“Sorry fellas,
heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
Mad Men is a show about people who feel like outsiders
trying to conform or claw their way to mainstream success.
But there’s one character who represents the ultimate insider:
Roger Sterling.
“When a man gets to a point when his name’s on the building,
he can get an unnatural sense of entitlement.”
At first we vicariously enjoy the fun and affluence of Roger’s lifestyle,
but over time, we also start to pity him.
“I wish I was going somewhere.”
Because while many other characters have upward arcs that involve forging a future,
his journey is one of decline.
“You get to a point in your life where it’s the last chapter.”
And along the way, he ventures into some deep, dark places,
questioning whether life has any meaning at all.
“One of my partners… he ended it all.
You’d have to be so sure you were going some place better, wouldn’t you?”
Mad Men may glamorize the heyday of advertising execs living the high life,
but it’s actually about the end of this era.
“Peggy can you get me some coffee?”
“No.”
Through the ultimate mad man Roger,
the show questions what these times were really all about.
If you can value anything when you have everything,
and whether there’s an intangible harm that privilege does to a person.
“I always envied that.
The way you were always reaching.”
“I always envied you didn’t have to.”
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Now back to Mad Men.
Roger is the quintessential “mad man” of the show’s title.
“When God closes a door, he opens a dress.”
Through him, we get to live the indulgence
and joie de vivre of feeling like you belong in the most elite of clubs.
“I'm the president of this agency, I don't have to ask anybody anything.
You know what?
I could call a holiday for the whole office right now.”
Roger embodies the good times and, most of all,
the attitude that delights us about the mad men.
He observes the ways of the world with a jovial clarity
that only a true insider can really have.
"Who knows why people in history did good things?
For all we know, Jesus was trying to get the loaves and fishes account.”
And he goes about things with a light touch.
This seems to be why Joan falls for Roger too.
These kindred spirits get how the world operates.
“Marriage… don’t know why you’d want to join that club, baby.”
“Hasn’t stopped you from having a good time.”
Yet they maintain a sense of humor,
resisting the urge to get too weighty or serious about it all.
“She died like she lived.
Surrounded by the people she answered phones for.”
Joan comes to look on her far more exhausting husband, Greg,
as ultimately more limited because he lacks this lightness.
“Where’d you pick that up?”
“Greg, stop that, you know there is no before.”
“Right.”
Joan and Roger don’t end up together,
maybe because they’re too similar or such good friends,
but Roger’s ability to attract the most desired woman on the show
does underline how charming this guy is.
“He was all over you, the time you wore that red dress.
the one with the bow in the back that makes you look like a present.”
“You have an incredible memory.”
“Well…
I think about it a lot, that dress, I mean.”
At the same time, Roger also embodies the darker side of the “mad man” identity.
He’s racist and out of touch, like in the cringeworthy episode
when he tries to make fun of another agency
by advertising SCDP as an equal opportunity employer.
“Is it just me, or is the lobby full of negroes?”
“They saw the Y&R ad.”
“The humor was Iost on them.”
“Not on me.”
He’s had everything handed to him,
He’s the son of one of the founders of Sterling Cooper,
“I’ve acted like I’ve started a business my entire life,
but I inherited it.”
And you would not call the guy hardworking.
He pretty much just coasts.
Roger’s a part of “the Greatest Generation,” who served in WWII
and significantly shaped American society afterwards.
“Don never talks about the war.”
“‘The war’?
His war, you mean.”
“Not much to say.
You boys used up all the glory.”
In Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, he writes, quote,
“At every stage of their lives
they were part of historic challenges and achievements
of a magnitude the world had never before witnessed.”
“You fought to make the world a safer place and you won and now it is.”
But Mad Men uses Roger to explore the complex experiences of this generation
after their glory days were over.
“It’s incredible what passes for heroism these days.”
The Allies’ fight in World War II tends to be viewed —
at least in the US and the UK —
as the most morally black-and-white conflict in living memory,
essentially as close as you can get to a showdown between good and evil.
But the 60s became more grey, and how was the Greatest Generation
supposed to adapt to that?
“Are you drunk?
“Pearl Harbor day, show some respect.”
