"Mad Men" and Drinking, Season Five, Part II: Mr. Leary, I Find Your Product Fascinating

I wrote in a previous "Mad Men and Drinking" post that I suspected there would be more drugs than drinking in Season 5, and such is proving to be the case.

Not that there's more drug-taking among the show's major characters. Not a bit. These guys will always put the booze away. But the drug episodes are the cultural signifiers in the season's depiction of 1966. They get the spotlit turns.

Nowhere was this more evident then in the "Far Away Places" episode, in which Roger Sterling is lured quite unknowingly into a very civilized LSD party in a tony Manhattan apartment. Roger is skeptical—he begins his trip with the statement "Well, Mr. Leary, I find your product boring" and heading for the bar. But his experience picks up after a while, including a Stoli vodka bottle that plays orchestra music when you open it. By the next morning, LSD has accomplished nothing less than altering his entire world perspective. He realizes that he and Jane must split—and do so amicably. More importantly, he sheds a portion of his self-centerness. "People always said I didn't understand how other people thought, and they were right," he explains. Of course, being Roger, he can't stop talking about it. By the next episode, he's become the office bore, bringing up his vast experience with LSD every chance he gets.

"Mad Men" and Drinking, Season Five: There Are Other Drugs

The crew at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce held onto the 1950s and held back the 1960s for as long as they could. They kept their haircuts, their conservative suits, their drinking habits and reflexive sexism and racism intact, despite growing signs of restlessness in the country to which they attempt to sell product.

But with Season Five of "Mad Men," which debuted on March 25 after a 17-month-long hiatus, the younger generation and repressed minorities are through being patient. It's the summer of 1966. Riots are commonplace. Blacks demand equal rights. Women, too. Everyone, really. With his new, swinging, French-Canadian wife on his arm, Don Draper, now 40, is starting to look a little old, and a little lost. And he knows it. He refers to himself jokingly, but knowingly, as "The Man" in one episode. The beatniks who razzed him about working in advertising in 1960 didn't bother him. But the hippies will.

As for his elder partner Roger Sterling, he seems from another, now all-but-lost world completely. He flails about trying to find his place in the new world order of SCDP, where Don has a black secretary, the hiring of a Jew is no longer an eyebrow-raiser but a commonplace, and clients ask for endorsements by The Rolling Stones.

The preferred forms of intoxication in the mid-late '60s are also changing. Booze isn't cool. It's old school. Weed is where it's at. We see it partaken of in the opening double episode "A Little Kiss," and in the second episode (though called Episode 503) "Tea Leaves." In the former, the band hired to play at Don's surprise birthday party smoke a joint on the balcony, and are joined by account man Ken Cosgrove, who apparently is liable to recite poetry when under the influence. In the latter, marijuana is everywhere backstage at a Stones concert. Don passes, but the increasingly smarmy media head Harry Crane, whoring after youth culture and trying to stay hip, takes a toke. I predict as the season moves on, liquor will continue to take a back seat to other drugs.

Even within the confines of SCDP, regular imbibing is somewhat frowned upon. The disapproval comes mainly from the ambitious and hardworking Pete Campbell. Pete has as big a chip on his shoulder as ever, and is growing increasingly impatient with the lax behavior of senior partner Roger Sterling, who last season nearly capsized the firm by letting his one account, Lucky Strike, get away. (He smokes Camels now.)

With Don cutting back, Roger is the biggest drinker in the office now. Some clients, like Mohawk Airlines, still "love his pickled guts," much to Pete's chagrin. But the more Roger drinks, Pete makes clear, the less Campbell likes it. "No more drinks!" he cries in frustrating in "A Little Kiss." Pete clearly does not intend to sail the company down a river of vodka. At the same Mohawk lunch where Roger down two "lethal" Martinis in cut time, Pete barely sips his. He does open a bottle Champagne when Mohawk is signed, but that's for ceremony's sake.

"When is everything going to get back to normal," asks Roger at one point. Answer: never, Roger.

As Roger is downing the most drinks, Roger gets the best liquor lines. When Pete comes to announce that he has good news, he asks "drinking good news?" "I had drinks with Mohawk," he tells Peggy in "Tea Leaves." "I sat down with two of them and, I swear, by the end I thought there were three." Of the two main execs at Mohawk, "I know Hank from the war. He likes vodka. And Jack likes Jack." Roger keeps Smirnoff vodka and Chivas Regal in his office bar.

