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USA TODAY  LOS ANGELES — It's not surprising someone is checking Christina Hendricks' hairstyle just before her next scene on AMC's Mad Men. That the person doing the checking is show creator Matthew Weiner is more unexpected. "Terrific. You look fantastic," says Weiner, popping by Hendricks' trailer to take a look at her ravishing red tresses. Hair —among other notable attributes — defines Hendricks' Joan Holloway, the stylish head secretary who keeps business moving and heads turning at Sterling Cooper, the early '60s New York advertising firm at the heart of Mad Men (second season premiere July 27, 10 ET/PT). "We've had some hair issues this year, but I think we're all happy now," Hendricks says. "Matt's very specific about Joan always being tidy, because she's very orderly. She's always very put together."
Attention to detail, whether it pertains to hair, dialogue or the lipstick-marked cigarette butts that fill the many ashtrays in the agency's office, is integral to the success of Mad Men, which conveys the glamour, ordinariness and ugliness of its times. "I'm pretty picky, yes," says Weiner, an alumnus of another exacting series, The Sopranos. "Everyone I work with is like that, too. I rarely have to change things, but I like to see everything." Weiner and his cast and crew don't appear to be letting their guard down after a freshman season that garnered a mountain of critical praise, two Golden Globes (including one for best drama), a Peabody Award and likely Emmy nominations later this month. Season 2 opens on Valentine's Day in 1962, a little more than 14 months after Mad Men's first-season finale left Sterling Cooper creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) facing failure at home just after creating a moving, family-oriented ad campaign; newly promoted copywriter Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) depressed after secretly giving birth after a tryst with adman Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser); and their colleagues also facing personal and professional tumult. Despite the passage of time, the characters will have to face the consequences of their earlier actions. Old secrets remain to be explored; new ones will emerge. "There are certainly a lot of unanswered questions from the first season," says Hamm, who took a Globe for best actor. "More questions are answered, but like with most things, as time marches on, more questions are posed, too. People aren't stagnant. These characters are incredibly well-drawn by Matt and have so many dynamics and relationships. They all shift and change." In some ways, they don't change, which is one of Weiner's central points. Don still struggles with a dual identity that viewers, as well as his blackmailer, Pete, learned about last year. As a young man, he took the name of a dead Korean War comrade to erase his past life as Dick Whitman and make a fresh start. "We answered a lot of questions in terms of the Don Draper/Dick Whitman schism, but there's still a lot of foggy area from the time of the Korean War to the time Don Draper shows up and becomes this advertising guy," Hamm says. Selling it to a larger audience As AMC's first original series in years, Mad Men is the latest cable drama to draw critical acclaim. It joins such shows as FX's Damages and Rescue Me, TNT's The Closer, HBO's The Wire and Showtime's Dexter and The Tudors. It broke out strong for the network last season, attracting 1.6 million viewers for its premiere. But it dipped during the course of the season, averaging about 1 million viewers an episode for the initial airing of 13 episodes. Top dramas on higher-rated cable competitors, such as TNT and USA, draw 3 million or more. All involved hope the awards, first-season DVD, big promotional campaign and expected crush of news media coverage lead to a larger audience. Weiner praises AMC and Mad Men's studio, Lionsgate, for providing creative freedom. "I'd love to have a larger audience," he says. "I think we'll find it." The real-life nature of TV and ratings connects to the make-believe Sterling Cooper admen and a main theme of the show, Weiner says. "It's the conundrum of advertising and television and entertainment, which is commerce vs. art. You're always dealing with what's coming from inside vs. what you can sell." Creatively, this year's MadMen will contrast the private self and the public persona. "Last season, a lot of it was about discovery and peeling away layers. Now that we're on the inside of all these people, we're trying to take it from their point of view," says Weiner, who also is executive producer. "With Don's history revealed to the audience, we have a different way to understand his perception of his life. Everything he does, in some way, is coated with irony." The 14-month time jump between seasons allows the show to explore the subtle way the world is changing around these characters. In a scene being filmed for the sixth episode, the Sterling Cooper boys club still meets in Don's office as the guys try to come up with a bra campaign (Mad Men obviously has retained its sense of humor). This time, however, there is a woman in their ranks: Peggy. She's not treated like one of the guys. "Peggy is the only woman in the office who wants to do something more than be a secretary. She's the pioneer," Moss says. "She's brave and smart but definitely learning as she goes about how to deal with her new stature in the office and what it's like to be a woman in this man's world." Dynamics have shifted in the Draper household, too, where Don's lonely wife, Betty (January Jones), lost some of her naiveté after she realized her husband's likely infidelity late in the first season. "By the end, she was getting stronger. She was less and less complacent," Jones says. With the characters established, Weiner says he plans to go home with more of them. "To get more of a sense of the private life vs. the public life means you have to see these people's private lives." Top-drawer attention to detail Mad Men's look and feel are another big draw for fans. Again, it's in the details. The Madison Avenue office set, located in the shadow of the modern-day Los Angeles skyline, is a time capsule. Secretaries' desks are archaeological digs, featuring such items as molded ashtrays, transistor radios, IBM typewriters and carbon paper. Extras in '60s dresses and hairstyles walk the office aisles, and wisps of cigarette smoke hover in the air during nearly every scene. (Actors smoke herbal cigarettes on set; some smoke real ones outside during breaks.) Asked whether the set is too meticulously appointed, Weiner says viewers can feel the difference. "It's an overall effect. It's hitting a part of your brain that you don't notice, but you'd notice if it weren't there." But items inside desk drawers? "It's hard for actors to work in an environment that's completely fake. They can do it, but there's something great about opening a drawer and seeing stuff in there." It helps, Moss says. "The props department hands you a folder for a conference scene, and it's full of actual material, letters and ideas. It's all real." As far as clothing, it takes a vintage suit and a dab of hair gel for the men to get the Madison Avenue look, while the women must don girdles, bullet bras and other constricting garments. "I stand differently and sit differently and walk differently in these clothes. I have much better posture. I sit up straight. I'm always in heels. It lends so much to the character," Moss says. It also helps define them as individuals, Hendricks says. The outfits "are always so our characters. There's never a discrepancy," she says, praising costume designer Katherine Jane Bryant. "I never walk in and go, 'My character wouldn't wear that.' " Visual elements combined with the scripts help actors understand a period before almost all of them were born, Kartheiser says. "The writing gives you an idea of how people think and feel. The props and outfits give an idea about how society behaved and the style and manners of the era. It definitely helps you drop into a world."
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