Mad Men was one of TV’s crowning achievements – but its dispiriting take on queerness always left a sour taste
A decade and a half after the series first aired, there’s nothing that does it quite like Mad Men. Along with Breaking Bad, this seven-season AMC drama came at the tail end of TV’s “golden age”, and was one of the medium’s real high points. It was a period series with wit, depth, lofty literary symbolism, top-shelf acting and cinematography that still blows pretty much any show you’ll see this year out of the water. Even those who’ve never seen the series are familiar with the gist of it through cultural osmosis – smart suits, hard liquor and rampant womanising in the 1960s New York advertising scene. As it celebrates its 15th anniversary on 19 July, many of its fans would still argue it’s never been bested.
But Mad Men, for all its mighty and lasting successes, was not flawless. The series was criticised throughout its run for its clumsy handling of race, for instance – thinly sketched African-American characters would show up for didactic B-plots before being ignored completely. One aspect of the show that attracted substantially less discussion, however, was its handling of sexuality – specifically, its treatment of any character that wasn’t straight.
While Mad Men’s central roster of characters were all heterosexual, the series featured a number of queer characters throughout its run, the most prominent being closeted art director Sal Romano (Bryan Batt). Sal’s story was one of secrecy and frustration. We see him feign macho heterosexuality in groups of other men. We see him pine for the oblivious Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) over an intimate dinner, in which Sal’s wife is basically relegated to the position of third wheel. Eventually, we see him sacked from Sterling Cooper, the show’s central ad agency, after refusing the aggressive sexual advances of influential tobacco magnate Lee Garner Jr (Darren Pettie). And then, three seasons in, we never hear from him again.
As an embodiment of homosexual existence in the American mid-century, Sal is dispiritingly joyless and unfulfilled. Mad Men told similar queer stories again and again. We see Joan (Christina Hendricks) break the heart of her female roommate, who professes her love and is immediately brushed off. We watch as Megan (Jessica Pare) is hit on by an actor friend while running lines, also rejecting her. The show’s main queer character across its final few seasons was the duplicitous Bob Benson (James Wolk), who also makes a fruitless pass at a straight colleague (Pete Campbell), and never comes to terms with his sexuality in the series.
The problem is not that Mad Men explores the ubiquitous homophobia of the era; I’m sure life as a queer person in the 1960s was difficult in a way that people of my generation cannot truly comprehend. But regardless, it was not just rejection and disappointment; to present it as such is to do a disservice to those queer people who did manage to find happiness, who managed to live joyfully and openly in defiance of social norms.
Of course, even within Mad Men, there were two main exceptions to this rule, queer characters who escaped the grim, frustrated fates of Sal and Bob Benson. One was Joyce, the self-assured bohemian lesbian played by Girls’ Zosia Mamet, introduced in season four as an unlikely friend of Peggy’s (Elisabeth Moss). She appeared in just five episodes, however; her only significant purpose in the show was to introduce Peggy to her boyfriend (and later fiance), Abe (Charlie Hofheimer). The other came early in the show, in season two: Kurt, a German designer and half of a two-man creative team brought in to add some youth to Sterling Cooper. He is nonchalantly forthcoming about being gay, prompting mockery and homophobic conjecture behind his back. But again, Mad Men never bothered fleshing him out, and other than a brief plotline in which he helps Peggy find her confidence (by modernising her haircut, no less), the show was never interested in giving him anything to do. And then, suddenly, he too was gone.
Now, naturally, there is the argument that any show focusing on the world of philandering mid-century New York ad execs is going to inevitably spend most of its energy on straight white cis men. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that: Mad Men was always extremely adept at exposing the hypocrisies and socio-political failings of these exact men. But what makes the show’s blinkered handling of queerness more galling is the fact that Mad Men’s scope always expanded beyond just the small office of Sterling Cooper. It kept Betty Draper (January Jones) in the show long after her presence began to feel tangential. It had no problem bringing back many of its bygone characters. Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray), the alcohol-abusing veteran who was washed out of the agency in season three (with no apparent hope of return) popped back up in later years as a newly sober freelancer. Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) left the agency in disgrace, but still was brought back for multiple episodes later in the show. Even Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis), unceremoniously dropped at the tail end of season three, is given a reprieve late on as a Hare Krishna convert. But Sal? Not a peep.
To this day, Mad Men remains pretty much the gold standard for period dramas in most every regard. But not in its approach to queerness. (Ironically, The Sopranos – probably the one show to which Mad Men was most often compared, both because of a shared literary sensibility and the fact that the HBO mob drama was where Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner cut his teeth – has actually aged substantially better in its handling of race and sexuality, despite its characters being, on the whole, raging bigots.) Even though less than a decade has passed since the series concluded, the TV landscape now looks very different: period dramas are increasingly forefronting marginalised narratives. It’s not enough to dull Mad Men’s shine, or to negate its pretty phenomenal artistic achievements. But we should never stop asking for more. In Mad Men, that little bit more would have gone a long way.