Beer is making regular appearances in the first few episodes—perhaps a signifier of the growing movement toward broader equality. Peggy drinks a ton of Rheingold at home in Episode 504, "Mystery Date." Joan, preparing for the return of her GI husband, Greg, buys some Schaefer. The rough new copywriter with the Jewish name and the Brooklyn accent, Michael Ginsberg, helps himself to a mug of beer at a bar after a client presentation. The sudsy refreshment stands in distinct contract to Don's whiskey neat.

Other stray liquor proclivities: Henry Francis, Betty's white-shoe husband, opts for a brandy at the end of the day in "Tea Leaves." Joan asks for a Gin Fizz at an Italian restaurant where her husband, mother and in-laws all opt for wine—a sign, perhaps that she, too, with her traditional ideas of marriage, motherhood and happiness, is falling behind the times. But she does manage to kick her awful hubby out the door in episode three, so maybe it's not all darkness for her in the future.

How One Mad Men Drinks

The "Mad Men" season is over, but this addled fan found a way to extend it. Last week I attended a tasting held by Remy Martin Cognac at the Lambs Club. I have no idea how they managed it, but Vincent Kartheiser was there, looking very much like Pete Campbell in his slim gray suit, slicked-back hair, clean-shaven face and with a drink in hand.

I introduced myself, and after assuring him that I was indeed a liquor journalist ("You do that full time?" he asked, with bright, curious eyes), I satisfied my curiosity on a few "Mad Men"-related liquor questions. First of all, I wanted to know what that whiskey was that Pete drank at home. I could never get a good look at the bottle. He was embarrassed to say he wasn't sure. "Glen-something," he hazarded.

He does know, however, what Vincent Kartheiser drinks. Glenfiddich and Glenmorangie. He's a brown spirits. And sometimes vodka. About Cognac, he admitted he didn't know much, but he was getting a nice introduction that night. Remy Martin's 1738 was being mixed into some excellent Gold Rush cocktails. But he doesn't think much of Don Draper's drink of choice, Canadian Club. "Have you had it? It's not very good."

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Finale: Meet the New Don, Same as the Old Don

Season Four didn't conclude with a smashingly eventful episode the way Season Three did—where the Sterling Cooper troupe pulled off an "Ocean's Eleven" caper to pull the agency out from under the nose of the devouring, traitorous British. Instead, Matthew Weiner delivered another quietly excellent chapter in a season that has had many of them.

And it did contain one "surprise": Don got engaged, and not to the person you expected. But any astute viewer of the show saw that one coming. Jesus, Dr. Faye Miller herself—Don's main squeeze throughout the season—called it in episode two when she said Don was the "type" who got remarried soon after getting divorced.

Also, anyone who saw the way little Sally ran from Dr. Faye and into the arms of maternal, and beautiful secretary Megan, could guess which lady Draper would choose in the end. Though it went sour for him with Betty, Don still believes in the American dream he sells to consumers—the beautiful, docile, supportive wive and family, who don't question Dad too much, and certainly don't know his real identity and horrible secret. Faye was an attractive, competent, modern woman, a perfect match for Don in many ways, mainly intellectually. But she was no good with children, proudly didn't cook, and knew he was really Dick Whitman. Don grew and matured a lot this season, but not enough to see in Faye his life mate. He's still half living a lie. And I think even Draper knows he's probably backpedeled a bit in proposing to Megan without giving her the whole scoop on his fraught back story. Note that he begins the episode in the dark with Faye, and ends it in the dark with Megan, looking searchingly out the window. He's a lost man. Perhaps permanently.

Since "The Summer Man," where Don started to swim and cut back on the booze, "Mad Men" has been noticeably less centered on liquor. That One Drink Too Many has not forced many (or any) plot points in recent episodes. Faye drank little, maybe some wine. Megan doesn't seem to drink at all. Roger still hits the vodka and gin more than anyone in the office, but he's a creature of habit. Nothing new in his repertoire.

Hilariously, there was a pitcher of Bloody Marys on the table at Don and Pete's meeting with the American Cancer Society. I guess they don't care about liver disease or anything like that. Just cancer. Megan and her friend go to the Whiskey a Go Go during a trip to L.A., when she babysits Don's kids (and nets a marriage proposal). Betty's hubby Henry drinks a bottle of Ballantine while packing boxes and fighting with poor, sad, mad Bets. And Don drinks a Miller Hi-Life while in bed in L.A. First time that popular beer has been seen on the show.

