Season 6 Starts with Sin, Sauce and Sun

What a season opener it was, after a long awaited arrival we finally got a taste of what the new season of Mad Men will look like.

It was full of interesting changes in the characters, Roger Sterling with side burns, long hair on just about all of Don Draper’s creative team and well as a shaggy mop on Peggy’s boyfriend.  There were all types of inferences towards life and death, Don reading Dante’s Inferno, the door man having a heart attack in the lobby, Rogers’s mother’s funeral and then the news that Rogers shoe shine man had died.  Interestingly Roger was more upset about the latter.

Overall it was a very good opening episode, we find out Don is back to his old womanizing ways and that Megan is finally on her own two feet.  The ending of season 5 eluded that Don would be back to his cheating ways but to see him cheating on Megan with his neighbor’s wife whom they have dinner parties with is very interesting.  She is also much older than him which I suppose is consistent with Dons flings in the past.  Peggy is strong in her new position and Pete is still as wormy as ever at SCDP.  The most bizarre part of the episode was Betty making reference to her husband Henry about raping her daughter’s friend……wow.  Staying consistent with her immaturity Betty hangs out for a day in an abandoned apartment building with some squatters and assists in making some soup and then later dyes her hair brunette after years of being a blonde. 

Episode 2 right off the get go was all about portraying the sexual freedom that was happening during the late 60’s.  Pete is flirting with his neighbors and her husband is flirting with Pete’s wife.  Don is continuing his affair with his apartment building neighbor, having day time intimacy wife her in the maids bedroom.  This episode like the 1^st one was quite dark, it offered little in humor at all and really touched very little on business.

The Heinz beans and sausage meeting was a highlight for me, interesting to see the ketchup guy from Heinz to come in and meet Don.  I also really liked to quote by Don, “you gotta dance with the girl that brought you”.  Meaning they needed to stay loyal to the beans division of Heinz and stay away from trying to get the ketchup business. 

From a fashion perspective this episode offered more into taking us back to the loud colors and prints that were becoming popular in the late 60’s.  Don still stays true to his classy, simple suits he has always worn.  We see Joan is some new styles as well as Megan in her olive green sweater. 

The most bizarre part of this episode would be the scenes of Don with his mistress and then the shift back in time to Dons youth.  The scene was Don and his pregnant mother taking up room and board at a friend’s house which also served as a brothel.  Don had made reference in earlier episodes about growing up in a whore house, now we get a glimpse of that time in his life.  We also see him give his mistress cash money as he dresses himself for work after a morning in bed with her.  It’s safe to say his upbringing molded him into to man that he is and the way he views women and sex.