Don Draper may be the handsome mystery at the center of Mad Men, the AMC series that's become a cultural icon. But as the series begins its fourth season on Sunday, it's about time the most captivating characters got their due, and they aren't the ones smoking in skinny-cut suits.
Betty Draper, the pretty housewife. Joan Holloway (now Harris), the sexy secretary. Peggy Olsen, the career girl. In the wrong hands, these characters could have become stale cliches, but in the hands of show creator (and Sopranos vet) Matthew Weiner and talented actors, the women of Mad Men are in many ways more interesting than the men.
As season four begins, spoilers are scarce. It's now 1964. The ad men of note — Don, Roger Pete, etc. have struck out with their own agency, rebuilding their success from the ground up.
Betty Draper has divorced Don and remarried Henry, though it remains to be seen if she has escaped her gilded cage or just moved to where the grass looks greener.
Peggy is gaining confidence in her professional life, and Joan is back in the office after her ticket out — a successful husband — turned out to be more ephemeral than she imagined.
I don't want to short-change the men, who struggle with finding their footing in a world that keeps changing around them. But learning that Weiner's writer's room is stocked with mostly women makes it clear why the women in this show are both so complex and so captivating.
Don Draper will still sizzle and seduce, but on Sunday I'll be watching for the girls.
As the rights and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community have expanded over the past 50 or so years, one part of that group, transgender people, has found it more difficult to be considered a normal part of society. Every new instance of putting the story of a transgender person on screen, whether fictional or real, increases their exposure to those who might never have encountered them before.
That makes a documentary like Will & Harper (a title which seems to take inspiration from the groundbreaking TV series Will & Grace) valuable. The fact that the “Will” in the title is comedian/actor Will Ferrell helps, as he and longtime friend, Harper Steele, embark on a road trip across the United States soon after Harper reveals her transition from a man to a woman.
Harper, who met Will while they were both at Saturday Night Live in the late '90s/early 2000s, decided at the relatively older age of 59 that she could no longer pretend to be someone she wasn’t. The idea of the road trip – and of filming it – came about so that the friends could reconnect, learn more about each other given the momentous change, and do a lot of the things that Harper enjoyed doing by herself prior to her transition.
Director Josh Greenbaum and his crew attach a camera to the hood of Harper’s old Jeep Wagoneer to record her and Will's conversations as they traverse many states, starting in New York and heading west. Their connection to SNL means that many of the show’s current and former stars show up in one form or another along the way, including Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Tim Meadows, Lorne Michaels, Molly Shannon, Kristen Wiig, and Will Forte, among others.
While their love and respect for Harper is obvious, Harper has trepidation over how strangers in middle America will react to her. The presence of Will (and the cameras) gives her perhaps easier acceptance than someone not traveling with a famous person, but there are still more than a few uncomfortable stops, particularly when they get to the South (Texas does not come off well, but surprisingly Oklahoma does).
Those scenes with everyday Americans are interesting (if occasionally a bit contrived), but the heart of the film is the friendship between Will and Harper. Their conversations range from silly to heartfelt, but there is a genuineness to them that can’t be faked. Harper invites Will to ask her any questions he has about her transition, resulting in insightful – and, often, funny – answers. Their friendship was clearly already strong, but it gets palpably stronger during the 17-day journey.
There are a lot of messages one could get from a film like this, but it’s notable for how apolitical it is. Will and Harper have encounters with Eric Holcomb, the Republican governor of Indiana, as well as a few people wearing MAGA hats, but their positions on transgender people goes unremarked upon. The friends gently correct people who mis-gender Harper, but they never express any animosity towards them. It’s a movie about exploration, with education as a side benefit.
While it might be too strong to say that Will & Harper is a world-changing film, it adds another layer to the story of transgender people as a whole. It also shows the unconditional love between two friends, a lesson that is heartening in divided times.
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Will & Harper is now playing in select theaters; it will debut on Netflix on September 27.