There was, however, the very smart use of a bottle of Don's trusty Canadian Club in the last five minutes, where Don unexpectedly meets ex-wife Betty in the cleared out kitchen of their Ossining home. Betty has finally decided to move out (mainly to get Sally away from creepy neighborhood kid Glen). Don has come by to show the house to a perspective buyer. When informed that the movers have not done a very thorough job on the place, he knowingly reaches into the back of a high cupboard and finds an unopened bottle of CC. He pours some into a coffee cup, and shares it with Betty as he breaks the news of his engagement.

It's a tender scene—they don't fight—and an apt one. So much of the Draper marriage centered on drink. Don drank a lot, and Betty picked up the habit. Who knows how much shorter, and more bitter, their union might have been if they didn't have that eternal buzz to lean on. At the end of the scene, they both leave the kitchen, going separate ways, leaving nothing but the cup and the bottle on the table.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 12: Cold Turkey

Don Draper didn't give up booze in "Blowing Smoke," the penultimate episode of "Mad Men"'s fourth season. He gave up cigarettes. At least on paper. Stymied by SCDP's inability to get a meeting with any new client since losing Lucky Strike, he came out against Big Tobacco with a full-page ad in the New York Times, announcing that, since smoking was bad and bad for you, the firm would no longer be taking on tobacco clients.

It was a bold move, one that pissed off his partners since he (naturally) didn't consult them; a cynical move, since Draper readily admitted he placed the ad to "change the conversation" about the firm and generate new business, not wave the flag of his ideals; and, ultimately, a somewhat sincere and heartfelt gesture. Lucky Strike had been bad for SCDP. It caused them to act badly (i.e., fire Sal; indulge the odious Lee Garner, Jr.) They have depended on it too much. They were addicted to its money. Now they'll have to really work.

Draper took a number of belts of the brown stuff during the episode. In his office and at the grubby apartment of erstwhile Boho mistress, now heroine addict, Midge. Though he kept his head when he should. There was a menu on the table of the black, tomb-like restaurant when he met with Heinz's "beans, vinegars and sauces" man, but no drinks on the table. Pete, who doesn't drink much anymore, took some painkiller at home after learning he had to, as a partner, pony up fifty grand as collateral for the bank. I do not, however, recognize the squat little bottle of whiskey Pete keeps on his bar in his apartment.

Old New York restaurant call-out of the week: La Caravelle. One of the great old French places in Manhattan. It existed on W. 55th from 1961 to 2004. We didn't see it, but Don and Faye were planning to go there.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 11: "This Is One"

More stress for Don Draper, more reasons to reach for the bottle.

Last week, Draper was scared the Feds might uncover his secret identity. That blew over. But now he's learned that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's biggest client, Lucky Strike, has flown the coop, leading to a full-on crisis in the office and in the advertising world rumor mills. Clients are running scared, and rival agencies are looking to poach talent. Hello, Canadian Club!

But Don's still keeping a lip on his consumption, even if he asks for help from two handy women—girlfriend Faye Miller, and new secretary, Megan, who's looking a bit "All About Eve"-ish in this episode. "I need a favor," Don tells Megan, as he pours a drink. "Don't let me overdo it." What's overdoing it?, asks Megan. "Three," answers Don, succinctly. "This is one." He ends up the day "one over."

Also noticed that Peggy keeps a bottle of Wild Turkey in her office. She's her own woman.

Oh! And this: on the black board in the SCDP conference room, listed as a "likely" new client, Four Roses Bourbon!

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 10: Don Needs a Drink!

And he deserves one! When Draper learned that the Feds were looking into his background after SCDP client North American Aviation requested a security check, he reached right for the Canadian Club, and threw a belt back, despite having backed off the juice all summer 1965. He then had a panic attack, threw up, confessed his past to new squeeze Faye, and leaned on Pete Campbell, of all people, to make it right.

