Mad Men Monday: Peggy!
[rebelmouse-image 24749655 alt="peggy don" original_size="500x303" expand=1]Let's start off with talking about a concern of mine: Don's alcoholism. Not in that I'm concerned that Don, a fictional character, is an alcoholic. I'm not worried about his health or anything. What I worry about is this as a plot device. I'm allergic to giving a character a disease, whether self-inflicted or not. Whether a character is struck with cancer or an addiction, it's a short leap from "fascinating TV show with some amount of suspense" to "afterschool special". The only show I can think of that avoided this trap---and even then, it was only barely---was "The Wire", and part of that is that Andre Royo, who played Bubbles, has charisma to burn. (The other part is that they made his recovery process an opportunity to make the character more complex.) The problem with introducing disease as a plot line is that the disease often becomes the defining feature of the character, especially when the character is an addict. It's kind of boring and often moralistic in ways that just don't make for good TV. But I remain hopeful. If anyone can pull it out, it's the writers of "Mad Men".