I watched the first seasons of Mad Men fitfully; I was definitely not on board. The characters and their settings, though allegedly historical accurate, were chilling. And I couldn’t understand the popular fascination with this time period, the early 1960’s, when men were men and women were there for their delectation. But I watched the latest season (the fifth) breathlessly, caught up in every story line. The characters were stirring, and their unnaturally stiff composure and surroundings underscored the explosive distance between their inner and outer lives. People that had been grotesque caricatures to me (Roger Sterling, Joan Harris) were suddenly sympathetic, and I fell especially hard for Peter Campbell, the upstart ad agent and Connecticut family man, as he fell, swiftly and simply, in love with a neighbor. Their romance, played out in daytime trysts at the Roosevelt Hotel, was tremendously moving.
The show’s designers did a splendid job recreating a room from the Roosevelt. (Ironically, the real Roosevelt Hotel boasts that they’ve just remodeled all their rooms.) There’s something about this generic, tasteful midtown hotel room that’s especially forgiving. Because it’s not-home and not-work, it gives the characters a space where they can suspend their official identities and unfold their real selves. The room is simple, spacious and squarish, furnished with neo-colonial pieces that look downright dowdy compared with the ones in Don Draper’s Scandinavian-modern living room and Roger’s white-and-chrome office. There’s an arched upholstered headboard, a high full-size bed, a butler, and a desk. The space is flooded with the kind of soft white daylight found in Dutch paintings. It makes the scenes feel, at the same moment they’re unfolding, as if they’re being remembered. And we know that they’ll be remembered, just this way, forever, by Pete.