But, oh, how the trouble rained down on all of SCDP in "Hands and Knees," episode 10 of season four. Roger and Joan's impromptu tryst of episode 9 resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, one the couple talked over at the Tip Toe Inn over a Bloody Mary (Joan) and Gibson (Roger). Roger was dealt a second blow when Lucky Strike, personified by the sleezeball bully Lee Garner, Jr., and the agency's biggest account by far, pulled the plug after 30 years of business. Roger got so upset he pounded the restaurant table and upended a couple glasses of Cognac. And Lane Pryce, hoping to see his son from London, was instead greeted by his brutal father, who made his argument that Lane should return home to his family with the business end of his cane, knocking young Pryce to the floor. Remember, dad's the man Lane described in episode 3 as "the kind of alcoholic who thinks he's a collector." It couldn't have helped matters that Lane is now dating a black waitress at the Playboy Club, where he likes to order Whiskey Sours. (Dad, ever the collector of exotic foreign liquors, ordered Bourbon.)

When Roger finally has the guts to tell the partners at the firm that Lucky is gone, they'll all need a stiff drink.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 9: French Toast à la Sally Draper

Not much interesting drinking going on in "The Beautiful Girls," episode nine of season four of "Mad Men," which focuses on the disappointing and frustrating choices women had to make in 1965. Among those women—Peggy and Joan, of course; but also Don Draper's latest squeeze, career gal Dr. Faye Miller; increasingly interesting, bird-like, reception desk secretary Megan; and poor old Ida Blankenship, who, after filling in her last crossword puzzle, takes a nose dive into her desk—is none other that little Sally Draper. Sally's not happy at home with brittle Betty, we know, so she hops the train, sans moolah, to visit dear old dad.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 8: Half on the Wagon

Don Draper is "The Summer Man," as episode eight of season four of "Mad Men" is called, and the Summer Man is cutting back of the booze and getting healthy, in mind and body.

The episode begins with Don diving into a brightly lit pool at the New York Athletic Club, about the cleanest, most sunlit and most hopeful opening shot we've seen this season. He has hacking fits at the end of each lap, sure, and is winded in the locker room, but he's trying. "They say, if you have to cut back on your drinking, you have a drinking problem," he writes, breaking in his new journal, toning up his muddled mind at the same time he retrieves his body from the gutter. Throughout this season, Don has witnessed, with reticence, the coming openness of the new generation. Everyone's talking about themselves! He hates it, but he knows it's something he's got to sample, or go down emotionally for the last time.

He writes at a table in his apartment, which—amazing—has windows! Who knew? It's been a dank hole up until now. But he's pushed the curtains back to reveal a near wall of window. And he's eating finally, not vomiting. Dinty Moore from a can. He drinks while he writes, not a Mailer-like shot of whiskey, but a Bud. Don's watching his consumption. After an unsettling phone call, he stares almost with fear at the drink cart in his office, and them barks to Miss Blankenship to fetch him more coffee. When the old battle-ax carts four bottles of Canadian Club to his office, he tells her to bring them back to the store room. ("I'm set," he says, to which Blankenship smartly retorts, "And then you're not.") He refuses a second glass of Champagne while on a date at Barbetta with the blank-ish Bethany (time to give this character the hook), and opts for a dignified glass of Chianti later in the episode while dining with Dr. Faye Miller, who's liking the newly sober Don Draper.

What's more, Draper seems to understand what happens when he does drink. In his office during a meeting, he watches closely as Peggy and Ken pour out the Canadian Club. "People are always drinking around here," he suddenly seems to realize. When he takes a wary sip, he recedes from the camera, and his officemates drift from him, in a neat "Vertigo"-like Hitchcock trick. You drink and reality retreats. That's probably what he's always liked about it. But now, maybe that's not such a good thing.

Meanwhile, his ex-wife Betty's still got the drinking problem that Don probably fostered in her. When she and new husband Henry Francis bump into Don and Bethany at Barbetta, Betty hits the Gimlets pretty hard. (Nice to see this still-existent Italian Midtown restaurant make an appearance. Don takes Bethany to the best places. First Jimmy's La Grange, then Benihana, now Barbetta),

At the office, vodka remains the drink of young idiots (as it still is today). Looking for an angle on a Mountain Dew campaign, Peggy charges the creative crew to come up with three Mountain Dew cocktails made up of at least three ingredients. Not two. "You need three ingredients for a cocktail," said Peggy. "Vodka and Mountain Dew is an emergency."

