Mad Men + Dexter

It took me until about the fifth episode of Season 1 to get into Mad Men. This is kind of how my thought process worked: This is Don Draper. He is handsome. I like these clothes. I wish men still wore fedoras and three-piece suits. Wow, everyone sure smokes a lot. I'm nearing the end of the first episode and I still feel like I know absolutely nothing about Don. Oh wait. He's married. Dammit. I hate affairs. Okay, everyone's still just doing their job, smoking, and having affairs. Pete Campbell is a jackass. So is Roger Sterling. Hmm, somebody just called Don the wrong name on the train. That's interesting. I've already forgotten about it. What's the point of this show again?

And then, a man enters who turns out to be Don's long lost brother. And we find out that Don Draper is really Dick Whitman who supposedly died in the Korean War. And Don doesn't want to talk to his brother about the past because he has a new life now. And then Don is at home and he puts something into his briefcase and he's going to visit his brother at his hotel late at night. I'm wondering if Don is going to pull out a gun and shoot his brother. But instead Don gives his brother $5000 in cash to disappear and never contact him again.

And now I'm intrigued.

For the rest of the season, I'm trying to figure out who the hell is this guy? "Don Draper." The man with fewer emotions than a tree. My favorite scenes, inevitably, were the flashbacks- the windows into Don's past as a child on a farm during the Depression and as a soldier who switches dog tags with his burned-beyond-recognition lieutenant, Don Draper, in order to fulfill his service requirement early (or maybe it was just to get away from where he had come from?)- because then I got to see a little bit about what was going on inside the head of this mysterious man.
(**spoilers ahead**)
Mad Men gives you a glimpse into another culture, presenting both the good and the bad. Sure, they say "swell" a lot. But they say other stuff, too... Horrible, objectifying things about women, who get treated no better than dogs. I'm telling you right now: if a man ever tried to tackle me because a bunch of guys were playing a game where they guessed what color underwear I had on, he would be coughing up blood for a week. The only woman able to break out of the typical-female mold is now-Junior Copy Writer, Peggy. Speaking of whom, congrats to creator Matthew Weiner for the curve ball in the finale. I had imagined the possibility of her getting pregnant by Pete, but I, like everyone else in the office, thought she was just gaining weight. She freakin' went to the doctor and popped out a baby, like, a second after she found out she was pregnant! Awesome. Also great about the finale: Betty Draper. That woman can be so annoying. Don is completely right when he says that sometimes it's like living with a little girl. She seems so petty about so many things, especially about the divorced woman down the street. I swear, when she told her friend that she didn't like her family portrait photos because "Sally looks fat" (Sally being her daughter, who can't be older than 8), I could have reached right into the show and punched her in the face. In the finale, however, a sequence of events happened that left me absolutely reeling. Her friend, Francine, comes over in hysterics because she discovered that her husband was cheating on her based on telephone records. Betty talks to Don about it and asks how a person could do something like that to the person they claim to love. Betty looks at their phone records and calls a number. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Wayne, picks up. She knows that Don talks to Dr. Wayne about her sessions. In her next appointment, she moves beyond the petty stuff and starts talking about Don's infidelity and how she feels sorry for him because "he doesn't know what family means." Sadly for Don, I think he begins to understand when he presents his idea to Kodak about the Carousel, looking at pictures of his kids and his wife and talking about home being the place where you know you are loved. He goes home to an empty house. End of Season 1.

On an almost completely unrelated topic: Dexter. (The small connection being that Mad Men and Dexter are both superb dramas.) Until recently, I have had no one to talk to about this show. I watched it because I try to make a point of watching as much great television as I possibly can, but when you're the only person you know who watches it, it's harder to get emotional about the characters and the story. When I have really intense reactions at something hilarious in The Office or something awesome in LOST, the first thing I want to do is talk to my respective Office/LOST buddies to see what they think. Otherwise, I end up having a whole lot feelings that I keep to myself. Now, however, after 2 seasons of Dexter, during which I tried explaining to a few people how incredible it is ("You see, it's about a serial killer who only kills bad people! Get it?! It's, like, the coolest justice system ever!!" "But doesn't that make him a bad guy too?" "NO!! It's stretching the traditional moral code! It's complicated and wonderful!"), I finally have a Dexter-buddy! Watching Season 3 is going to be infinitely more exciting because now, when Dexter does something badass, I can text my friend, "That was so badass!" instead of silence.

Ever since I got into learning about the Mafia, by which I mean watching The Sopranos, Martin Scorsese movies, and The Godfather, I have been fascinated by the anti-hero. I'm sure I was fascinated before I started loving everything about mob culture, but gangsters are the epitome of the anti-hero. You have to wrestle with the fact that you are rooting for Tony Soprano to be successful and realize at the same time that he can garrote a man to death with no remorse. In a similar way, Dexter Morgan murders people. These murders are premeditated, calculated, and he enjoys them. And they all deserve it. And he works for the police department as a blood analyst. Season 1 revolves around a series of murders by someone called the Ice-Truck Killer. He leaves his bodies in pieces with their blood drained. Dexter respects his style. (Dexter's style is to sedate his victims, bind them to a table with plastic wrap, they wake up with him standing over them, he makes an incision on their cheek and puts a few drops of their blood onto a glass slide, then he chops their bodies up, and dumps the garbage bags in the middle of the bay. His collection of glass slides = trophies.) About halfway through the season, we get to see who the Ice-Truck Killer is. Not until the finale is his true identity revealed: Dexter's brother. Dexter kills him and comes back in Season 2 with all sorts of emotional problems. Well... to the extent that Dexter can feel emotion. He has killed the only person who would ever accept him for who he truly was. It creates a sort of mental block for him, making killing difficult for a little while. Plus, all the garbage bags with his past victims are discovered in the ocean, making things very interesting.

Up to this point, I have managed not to mention a single supporting character. This is not to say they are not good. Dexter's sister, Deb, is a police officer, as well. She is in the unfortunate position of having been the girlfriend of the man who turned out to be the Ice-Truck Killer. And he tried to kill her, too... As you can imagine, this makes her a bit unstable in Season 2. Dexter's girlfriend, Rita, was totally awesome. She had 2 adorable kids. Dexter really liked her because she was "damaged, too," as he would say. He kinda ruined things with her because he cheated on her with Lila, or as I like to call her: "The Worst Human Being on the Planet." Literally. As in, she tried to burn children. Sgt. Doakes is the hardcore police officer who knows that there is something not right with Dexter. In Season 2, he starts following Dexter around because he wants to catch him "in the act." Unfortunately, Doakes is no longer with us, thanks to the worst human being on the planet. While I think that each of these characters adds something important to the show, Michael C. Hall is Dexter.