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Comment by andy800 | Hacker News Reader

Mad Men is a great show, but it demonstrates how setting a guy up as the protagonist modifies viewer perceptions.

Don Draper might be the biggest asshole to ever be a lead character on TV. He has zero sense of humor, takes all the credit for his employees' work, sleeps around (obviously) with his kid's teacher, with clients, with two of his secretaries (today we'd certainly call this an abuse of power), he refuses to have a relationship with his long-lost brother, mostly ignores his kids, never acknowledges Peggy's skills or contributions, fires a gay guy for not "entertaining" a client, drinks and sleeps at work all day. Plus plenty more I can't immediately recall.

Sure, Tony Soprano has people killed, but he isn't nearly the passive-aggressive dickhead that Don is.

Yes he is a complex person but the same show could have been made from a different character's perspective with Don Draper being the asshole everyone in the office avoids at all costs.

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First I want to say that I agree with you but there is one point that I think they treated more subtly than you describe here. When Sal was fired it was not, imo, strictly for not entertaining a client. If you recall, Don first discovered Sal was gay before the incident with Lee Garner. Don's response at the time was to tell Sal to be discreet. My reading of this was that Don, perhaps somewhat anachronistically and certainly out of character, did not have a problem with Sal's sexuality but understood that it could cause trouble for Sal and maybe even the firm. So when Lee demands that Sal be taken off the account the firm has no choice. Lucky Strike pays the bills. Also, you might recall that it was Roger who fired Sal not Don. It was Roger because Lucky Strike was his account and Lee only dealt with him. Roger didn't even care to know the reason. IIRC he even said something to the effect of "Lee wants you gone so you're gone. It doesn't matter why." Don's response to this was the privately tell Sal he'd be a reference for him. My recollection of that episode was that Don had little to do with the outcome and was uncharacteristically compassionate.

If my read on this particular scene is accurate I think it does actually further prove the point you're making. The show did go out of its way to make Don a more sympathetic character to a 21st century audience despite him being a real piece of shit.

Edit: another way to read Don's acceptance (if you could call it that) of Sal's sexuality was not that he was ok with being gay but that he understood what it was like to have a real secret. He understood what it means to live a lie and present yourself as someone you're not. This maybe allowed him to refrain from judging Sal even if he did have a problem with homosexuality.

> not that he was ok with being gay but that he understood what it was like to have a real secret

That is a really interesting interpretation, thanks.

(Also a reminder that even if Don was pretty anachronistically OK with it, he still dropped a "you people" line to Sal)

You're 100% right. I completely forgot about the "you people" line. And now that you mention it I do recall Don sort of looking at Sal with disgust. It's hard to tell though if that disgust was because of intense homophobia (probably) or simply because he gave Sal a chance and asked him to be discreet and Sal then almost immediately created a problem for the firm.

> the same show could have been made from a different character's perspective with Don Draper being the asshole everyone in the office avoids at all costs

You might be alluding to this, but that is a major component to the show.

He gets away with being a trash human being through his handsomeness and extreme charisma, but deludes himself into thinking he's a genuinely talented and excellent person. He disposes of the women he surrounds himself with the moment they see a glimpse of who he is, choosing to keep running rather than face even the slightest judgement.

The early seasons involve the viewer slowly realizing that for themselves, as we begin to find out who he really is.

The show later becomes him accepting his awfulness, and finally, actually sharing that candidly with others.

The season 6 finale is poignant. He's been lying to his kids their whole lives.

But he takes Sally to his real house, where he actually grew up – "this is a bad neighborhood!" But the talented young actress portraying Sally just gives her father a look of slow understanding, and he squints back in silent confirmation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm3yrjwaRLo

It's like they're seeing each other for the first time.

Or maybe the false dichotomy between good and bad people is boring? People like the Sopranos and Mad Men for being smart and subtle fictions.

Works of art actually don’t have to pass moral judgment or teach so called values to the audience.

>Works of art actually don’t have to pass moral judgment or teach so called values to the audience.

Thanks for this, I was trying to put exactly this into words. I actually find Draper refreshing, he's not so much evil as he is a flawed human, as we all are. Blessed with good looks, charisma, charm and cursed with a broken childhood, insecurity, and a secret past.

Nobody is asking for, or expecting, moral lessons. That's what Full House or Growing Pains were for. The point is that, especially upon a second viewing, Don does so few positive, admirable, or generous things and so many selfish, nasty, hurtful things. It still doesn't make him a "bad person" like Joan's rapey husband, it just demonstrates that Don is innately an asshole, a very big one.

> Don does so few positive, admirable, or generous things

True, but he still seems to do these things quite a bit more often than almost every other character on the show. They are all pretty selfish

This is why they're called an antihero.

The absurd, frustrating, and sometimes hilarious experience of the characters in Mad Men reminds me _a lot_ of the chaos of working in tech startups the last 10 years during the boom economy. A lot of people have had bosses reminiscent of a Don Draper, Roger Sterling, or Cooper, even if it wasn't full bore day drinking, fuck-your-secretary 1960s levels of bad behavior. Pretty close though. I'll never forget hearing a story a date once told me about her eng manager doing nitrous oxide at his desk. Or how Dropbox, Google, etc. literally had places to nap in the office. Or the many many women who went to coding bootcamps, only to have their mentors try and date them.

Even if you think Draper is an unappealing asshole, there are other characters (like Peggy!) that are there to personally identify with and root for. Mad Men provides a lot of catharsis seeing a set of deeply flawed people, subject to the trials and tribulations of history, make it through life and work. We all want to believe that despite our various fuckups, we're good people and deserve to be happy.