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 7: Misery Loves Company

I have noticed that in the current season of "Mad Men," as Don Draper gets more profligate in his draining of bottles, the younger members of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce have been quietly taking note and cutting back. Eager accounts man Pete Campbell used to sip on a whiskey regularly in an effort to be one of the big boys. On a recent episode, though, he was drinking an orange soda. And Peggy Olson often accepts drinks from Don and then puts them down without sipping from them. Times are changing. It's 1965. Don and Roger's drinking habits are starting to be seen as antiquated and old hat.

Also of the old school: Duck Phillips, who make a reappearance in the episode titled "The Suitcase," and is not at his best. He's fallen off the wagon again. We first see him in his darkened apartment (can bachelors not find flats with eastern exposure in 1960s Manhattan?), spilling Cutty Sark over himself. Later, he gets in a drunken brawl with the equally soused Don, who's just regurgitated the ample portion of whiskey he's ingested over the day.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 6: Blotto!

Get a couple hundred ad men in a room and you're going to see some serious drinking.

Episode six, titled "Waldorf Stories," of "Mad Men"'s fourth season, whirls around the sixth annual Clio Awards, held—natch—at the Waldorf=Astoria. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is up for a trophy, for the oft-mentioned film-like Glo Coat floor wax TV commercial—and Draper can barely conceal his wish to take home the prize. He does. But this, of course, gives him a grand excuse to celebrate. And in the world Don Draper, celebrating means two things: heavy imbibing and carousing.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 5: Sake!

Sake makes a splashy debut in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword," episode five of the fourth season of "Mad Man." From the second scene, in which we learn that accounts man Pete Campbell has won Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce a shot at the Honda motorcycle company's business, you sort of knew it would. Despite Roger Sterling's objection—he fought in the Pacific theatre during World War II and has not forgiven his former enemies—Campbell, Don Draper and Eastern-leaning Bert Cooper go after Honda's business, reading up on Japanese business practices and practicing their bows. As a "modest gift" to the two Honda execs and their translator, Campbell presents them with two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black (what? no American whiskeys were available?) and, um, a cantaloupe.

Oddly enough, the bottle of sake which arrives for Draper two days later is not from the Honda people (the meeting did not go well, thanks to Sterling's embarrassing race-baiting), but from Ted Chaough, the Don Draper of rival ad agency Cutler, Gleason and Chaough. CGC has been openly taunting SCDP in the press (via the advertising columnist at the New York Times) and stealing their cast-offs, like Clearasil and Jai alai. It is now competing directly with SCDP for Honda's business. The disdainful Draper calls Chaough "a fly I keep swatting away."

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 4

"He's a drunk."

That's how Don Draper was described in the episode "The Rejected," and for the first time in the history of "Mad Men." The utterer of this until-now-unspoken truth was Alison, the sweet and faithful secretary Don used one night and discarded the next morning earlier this season. (The idea has been obliquely hinted at previously this season, though. The nurse neighbor of Don's mentioned her father was a drunk when she helped him to bed. And, last episode, when Lane poured out for Don some of the Irish whiskey his dad sent him as a present, he referred to dad as an alcoholic, therefore tying Don together with his father's habits.)

I think it's official with this episode—Don Draper's drinking is no longer fun. It's not romantic or charismatic or manly or even funny. It's overdone, and it's rendering him irresponsible and, as young Joey in the office said a couple episodes back, pathetic. He reaches for the bottle at all hours of the days and usually ends up soused, falling asleep on the couch in his Village apartment, which always seems to be draped in eternal darkness no matter how many lamps are turned on. "Why is this empty?" he asked in the first scene, shaking a drained bottle of Canadian Club during a morning conference call with Lucky Strike. "Because you drank it all," replies Alison, who's just about had enough. Don reacts by grabbing the bottle of Smirnoff instead.

Is Don headed toward Freddy Rumsen Land, set to hit bottom and then grab the life raft of AA. Hard to imagine a man as stubborn and proud as Draper would accept that reality. And, if he did, I think it would present the series with a style problem. Cocktails and drink has been such an integral park of the series' aesthetic, it would be hard to adjust to a sad-sack, on-the-wagon Draper who's no longer man enough to handle an Old Fashioned or six. A lot of the wit and edge and, yes, plotting of the show comes from that constant drinking and smoking and carousing. Well-behaved, reformed Mad Men just don't have the same appeal as the private rogues we've come to know.

