s standards. But loving them is excusable, because the times they are a-changing, and time heals all wounds.
It is acceptable to love the characters in Mad Men because we have evolved as a society, right? We no longer think, act, or live the way Don and Roger do, right? We no longer live with the same sinister mentality as was commonplace in 1960, right? We are enlightened, right? Times have changed, right? Wrong.
The characters of Mad Men are not Frank, Dean, and the Rat Pack. The cast of Mad Men are really nothing more than The Situation, Paulie D and the cast of Jersey Shore.
While Mad Men has been critically acclaimed across the board and honored by virtually every English-speaking television authority on the planet since its inception, Jersey Shore has survived a polar opposite fate, and has established itself as a cultural low-water mark by every source that has crossed paths with it. Jersey Shore has become the butt of late-night jokes, fodder for internet comedy, a dark premonition for all parents of young adult children, and has even specifically been targeted by the Governor of New Jersey. But despite being viewed as a joke within itself and an abysmal display of a severe lack of human decency, Jersey Shore remains hugely popular among America’s youth for the exact same reasons that Mad Men remains popular among affluent intellectuals.
While Mad Men is darkly sophisticated, cerebral, and intellectually taut and a brilliant critique of modern man, Jersey Shore is base, vulgar and exploits the absolute worst of youth culture. Jersey Shore is the local strip club to Mad Men’s Metropolitan Opera House. Kanye West to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Teen Beat to Time Magazine. McDonald's to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Starbucks to good coffee. Everything that is great about Mad Men only further illustrates that which is disgusting about Jersey Shore. Yet the similarities of the two shows are hauntingly similar. Scripted television versus “reality” television aside, both represent the worst of American culture. Both rely on the dark nature of mankind. Both highlight the self-centered, egotistical, shallowness of humanity, and both stand as televised cornerstones for their respective demographics.
More haunting yet, the characters of each show are striking parallel. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino with his leadership role despite his total lack of disregard to anyone but himself and his own success is really Roger Sterling. Snookie, the easily mocked break-out success within the show’s own reality, is really Peggy Olsen. JWoww, a strong independent woman who has no hesitation standing up to anyone regardless of consequence, is really Joan Holloway. Paulie D, consciously stylish and highly respected among the rest of the group despite his constantly answering to The Situation, is really Don Draper. Sammie, an attractive and sought after yet emotionally driven young woman with a penchant for stirring up conflict when circumstances don’t suit her, is really Betty Draper. Vinnie, with his seemingly clean-cut, intelligent, and charming exterior but who has a seedy dark side and who doesn’t appear to belong with the rest of the group, is really Ken Cosgrove. Angelina, the least respected of the group despite her naive and childish ambitions and total lack of hesitation to sell-out anyone and everyone for her own benefit, is really Pete Campbell, though I am not sure if that is a bigger insult to her or to Pete. I have a difficult time placing Ronnie in the Sterling Cooper clique, but that is mostly because I can’t get a sense of Ronnie beyond his natural ability to grossly over-compensate for his own insecurities with arrogance and thinly veiled romantic desires which I suppose makes him like Sal Romano.
As a character analysis, Jersey Shore is really Mad Men mixed with alcohol, debauchery, and an almost Godly sense of pride except that Mad Men already has alcohol, debauchery, and an almost Godly sense of pride. Jersey Shore really is Mad Men and Mad Men really is Jersey Shore. The only real difference between the two, again, apart from scripted versus “unscripted,” is that those who love Mad Men also love to hate Jersey Shore and probably vice versa. And in a rather ironic twist of fate, those who hate Jersey Shore will continue to hate it for the exact same reasons they love Mad Men. The differences are not the two shows, the differences are us, the audiences. The difference is that television that is about a destructive, disgusting, and socially challenging society from the past is only considered brilliant whereas television about a destructive, disgusting, and socially challenging society happening in the present is considered exploitation the inevitable moral decay in the fabric of American youth culture. Time makes all the difference, and time heals all wounds.
We approach the 1960’s with a certain level of learned understanding. We knew it was a troubled time, but we also like to think that it was a simpler time. The world outside was filled with unmitigated chaos with no end in sight, but the home life was dinner on the table at 6:00, manicured front lawns, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and father always knows best. Even if we consciously know none of that is true, we still like to think of it that way. Mad Men is one of those rare shows that takes a look back at a time we thought we understood and plays Chinese ping pong with our emotions and veiled understanding. It is like the first time a 12 year old boy discovers that professional wrestling is staged; for years we believed what we saw, and we don’t like to accept our own gullibility for a false sense of reality, but as time goes on we realize that the reality is vastly more logical than the preferred fantasy. This is one of the reasons why Mad Men is so brilliant. Nothing is more intriguing than a glimpse into realism that challenges our previous perception of the past. But no matter what happens in the world of Sterling Cooper, it was the past. No matter how offensive we find it, we are naturally detached from it. No matter how vile and immoral Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and Pete Campbell appear to be, we are separated from them by 50 years so we are able to justify loving them. The times they are a-changing, and time heals all wounds.
