Talking ‘Mad Men’: Season 6 Premiere

Frank Ockenfels/AMC Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and Don Draper (Jon Hamm) from Season 6 of “Mad Men.”

Every Monday morning, Sloane Crosley and Logan Hill will be offering their post-”Mad Men” analysis here. Read on and tell us what you think: Is Peggy the new Don Why did Betty go brunet And can Don change

Sloane Crosley: So what was that we were saying about this being a lighter, ebullient antidote to last season

Logan Hill: Well, it started out sunny enough, though that’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone read Dante on the beach.

SC:  It’s “The Inferno,” Logan. Did you bring your sunscreen At what point did you realize that Don wasn’t speaking aloud, and then at what point did you think it would be the whole episode Or maybe that second thought process was just mine.

LH: I’ve got to say, that first scene bothered me. Because I love this show least when it’s telegraphing its intentions with blatant symbols, historical references and quotations. This premiere, we get at least two from Freshman Lit: That Dante quote and then “Lend me your ears” from Peggy, who may succeed Don. I’m afraid Don is Caesar, Peggy’s new boss is Brutus, and she’s Marc Antony in the show creator Matt Weiner’s mind. Or that I’m as high as Stan.

SC: Well, it’s the only thing he says and just a few lines. The rest of that passage from “The Inferno” is about abject terror, which pretty much describes Don’s face in this episode. It’s funny, I kept thinking that this took place just a few years before Joan Didion started escaping to the Royal Hawaiian and her descriptions of it being this enclosed sanctuary in the sand were fresh in my mind. Now that kind of thing seems like a nightmare â€" forced sanctuary â€" like being on a cruise ship. It’s interesting to watch Don pick that up and be disgusted by the “this one goes out to all the Yankees and pale faces out there! Enjoy your pig!”

LH:  Didion was on my mind too but more because of “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and Nicholas von Hoffman’s We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against, their riffs on the sadness of the hippie culture that Betty invades like some tourist. To me, Don seemed so troubled by the ease of Hawaii. Standing in his office, staring at the window, hearing the ocean: That shot was oddly morbid.

SC: Nothing good ever comes on this show when you see a tight shot of the back of someone’s head.

LH: Yes! And is Megan creeping up behind him Ready to push him down the stairs I’ve got to say, I was happy to see Megan looking great and doing well as a man-murdering femme fatale star of daytime television. Do you still loathe her

SC: I’m glad you brought her up while we’re still on the subject of Hawaii because every pattern she wears is derivative of or an actual Lilly Pulitzer, who died Sunday. So let’s pour out a blue drink for Ms. Pulitzer. Meanwhile, I don’t loathe Megan. I just hate that the show sets it up so that she has to be an objective victim for me to like her. She has to be cheated on or have a terrible mother.

LH: But I feel like she is definitely herself. She’s created her distance from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and Don, which is why I feel she’s almost like a control group in this caustic experiment of a show.

SC: I will definitely concede Megan-as-control-group. Woman’s like the blank in Scrabble and about that beige and surface as well. But I’ll give Megan this: when it comes, her depression is traceable. She wasn’t getting acting gigs in Season 5 and that made her sad. Now she’s on daytime and TV and getting recognized and she’s happy. Whereas Roger and Don and Pete (oh my) Forget it.

LH: In last season’s premiere, Betty got fat. In this one, she got brunet. Like Megan. Like the 15-year-old girl she jokes that Henry should rape.

SC: The most lighthearted description of raping a minor ever to play on TV.

LH: A low-water mark! But Betty’s line made me gasp â€" and it didn’t for work me. She’s rarely been so crass before. And there’s no way she thought Henry would find it funny. He’s too much of a prude. But when Betty went brunet, do you think it was to be more like the teen violinist Because the hippie called out her “bottled” blonde hair Or something else

SC: I actually think your two Betty observations are connected. I think she  went all Elizabeth Taylor because that  filthy beatnik called her a bottled blonde. But there was also the threat of violence during that whole scene. The sous chef in a beanie wouldn’t have been able to stop the alpha hippie from really hurting Betty. And as much as a relief as it is that the tension only culminates with her coat getting ripped, I think there’s something dark (-er than suspected) in Betty where she was almost disappointed. In an alternate world where pretense wasn’t an issue She and Don are perfect for each other because both their minds instantly go to the darkest place.

