Like most fans of “Mad Men,” we tend to be obsessive about the show — no detail is too small to analyze. Series creator Matthew Weiner feeds into this obsession by loading every episode with a long list of reference points — from literature, television shows, music, and more. Each week, we’ll provide a quick and handy guide to the previous episode’s cultural references, from the obvious to the elusive. This week, we’re jumping right into 1969. It’s two months after the previous season ended, and we have more references to Sharon Tate (bring back the conspiracies from last year!), a few rock songs with double meanings, and the return of a reference to a famous tragic-romantic play.
“I’m a Man” — Spencer Davis Group
Don’s introduction in the season premiere, floating through the Los Angeles International Airport, is set to this brash song from the group’s 1967 album of the same name. It’s the type of chest-puffing introduction that mirrors not just what we imagine Don is feeling, but what every man feels. The world is changing, but patriarchal attitudes still exist — especially among the stilted old men of the advertising world.
“Dracula’s Castle”
This is what Don calls Megan’s new home in California, a secluded spot in the Hollywood Hills where you can hear the wolves howling from the canyon. Remember last year when everyone seemed to be linking Megan with Sharon Tate? Based on a later scene where Don watches Richard Nixon’s first inaugural address on television, that would place the show in January 1969, a month before Tate was murdered by the Manson family not far away in Benedict Canyon. Also, the only film Tate made with her husband, Roman Polanski, as well as one of the last films she made period, was “The Fearless Vampire Killers” in 1967.
“Lost Horizon”
After Don purchases a large television for Megan without asking her (it can hardly fit in her small home), the couple wakes up to the opening of “Lost Horizon,” Frank Capra’s 1937 film about a group of people whose hijacked plane crashes in the Himalayan Mountains, where they find paradise and discover their arrival might not be so random. When Don awakes, the camera specifically focuses on the opening of the film, which paraphrases a section from the Gospel of Matthew.
“Cyrano de Bergerac”
This is actually the second reference to Edmond Rostand’s play on “Mad Men” (in season three, the now-deceased Lane Pryce referred to a client needing the firm to be their “Cyrano de Bergerac”). Here, the reference is even more direct. Freddy Rumsen references the play, about a gifted man who, marked by self-doubt, convinces another man to seduce the woman he loves for him. As we learn at the end of the episode, this mirrors Don’s use of Freddy as a front to get his ideas into the agency without them knowing (he’s been suspended with pay due to his downward spiral last season), but if you’re familiar with the play you know this does not end well.
“You Keep Me Hangin’ On” — Vanilla Fudge
The rock group’s cover of a Holland–Dozier–Holland song, originally recorded by The Supremes in 1966 (another girl group reference: earlier in the episode, Lou Avery, the square replacement for Don Draper, calls the copywriters Gladys Knight & The Pips), plays over the end of the episode. We see Don out on his balcony, in the cold, shivering. A bottle is near him but he doesn’t drink. Is he going through withdrawal? What is keeping him hanging on, really? It certainly doesn’t seem to be Megan, based on his — possibly a dream — redeye conversation with the mysterious woman. Maybe the work is what is keeping him hanging on? If Don’s scheme involving Freddy Rumsen as his decoy is discovered, will he keep on hanging on or will he finally just let go?