In season four, Roger tries to sabotage a deal
with the Japanese company Honda
because of leftover bitterness from the war.
“We beat you, and we’ll beat you again, and we don’t want any of your Jap crap.
“So, sayonara.”
and this just makes him come across as rigid and stuck in the past.
“It's been almost 20 years and whether you like it or not,
the world has moved on.
These are not the same people.”
“How could that be?
I'm the same people!”
He struggles with the feeling that the best is behind him.
“Maybe every generation thinks the next one is the end of it all.”
“I bet there are people in the Bible walking around complaining about kids today.”
His greatest fear is becoming irrelevant.
“I'm exhausted from hanging onto the ledge and having some kid's foot on my fingertips.”
And he’s forever trying to recapture that relevance he had when he was younger.
Sometimes this comes out as nostalgia for the past.
“God, I miss the fifties.”
Other times as attempts to be hip, like when he experiments with LSD,
“You always say I never take you anywhere.”
or adopts a 70s style.
And his relationships with women reflect a clear desire to chase youth.
“At a certain age, they lose that.”
“What?”
“That glow of pure youth.
It's like they hit 30,
and somebody puts out a light.”
As time goes on, Roger’s era is inevitably fading away.
"My generation, we drink because it's good,
because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar,
because we deserve it.
We drink because it's what men do.”
This is symbolized in his health struggles.
He has his first heart attack in the midst of seducing a young woman.
“Mirabelle…
Mirabelle…”
“Mona.
Your wife’s name is Mona.”
So it’s a very physical reminder that his pursuit of youth isn’t working.
“I’ve been living the last 20 years like I'm on shore leave.
What the hell is that about?”
And by the end of the series, the age of the “mad man” —
as embodied by Roger — is over.
Roger Sterling spent his life continuing his own father’s legacy,
but now there’s no one left to carry on his family name.
“No more Sterling Cooper and no more Sterlings.
Margaret is the only daughter of an only son of an only son.”
“All I’m going to be doing from here on is losing everything.”
“You feel loss.”
“Damn it, how many times do I have to say this?
I don't feel anything.”
Roger spends a lot of the series searching for a deeper sense of purpose.
Doing things like writing his memoirs, seeing a psychiatrist,
and leaving his wife Mona for a secretary, Jane.
“It’s different with this girl.”
But all these attempts at fulfillment fall flat.
“You better not have locked that door.”
“Go away!”
“Or what, you’ll commit suicide?”
And as he endures several big personal failures,
like the loss of his biggest client Lucky Strike,
the end of his second marriage, and the death of his mother —
he starts to reveal a nihilistic side.
“It turns out the experiences are nothing.
They're just some pennies you pick up off the floor,
stick in your pocket, and you're just going in a straight line to you-know-where.”
Roger’s flirtations with nihilism are deeply linked to his hedonism.
All his sensual pleasures and supposed fun only seem to leave him feeling bored and adrift.
"Well, I gotta go learn a bunch of people's names before I fire them.”
He reflects how the “mad man” persona was hiding a deep emptiness
that alcohol, sex, and money couldn’t fill.
“That's a hundred dollars.”
“Well I suppose I’m going to have to drop one of you off,
you decide who.”
There’s another reason for Roger’s lack of meaning
that’s even more at fault than his hedonism,
and that’s his privilege.
“Do you know how invigorating it is to go in and write a check for $6500 and not
care?”
Roger’s fear of losing relevance is only possible
because for a lot of his life he’s felt very relevant to begin with.
As we said in our Don Draper video, everyone wants to be Don,
but no one can be -- not even Don himself, who feels like a complete fraud.
Roger’s the real deal - he does actually have it all
and he was born into this life, with the total pedigree.
“I sure as hell didn’t get to choose what I wanted to do,
my father told me.”
Even his last name “Sterling” makes us think
of sterling silver or the British Pound Sterling—
so it’s as if his name is truly currency.
As Flavorwire put it, quote, “Roger is the anti-Don.
If Don exemplifies the American dream of the self-made man,
then Roger is the antithesis of that dream.”
It’s an understatement to say Roger’s entitled.
“What kind of company are we going to be?”
“The kind where everyone has a summer house?”
