Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (August 15, 2008)

FROM MAD MEN TO SWINGTOWN — THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED. HAVE THE CLOSETS?
I was late coming to the Mad Men game, having ignored the first season when it originally aired. But thanks to the recent Season One DVD release and new episodes currently airing, I’m now as hooked on it as the show’s characters are on their five packs of Lucky Strikes a day. Between the fab wood paneling, the desklamps, the work-place drinking, and the sight of Jon Hamm in an undershirt, there’s much to love about Mad Men and the 1960s it meticulously recreates.

There’s also much to be appalled by, particularly the disdain with which the men casually treat the women they work with, sleep with, and avoid sleeping with.

And then there’s poor closeted Salvatore Romano, brilliantly played by out actor Bryan Batt, who never fails to look utterly debonair. The crucial Sal episode came mid-season last year, when we saw Sal turn down an invitation from a handsome lipstick company executive to visit his hotel room. In rebuffing his advances, Sal made it clear that he’s always known himself for who he really is and what he desires but has been too afraid to act on it.

In the current season, it appears those fears have led Sal to marriage. As Michael observed a couple of weeks ago in his BGWE, this isn’t exactly a surprising development for a gay man at the time. But Sal’s story is not over yet. Just this week, that cosmetics executive made a reappearance in the office, an indication he might still tempt Sal to act on his desires.

Bryan Batt

It’s also interesting to consider Mad Men alongside Swingtown, the other great scripted drama of the summer. Between these two shows, TV is currently giving us a handy little primer in sexual politics of past decades. The 1970s suburban housewives of Swingtown, for example, might be as subservient to their men as Mad Men’s secretaries, but at least they’re coming to an “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” form of consciousness.

And while it’s easy to miss him, Swingtown also has a closeted character, or at least, I think that’s what’s going on. He’s Rick (Nick Benson), the adolescent son of one of the central couples, and for several episodes, we’ve seen him grappling with the realization that B.J. (Aaron Christian Howles), his best friend has fallen in love with a neighborhood girl. The extreme pain, confusion, and jealousy he evidences at this loss has made it pretty clear, at least to me, that he’s a kid struggling with the depth of his feelings for his male best friend.

Aaron Christian Howles, Nick Benson

But unlike Sal, he’s coming to terms in a very different time period that the rest of the show examines, where the sexual freedom we only glimpse in Mad Men in occasional bohemian settings has translated into the suburban mainstream.

The show seems to be establishing how the sexual revolution that’s causing such confusion for the swinging grown-ups is ultimately having a beneficial impact on the next generation. The kids, it seems, are alright — determined to make better choices for themselves and avoid falling into conventional, loveless marriages of convenience like their parents.

It remains to be seen if this shift in attitude and more open environment will have a similarly positive effect on Rick and help him come to a better understanding of and acceptance of his own sexuality. I think, given time, it might. Unfortunately, the show’s ratings indicate we might never get to see that develop in a second season, which is a shame. Because Mad Men and Swingtown, in looking at the past, have offered up more exciting and engaging TV than anything else on — or set in — the present day.

Next page! Maria Von Trapp is a man!