LH: They do share a certain cataclysmic view of everything. And some odd inner toughness, which we don’t often see from Betty. I get misty thinking of her in her housecoat with the shotgun, though I doubt Betty is Don’s Beatrice, waiting for him in the Eden of Rye, N.Y.

SC:  Let’s talk about how hairy everyone has gotten (mountain man Stan! Sideburn Pete!) vs. how fresh-faced Bob is.

LH: I can’t tell if it’s the 1960s or a werewolf movie. In the office, Pete certainly seemed more arrogant than ever, mocking Don’s nap habit. And if anyone on this show is going into therapy, I’m glad it’s Roger: He just needs a room in which to deliver monologues. It’s like an Off-Broadway theater.

SC: The bit about the bill and the doors and all of it. Perfect Roger and delivered in these great doses Weiner knew we were waiting for. Though I have to say, the Roger plotline is arguably the focal point of the episode, the one we check back in on with the most frequency and the most varied ways (the shrink’s office, the funeral, the office itself), and yet, the whole “this person’s in shock and they will crack later over a more minor incident” device is something I’d see on “The Big Bang Theory.”

LH: He’s such a slippery, witty, superficial nutjob, his storylines never quite touch ground. But I never quite mind, either. The rest is bleak enough. Can I nerd out with 2 quickly-Googled historical references

SC: By all means.

LH: I think the show’s saying something about the weird ways that legacies hold all kinds of surprises, whether family or work: That Leica M2 Don gave the doctor The photographer Nick Ut used that model to take the Pulitzer-winning “Napalm Girl” photograph in 1972. Since Dow Chemical’s napalm is also handled by Don’s ad agency, it’s horrifically ironic. And when Roger’s daughter â€" after declining his sketchy-looking jar of River Jordan water â€" says, “Refrigeration. It’s the wave of the future.” I couldn’t help but think of “The Graduate.” It opened, Dec., 22, 1967, just a few days before this episode, with the line: “Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.”

Photo by Movie Still Archives Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate.”

SC: You know, overall, I think there was a theme of lost causes in this episode. Don tries to help a younger version of himself (the kid he married on the beach) only to discard him by discarding the lighter. Betty tried to help a younger version of herself,  Sandy, only to abandon the cause. Roger tried to help his daughter only to realize she’s a little schemer like him.

LH: Good point. It’s almost an obsession with legacy. Everyone’s thinking about their own death, and wondering what they’ll leave behind.

SC: What did you think of Peggy’s new attitude

LH: Her emergence as Don 2.0 is so obvious but I’m glad they sped through it. By the end of the episode, Ted is already pushing her to drop the Draper pretense. And Peggy is her own person. She’s the one with the killer pitch in this episode: Not Don, who flubs it.

SC: The king is dead, long live Peggy. All of Don’s pitches this round were about falling in love with “an idea” or “an experience,” and I’ve heard it all before. I’m over the emotional shell game.

LH: Yes,  Don’s the same depressed horndog, on a different depressing day. I feel like the whole series is built around this idea that most people don’t really change (See: Roger’s riff on doors), and I wonder how long that can last before even folks who love it lose patience.

SC: Maybe Don could take his advice and stop feeling so damn sorry for himself.

LH: I hope so. That was the bummer about his affair with the wife of his noble cross-country skiing surgeon pal: He’s lying naked in bed with her, making his new year’s wish, “I want to stop doing this.”

Sloane Crosley is the author of “How Did You Get This Number” and “I Was Told There’d Be Cake“; Logan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ, Rolling Stone, Wired and others.