Say You’re Sorry To Mr. and Mrs. Utz–Or Else!

Mad Men is a television show that’s been lauded and praised by many. I caught the past two shows and think the buzz is deserved. The opening credits give you a hint that it’s a little different from most 2008 scripted TV fare. In an animated sequence, a man wearing a thin tie falls slowly off a building, a cartoon that’s inspired by a Hitchcock movie. Even many of the commercials are a homage to the early sixties, and slides before each break tell us advertising history over the ages.

Set in 1963, it tells the story of Dan Draper, ad man, who like most of the cast, chain smokes and regularly pops down brown liquor from a bar in his corner office. The New York ad agency is full of characters who also smoke and do bad things with secretaries, and Draper in his thin tie and serious demeanor is a tough cookie. His wife looks like Grace Kelly, with the perfect blond hair and calm Nordic outlook. Their two kids are just what central casting would provide, cute but out of the way, watching cartoons on a black and white TV. While Dan carries on with various women, she’s being propositioned by a man in the stable where she rides.

Last night’s episode began with the filming of a commercial for Utz Potato chips. A comedian named Jimmy Barrett, played brilliantly by Patrick Fishler, is reading his lines in take after take. Then a couple comes on the set, the man with silver hair and the woman, obese. Barrett swerves from his script and begins doing a “Hindenberg’ routine, then makes more cruel jokes about her weight, as the stunned crew and director look on, aghast. The couple is Mr and Mrs Utz Potato Chip, and the comedian is in deep doo doo. But he doesn’t care.

Later Draper is incensed when he hears about the famous comedian who was so mean to his clients, jeopardizing the account. He sets up a dinner at Lutece, and when Barrett and his floozy wife/manager finally show up to the dinner late, the comedian mocks the waiter with the French accent. Because Draper and wife/manager had a fling in the car the week before, Draper’s demand that Barrett apologize and save the account is more complicated. He pins her up against the wall and forces her to bring Jimmy to heel.

The rest of the dinner sequence is awkward, with the comedian asking prim and proper Mrs. Draper inaproppriate questions about horses while the Utz couple look on, waiting for Jimmy to say he’s sorry. It’s a masterful scene in a well-written show that captures the details–even the wide newspapers–of a faraway time.