At a bar with his father-in-law, Pete Campbell gave a brand shout-out, ordering "Dewer's on the rocks." Peggy, meanwhile, goes to a radical downtown "happening" where pot and beer are the primary stimulants. The event makes Don's encounters with beatniks at the Gaslight in season one seem positively quaint.

Another old New York restaurant got a big cameo, as Pete, Harry Crane and their old colleague Ken Cosgrove met for lunch at Jim Downey's Steakhouse. The restaurant was located at 49th and Eighth Avenue, and attracted a lot of show folk. Downey's closed in the 1980s.

As a side note, I'm enjoying how Harry, head of the television department, is now peppering his talk with Yiddish expressions the more he travels to L.A. on business. "Those ganefs at CBS are killing me," he remarks at Downey's, to which WASPy Pete can only wrinkle his brow and say, "Those what?"

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 3

A mysterious bottle from overseas cemented the friendship between Don Draper and Englishman Lane Pryce during "The Good News," the third episode of the fourth season of "Mad Men."

"I received something special from my father for my birthday," said a rather sad and lonely Pryce, working on New Year's Eve at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Don, having foregone a trip to Acupulco, and feeling equally forlorn (even if he would never admit it), was receptive. What was it? "Who knows?" said Lane. "He's one of those alcoholics who thinks that he's collecting."

He poured from a bottle with a red cap and some small type on the label. The bottle was too blurred to identify, but someone sitting next to me while I watched was sure it was Redbreast Irish whiskey. Could be. The red cap is right, and the slight bulge in the neck of the bottle. And I thought I glimpsed the small red, oval illustration found on every Redbreast label.

Don tasted it. His face showed he was impressed. "It has no bite at all," they agreed. That comment would seem to indicate Irish whiskey, which is triple distilled. And Redbreast is known for its smooth character. Certainly they couldn't have been talking about Scotch. Don and Lane subsequently decided to go to the movies and then to dinner. To fortify themselves, Don (sloppily) pours the rest of the mystery bottle into a flask. 

Otherwise, a bottle of Famous Grouse appeared at the home of Anna Draper, the California woman who lent Don her late husband's name. Don paid a surprise visit to her, only the second such since the series began. And they went out to eat at "that place with the beer and the abalone."

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Episode 2

"Duck doesn't understand this business. He's dry as a bone." That was Freddy Rumsen back in Season Two, just before he was going to be sacked for his excessive imbibing, complaining about teetotaler (and former drunk) Duck Phillips, who forced him out. Freddy unexpectedly returned in episode two of season four, titled "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," and much has changed for him. Now he's dry as a bone. "I'm clean and sober now. 16 months without a drop," he tells Roger Sterling after refusing an offer of "something brown." The intimation is he's in AA; he brings the Ponds cold cream account to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce owing to the fact that his connection at Ponds is a fellow brother in that "fraternity."

The irony of Freddy's return is that the men who fired him, Roger and Don, are still drinking, and not drinking well. And they are seen as increasingly out of step with the times because of their habits. Both men bend an elbow in their offices well before noon. Don is either hitting it harder (very likely due to his misery and regret over his divorce and the prospect of spending Christmas alone) or not holding it as well as Roger. Even Roger says "A little early for that isn't it, Don?" as Draper pours an AM glass of rye, to which Don replies, "You're joking, right?"

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Four, Premiere

It's November 1964 at the start of season four of "Mad Men," and a lot has changed in the world of the series' characters. But not the drinking. They're still drinking. And drinking the same stuff.

Ad exec and glamorous sphinx Don Draper has had some hard knocks during the first full year of the Johnson administration. He's his beautiful but infantalized wife, his two children, and the seemingly picture-perfect family life that went with them, and he's been reduced to living in a slightly shabby Greenwich Village apartment, relying on blind dates set up by pal Roger Sterling—and the occasionally S&M hooker—for companionship.

Furthermore, the newly minted Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce must make do with one cramped floor of the Time Life Building. But he still has his Canadian Club. There are bottles in his office and in his home. I may be imagining things, but the label looked different, the distinctive Canadian Club cursive bigger and bolder. He seems to have kept the same orb-like glasses from the old office as well.