But Jersey Shore is not the past. Jersey Shore is the present. Jersey Shore does not give us a detached glimpse into the reality of a time previously misunderstood, it instead shows us the reality of the immediate offensive present. Mad Men reminds us of how far we have come as a society, but Jersey Shore highlights our current social failings. The only problem is that when broken down to its fundamental base, we are forced to see that in reality not much really has changed. Alcoholism, womanizing, immoral behavior, violence, and general unmitigated debauchery are all phrases that perfectly describe Jersey Shore, and they are all phrases that perfectly describe Mad Men, just as they are all phrases that perfectly describe early 1960’s culture as well as perfectly describing current youth culture. The times really aren’t a-changing, and time has healed no wounds.
Yet, even though they are both vile displays of American culture, they are still loved equally by their respective demographics. It is perfectly acceptable to hate Jersey Shore as it is also perfectly acceptable to hate Mad Men. But it has become common to love Jersey Shore and it is almost expected that everyone love Mad Men. Most who have never fully immersed themselves in it probably do hate Jersey Shore just as those who have not fully immersed themselves in Mad Men feel the same way, but that is what makes these two shows challenging in their own right. Neither show would exist without the human element which is to say the success, and by extension, the existence of both shows is reliant, not only on the exploitation of their vices, but on the illustration of their humanity. From afar, it is easy to look at Don Draper as a one-dimensional character who cheats on his wife and spends his professional life duping the general public into buying products they don’t need, just as it is easy to look at Snookie as a dumb girl who only cares about drinking, clubbing, and picking up men. But television doesn’t work that way. Literature doesn’t work that way. Art doesn’t work that way. There is nothing intriguing about characters that lack depth. There is nothing interesting about watching a show with no arc. And there is certainly nothing compelling about characters for whom an audience has no sympathy. If we wanted that we would still be watching reruns of Cavemen and Theodore Rex would have swept the Oscars in 1996.
There was a moment in each show that captivated their respective audiences and earned them a place in television history; Don Draper’s Kodak Carousel pitch, and Snookie getting punched in the face by a drunk frat guy.
After 12 episodes of watching Don Draper parade around his own immoral private Idaho with little concern about the consequences of his actions on the people around him, and almost no display of the overt humanity we have come to expect from television shows masquerading as more intellectual than they are, he was presented with a new account for the Kodak Wheel. His pitch for the new product was nothing short of brilliant, and it reads as follows:
In Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards, takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel. It’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and around, and back home again. To a place where we know we are loved.All while giving this pitch Don is flipping through slides of himself with his wife and his children. It is easy to say that Don is nothing more than a salesman who knows how to sell a product with a select choice of words, but the reality is that Don wasn’t selling a product; Don was selling an emotion, a feeling, a memory, a sense of humanity because Don Draper is human. Don Draper is not a scoundrel being portrayed by Jon Hamm to the tune of a couple Screen Actors Guild awards, a Golden Globe, and a bevy of additional acting award nominations. Don Draper is humanity, not just human, but humanity. A man who spends the bulk of his time hiding his human insecurities, secrets, and weaknesses while living a sordid egocentric lifestyle until a minuscule glimmer of warmth from a yet extinguished candle lights the way in an otherwise dark cave. Don Draper doesn’t sell a slide projector; Don Draper sells his own pain. Don Draper was metaphorically punched in the face while the world watched him weep, and Kodak bought it, Sterling Cooper bought it, and television audiences bought it.
Snookie, on the other hand, was literally punched in the face and literally wept while the world watched which, like Don Draper, illustrates her own humanity. For 4 episodes, Jersey Shore was little more than a display of shallow self-righteousness from a group of easily ridiculed 20-somethings who seemed to care only about where they were getting drunk and who they were sleeping with next. They were fake, they were plastic, they were one-dimensional. The cast of Jersey Shore was in no way reflections of accepted society until the end of episode 5 when an anonymous drunk guy purposely hauled off and hit a 4’9” Italian girl in the face over a dispute for some shots of liquor while cameras were rolling. The punch heard round the world. Suddenly the show was not about fist pumps, beating the beat, GTL, or grenades. The show was about the sudden display of compassion we had for these characters who had seemed so shallow and invincible. Through Snookie’s pain, we saw Snookie’s humanity and we sympathized. Snookie’s greatest achievement was not that she sold her wild lifestyle to MTV, instead she sold her full range of emotions to the country, and we bought it.
The simple-minded sects of society would say the only selling point for the two shows is that they sell sex as that old cliche is a commonly understood television principle. But the truth about Jersey Shore and Mad Men is that they do not sell sex, alcohol, and debauchery because, contrary to popular belief, that is not what has ultimate selling power. What's more, that theory has been disproved time and time again: Law and Order, The West Wing, Meet The Press, The Simpsons, Jeopardy, Spongebob Squarepants, all shows with enormous followings that have little or nothing to do with sex of any kind. Certainly those vices capture the attention from audiences, but only a limited amount of footage from bars, nightclubs, and hot tubs can keep audiences interested. Just as audiences will only remain intrigued by a retrospective look at the past for so long. Great television is not about racy situations, great television is about characters. And characters need to be complex. They need to have depth. They need to have emotions that contradict our initial impressions of them. In Don Drapers own word: “You are the product. You feeling something, that’s what sells. Not them, not sex.” This has been true throughout the history of film and television. As sure as the sun sets in the West, and as sure as there will always be an English empire, film and television needs provocative characters. The times they aren’t a-changing, and time heals no wounds.
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