Fun
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Nostalgic
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Curious
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Weird
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: October 18, 2007
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Mad Men, “The Wheel” (season 1, episode 13). [Stream on Netflix.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The first-season finale of Mad Men was the close to a buzzy season of television — one that introduced that show’s signature attention to period detail; its post-modern view of the apex of Americana told in the most crassly commercial terms; the heady intrigue of Dick Whitman — that hadn’t quite yet showed everything it can do. With “The Wheel,” Mad Men closed its first chapter by having Don Draper be the utmost Don Draper, on multiple fronts.
With the presentation to Kodak, Don presents the American family at its most cynical: his own. Everything Don is saying about family and emotion and memory … it’s all true. It’s also 100% a pitch. Watching Don pull his feet out of the fire with the Kodak pitch was one thing; that’s the kind of thrill any TV show worth its salt would know to provide. It was the show’s willingness to hang Don out to dry during his moment of professional triumph that makes it special. It’s character and commerce becoming utterly inextricable from each other; Don Draper was already there, and America would soon follow.
And that’s not even getting into the shocker of Peggy’s plot, where her rando hookup with Pete Campbell from the pilot bore (very literal) fruit. Don would later lure Peggy bad to the firm with “It will shock you how much this never happened,” perhaps the only line in Mad Men history that could rival Don’s Carousel pitch for sheer character-illuminating verve.
