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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: August 16, 2007
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Mad Men, “5G” (Season 1, Episode 5) [Watch on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Mad Men made a splash right from its first episode with its meticulously crafted style, a throwback to a yearned-for (yet poisoned) era. The clothes, the clean-cut men, the smoking — everything about the veneer of Mad Men was meant to draw people in with the attractive surface of the early 1960s. Which is what made the show so insidious for people who did still harbor illusions about the good old days. But what ultimately elevated Mad Men‘s first season from well-styled cable drama to genuine TV fascination was the introduction of the mystery of Dick Whitman.
There were hints from the first episode that Don’s wartime past was A Thing, but few viewers could have anticipated how much the fifth episode of the series blew the doors off the secret, as Don’s brother Adam showed up, calling Don by his real name, “Dick Whitman.” Don’s reaction to the development — it’s the farthest out of his comfort zone he’d been in the series to date — let us know this was no quirk of personality or temporary stumbling block in the Don Draper story. The mystery of how Dick Whitman came to become Don Draper, how this paragon of white male greatness might actually have climbed to his perch atop a hill of lies, would be the engine that drove fan engagement for the rest of the season, and it was Don’s actions in “5G,” the ruthlessness and considered calculation in the face of his pleading brother, that added about eight new layers to the man at once.
Here’s to you, Dick Whitman. Eight years and counting of fascinating us, even after we found out you grew up in a brothel.
[You can watch Mad Men‘s “5G” on Netflix.]
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