Mad Men is more than a comedy. Part of why we can laugh at the characters on the show is that we love them like family. The first season ended with Don making a pitch to Kodak about their slide projector. In the pitch, Don lays out everything for us. He’s talking about his own memories, but the show itself is about the collective memories of America. Good times and bad abound in the 1960s, but the memories are ours, even if we didn’t live through them, or were too young to understand. Don isn’t just pitching the Kodak Carousel, he’s pitching American History, and the look back at ourselves that Mad Men allows. He says, “There’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash.” From there on, he’s talking to the audience. He describes nostalgia as “pain from an old wound” while showing pictures of his failing marriage. His kids, in those moments, could be any of us, and he “takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” Mad Men doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it just makes us miss the original. Lucky for us, the fifth season starts March 25 with a two-hour premiere. It’ll be like going home again.