"Mad Men," Season 4, On Its Way

Soon it will again be time for me to pick apart the drinking habits of the characters in "Mad Men." But until the premiere, on July 25, we have the 2010 poster art to chew over. Pretty stark. Obviously, it's expressive of Don Draper's new status, having shed both Sterling Cooper and his wife and family at the end of last season (which left him around Christmastime 1963). A new office, not very furnished. A view of Manhattan. A phone. A cigarette. A penetrating look outside at the rapidly changing world.

But where's the booze?

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Three, Part V (The Last)

Season Three of "Mad Men" concluded on Sunday with a series of seismic endings and beginning, Don and Betty Draper calling it quits on a seemingly picture-perfect marriage that was always bases on lies and surface realities, and Don and his partners at Sterling Cooper deciding to bolt the firm and begin their own, leaner agency rather than cheerlessly slave under the unappreciative yoke of new owner McCann Erickson. Honesty, respect and hard, but cleansing words and confrontations were the order of the day, with most everyone coming out at the end of the episode perhaps exhausted and feeling a bit swatted around, but also reenergized and replenishished. (Perhaps not Betty, but her capacity for happiness is questionable at best.) It was a reboot everyone in the Sterling Cooper universe needed badly.

The two previous episodes before the finale has to do with Don's past as Dick Whitman finally being discovered by Betty ("The Gypsy and the Hobo") and the impact of the Kennedy assassination ("The Grown-Ups"). With so much pivotal events going on, there wasn't much time for well-considered drinking. Certainly, characters were imbibing. "The whole country's drinking," said Pete Campbell to his wife, in the wake of the Kennedy shooting. But it was a shot here, a belt here. Nothing fancy. Nothing pretty. It was nerve-steadying drinking, sorrow-drowning drinking.

And so we saw Don throwing back plenty of Canadian Clubs, neat, particularly as he was hastily, desperately putting together the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce so as to at least purify his working self, even as his married self was going down for the last time. At home, the bottle of whiskey was seldom absent from his side. When Betty confronted him with "The Box," filled with incriminating evidence of his hidden, buried past, he was so shaken that, for the first time in the history of "Mad Men," Don could not fix himself a drink. Betty did it for him. After being banished to Baby Gene's room, the bottle of Canadian Club (with a different label than in earlier seasons) was always on the end table.

Roger Sterling, meanwhile, was forced to soldier forward with his daughter's wedding, scheduled, as fate would have it, for the day after Kennedy was killed. Only about half his guests showed up, dutifully raised their Champagne coupes. It was good to see Roger and Don bury the ax in the finale, even if it was done out of necessity, the two men needing each other in order to strike out on their own. It allowed for a familiar scene from seasons past to once again occur: Sterling and Draper sharing a drink at a dark bar after hours, Don with his rye, Roger with his Martini. Just like old times.

The season ended with the rogue members of the newly born agency—Draper, Sterling, Bert Cooper, turncoat Brit Lane Pryce, copywriter Peggy Olson, accounts man Pete Campbell, media director Harry Crane and office manager Joan Harris—setting up temporary shop at the Pierre Hotel. Pete's wife Trudy came in with a box of sandwiches and a cake for the hungry, busy ad men. Guess it'll take a little while to set up those office bars again. But then, it's the dawn of a new era. America's about to become very different. The Beatles are on their way, women's liberation, the Civil Rights movement in full flower, drugs, student protests, an unpopular war, Nixon, and more crushing assassinations. The office bar? Very old school. Very square. It'll get no respect from the new generation. Draper and Sterling may still by their poisons, but it won't make them cool anymore. To the kids in Central Park, they'll just be The Man. Uptight, locked in, responsible for everything bad with American. They might want to take a tip from Peggy and start puffing on something other than a Lucky Strike.

Why Hasn't "Mad Men" Exploited "21"

The AMC series "Mad Men," which is set in New York in the early 60s, has done a good job of mining the city's great restaurants and bars—both extant and vanished—for background texture. We've had mentions and scenes set in such bygone food and drink meccas as Toots Shor's, The Stork Club, The Pen & Pencil, Rattazzi's, Lutece and Chumley's. Of eateries and watering holes that still exist, we've heard from Keen's Chop House, The Four Seasons, P.J. Clarke's and La Grenouille.

What's missing here?

The "21" Club, of course. Around since the 1930s, a longtime favorite of businessmen with fat expense accounts, and just a hop, skip and a jump from Madison Avenue, where "Mad Men" ad agency Sterling Cooper is located, it's a natural. The show's characters should have availed themselves of the place's red-checkered tablecloths long before now and inhaled a Southside or two. You just know that Roger Sterling haunted this place at least twice a week, and probably had his own table.