Pete Campbell is entitled; Roger’s on a level
where he couldn’t even begin to fathom why
he should ever not be entitled anything.
And as younger, ambitious Pete keeps one-upping Roger over the course of
the series,
the clash between these two privileged men reflects the changing times.
“This does not invoIve you, Roger.
Nor does Vicks, PIaytex, Life cereal, Samsonite,
Sugarberry Ham, Secor Laxative.
Need I go on?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“He's suggesting that you give him your office.”
Yes, Pete got his foot in the door thanks to his good family name,
he still feels he has to prove himself.
“Now now, I’m just pleased that after a long effort,
I was able to sign them.”
Whereas Roger’s from an era where his background meant that he could take it easy.
Through Roger, though, the show forces us
to consider whether having everything handed to you
is really a privilege after all.
It’s because Roger’s had so little struggle that his life can feel pointless.
“It’s too easy.”
It’s hard for him to attach any value
to things that have been given to him free of charge.
Whereas the Dons and Peggys of the world know exactly what things are worth to them,
because they’ve had to pay for what they’ve got.
These kinds of characters don’t suffer from Roger’s bouts of existential darkness
and fears of meaninglessness.
Because they’re never received the external validation
that Roger could always rely on,
they’ve have had to create for themselves the feeling that they matter at all.
“Believe me, nobody wanted me there.”
Sometimes Roger even considers
throwing in the towel and living a life of leisure.
“If I'm useless, so be it.
There's a deck chair somewhere with my name on it.”
It’s hard to imagine Don or Peggy ever talking that way.
“I want to work.
I want to build something of my own.”
So the show uses Roger to weigh up the possibility
that all of life could be meaningless… but ultimately it rejects this view.
Mad Men underlines the importance of working hard
and making sacrifices in order to define your own dreams and meaning.
Because he hasn’t done this, Roger’s growth has been stunted.
“And you have talent, and skill, and experience.
But you’re not a leader.”
That’s why, despite being so high up on the totem pole,
he’s kind of a joke at the company.
“Mr. Sterling's not on that chart at all.”
“That's true.”
“Ah, well, that was an oversight.”
He gets even less respect when he loses the Lucky Strike account,
“I don’t owe you squat, you inherited this account.”
and then tries to hide this from his coworkers.
“Saving that account was impossible.”
“Because you ignored it!
One damn account, and you ignored it!”
Roger can be sensitive about the lack of appreciation he gets.
“You don't value what I do any more than they do.”
It's as if his privilege has even made it hard for him to respect himself.
“Lee Garner Jr. never took you seriously because you never took yourself seriously.”
In the next generation, Roger’s daughter Margaret
follows her dad’s example in proving the aimlessness
felt by people aren’t forced to make their own way.
After doing all the right things for her social class,
marrying a suitable guy and having a kid,
she’s so unhappy she runs off to join a commune.
“I’m really happy here daddy.”
“I know.”
By the end, Roger does find a way out of his existential swamp.
“I guess somebody finally got their timing right.”
It would be a little unbelievable to see Roger Sterling become a model family man.
But the last we see of him,
at least he’s engaged to an age-appropriate partner
who actually challenges him.
“Roger, please don't ask me for anything.
Please don't ask me to take care of you.”
It’s symbolic that Roger’s endpoint is a lot less grand than Don’s,
yet it’s satisfying perhaps because of its smallness.
Roger needs to stop chasing youth or expecting some grand important purpose,
and focus instead on the simple human satisfaction of feeling loved.
“I’m trying to make you happy.
That was our agreement.”
You could say that Roger embodies the spirit of Mad Men,
and our feelings toward him sum up
how the show is making us feel about the “mad men” overall.
“Roger Sterling, no matter what you do, everyone loves you.”
It’s easy to envy Roger’s lifestyle, but in the end
we see that we might be better off for not having all that he has.
Mad Men is really about the progress of characters who didn’t have it so easy during the 60s.
“It’s exciting.
I mean I know it's going to be challenging, but I needed that.”
We have no choice but to approve of the demise of Roger’s kind.
Still, we can’t help saving a special spot in our hearts
for Roger and his particular way of looking at the world.
“Not to get too deep before the cocktail hour,
but do I need to remind you of the finite nature of life?”
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