See also: Fight Club.

Or The Wolf of Wall Street.

Lots of folks just seem to get a vibe from what they watch, and that forms their entire view of what they've seen. The actual plot? What the characters do? Nope, all vibe.

Walter White comes to mind, too. The creator was aghast at how much people _liked_ Walter and gave Skylar shit.

I can say, upon watching the series a 2nd (and 3rd!) time, I definitely came to dislike Walter.

Walt at least starts out with noble sounding goals motivated by pride. The show lets the mask fall so slowly on what he really is the viewer will probably have a hard time letting go of the initial appearance, especially if you identified with it personally. But even half way through the show you'd have to be deluding yourself if you still thought he was a good person, and by the end he's explicit about what a monster he always actually was.

To be fair, Walter indeed becomes one of the worst human beings (if not the worst) on the show by the end of it, in terms of morality and just in general. But he is entertaining to watch, even though at times it is frustrating.

Skyler isn't really a terrible person at all (the whole petty thing with Ted aside, which is really minor and understandable in the context). But I would be lying if I said she wasn't extremely annoying and frustrating to watch (which imo speaks well about the writing on the show).

I think it's tough to write characters who spend a really long time knowing far less than the audience does, even if they're mostly behaving very reasonably (generously, even) considering what they do know, and not have them become annoying. Especially when they get as much screen time as she did.

Which, of course, can also be blamed on the writers. No one made them write it like that.

Oh, let me clarify, I didn't mean that Skyler being written as an annoying character is necessarily a flaw. I don't know if it was intentional, but to me it feels like it works well within the story, and makes it feel more real to how real life often works out.

There are plenty of all around good people in real life who just happen to be annoying to interact with in certain contexts. That's just the reality of life, and imo the show executed it well.

To add, I found Marie to be written annoyingly as well, but in a very different way from Skyler, which further indicates that it was somewhat of a deliberate choice. Despite me finding both of them being frustrating to watch interactions with, I would say they were written well. And no, I don't have some bias against women in the show. One of my favorite, in all aspects, characters from the Breaking Bad universe is Kim Wexler from Better Call Saul spin-off, and by far.

I mean, one might take the couple most prominent women in the show being annoying on the one hand and frustratingly bone-headed on the other (Marie) as bias or misogyny... except that nearly all the guys are monsters, or worthless, or are also annoying (sometimes all three). I think it's just a show where almost no-one's good, all the way, entirely, or has always psychologically got it together. Even Hank gets pathetically sorry for himself and starts wasting money on his weird clearly-coping-for-something (ahem, PTSD, among other things probably) rock collecting (well, rock buying) "hobby"—except, I've seen people behave almost exactly that same way in real life! Its characters are human, often such that it's hard to fully like them, just as it can be hard to like most people in real life without some familial or long-running friend bond to get you over their quirks and weaknesses.

... still, there's a lot of time in those first couple seasons in particular when, to the viewer, Skyler kinda just comes off as a clueless nag, even when she's actually behaving reasonably, just because of how the show's presented. "Skyler, you don't get what he's dealing with, just back off!" you want to yell at the screen—then, if you think for a second, you remember he's dissolving bodies in bathtubs and living a secret life and lying to everyone and putting everyone around him in mortal danger and all kinds of messed-up shit, all because he couldn't swallow his pride just once for the sake of his family, so maaaaaybe we should go easier on her. But the presentation, the writing—it does tend to raise such ill thoughts of Skyler to begin with.

Yeah, people tend to misunderstand the points of those movies, even if the message is painted so thick, it feels impossible to miss, like in Fight Club.

The movie satirizes the entire premise, the narrator, Tyler, and their club at every possible step. The whole thing about how they are all "unique and different from the sheep", all while they end up shaving their heads, wearing the exact same clothing, and getting rid of their names to just serve Tyler as faceless "soldiers" felt like such a blatant mockery.

And yet, despite that, it fell on deaf years for many people.

A certain subset of viewers envy Leonardo's character -- hot wife, sycophant employees, yacht, Lambo, etc -- but the film never presents him as admirable or even talented (except at ripping people off). A little like the book Liar's Poker back in the 80s -- Michael Lewis (sort of) intended it as an expose of the toxicity, absurdity, and excess of Wall Street. But the book was so entertaining, it actually made it sound like the greatest place anyone would ever want to work. Having enough money to bet $10 million on one hand, talking shit about Equities in Dallas, and of course, becoming known as a Big Swinging Dick.

Fight Club is a bit more subtle, it doesn't really renounce (or endorse) anything, but its main character is (spoiler) obviously seriously mentally ill with two entirely distinct personas.

I was drawn to Draper's charisma at the start of the show, as intended. But as all the infidelities, abuses of power, and general narcissism piled up, I grew to dislike him. By the end of the series I felt a deep ambivalence for the man, but that's a testament to how well written and acted the character was.

> passive-aggressive dickhead that Don is.

I very much disagree. Look how Tony treats his sister when she's trying to better herself and change their families tendency to rage, he jabs at her constantly until she breaks and gets immense satisfaction that she is as broken as him.

Melfi even argues Tony is a sociopath, Don at least realizes the difference between right and wrong.

Although I've watched every episode of The Sopranos, it was quite a long time ago. I recall that for the most part, when Tony was pissed at someone, he typically confronted that person, and if he didn't do it personally, the "victim" usually knew why he was getting wacked or beat up or whatever.

But yes, you're correct, within his family -- especially his mother, Uncle Junior, his sister and sometimes his wife -- things are a lot more complicated.

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