So, what gives? I asked "21"'s longtime publicist Diana Biederman and she confessed that, indeed, she has been valiantly trying to coax the "Mad Men" people into giving the restaurant a cameo, or at least a mention, for some time now. But to no avail. Biederman sent the production people volumes of historical material about "21," including clear ideas on what the place would have looked like in the early '60s. Among those material was an image of the above artwork, which hangs in a private hall on "21"'s second floor. It's an illustration that appeared in Town & Country magazine in 1961, of a smartly dressed woman about to be seated in the bar room's second section, right underneath the bell. (That's J.J. Hunsecker's seat in "Sweet Smell of Success," by the way.) Pearls, gloves, purse, patterned topcoat with shortened sleeves—you could just see Betty Draper in that outfit, couldn't you?

Biederman thinks she may have came close at the end of the second season. There was a scene in the final episode—where Betty beds down in the ladies room of a bar with a stranger—that the publicist feels may have once possibly been intended as for "21." But, Betty sits at a stool, and Biederman had told the show that "21" did not have stools in the 1960s. (The loss may have been for the best. Sex in the bathroom? It's not really a "21" moment, is it?)

One thing we know for sure—with the third season almost over, there's no chance of "21" getting its due this year. Let's hope Matthew Weiner wises up and sets a scene there in 2010.

Mad Men and Drinking, Season Three, Part IV

As season three of "Mad Men" meanders to its conclusion (the desultory pace of the season hasn't exactly been a plot locomotive—not that I'm complaining), one theme has become apparent: things aren't going well for master ad man Don Draper. He's slipping. The world's changing fast and he's not changing quickly enough to keep all his various balls in the air. Certainly, he seems to be on top of the world. He is feted at Sterling Cooper's 40th anniversary party; he landed a huge client in Conrad Hilton for whom he's flying all over the globe; he and his wife just had a new baby; and he's bedding a lovely new mistress. But Hilton is demanding and capricious, ladling out and withholding love like a fickle father; his marriage has not recovered from the revelation of his past infidelities, with Betty cold and snappish and secretly looking elsewhere for comfort; the mistress, daughter Sally's former teacher, is borderline cuckoo and a likely disaster in the making; he's been forced to fire art director Sal and, in the process, reveal an ugly stripe of homophobia; and, worst of all, Betty found the keys to his secret desk drawer and now knows that he's really Dick Whitman, that his (and, thus, her) life is based on a whopper lie.

None of this has caused him to drink more. He drinks as much as he always has, and doesn't seem to think it will ever catch up to him. Don does, however, get a blast from the past when invited one night to Hilton's suite in the Waldorf=Astoria, where "Connie" is pouring from a thin glass flask. This, we learn, is Prohibition booze, of which the old, old Hilton has a case. Don drinks it and winces. "I remember this," he says—a reference to his rural, hardscrabble upbringing.

Otherwise, the whiskey that's winning the prize for most spotlight appearances this season is Johnny Walker Red. Don and that prison guard drink a bottle in the hospital while waiting for their kids to be born. And, in episode 9, Lucky Strike scion Lee Garner, Jr., empties a bottle, with disastrous results—he makes a pass at Sal and, when Sal rebuffs him, gets the poor guy fired. I'm guessing Johnny Walker has a placement deal with MM, but that's OK—the whiskey was dominant in the U.S. market and is entirely period appropriate.

Neither does liquor do any good for struggling, pompous copywriter Paul Kinsey. While working late on a campaign for Western Union, he drains a bottle of what looks like Scotch. The only identifiable word on the label is "North," plus the number 20, which could be an age statement. A fair guess is this is North Port, a Highland single malt that did indeed have a 20-year-old expression. It was situated north of the royal burgh Brechin and was built in 1820 by a family of bankers and farmers. It remained a family distillery until its buying over by the D.C.L. (Distillers Company Ltd.) in 1922. The distillery was closed in 1983 and demolished. There's now a Safeway on the spot.

The North Port causes Kinsey to forget mid-morning the genius idea that struck him the night before. As everyone says to him later, "I hate it when that happens."

Sad, angry Betty, meanwhile, continues to put a considerable dent in the wine cellar.