Killer Instincts

by Ryan Cazalet

It's been almost a month since we here at Double Down announced the creation of this new website. Well it turns out that it takes about a month to start a website like this. Actually more than that, but we're on a tight deadline from some people that you don't want to owe anything to. So here goes nothing.

There are two major themes you will be dealing with on this website and they are, in no particular order, sports and entertainment. And by sports we mean football, baseball, basketball, hockey and occasionally some secondary sports like soccer. And be entertainment we mean movies, television shows, celebrities and general things that entertain the average red blooded American. And since last night I just so happen to have been having this discussion, I decided to make it the inaugural piece.

Last week saw the return of one of the greatest television shows of all time in Mad Men. Some say its too slow, its boring, nothing happens blah blah blah. To quote an all time great movie "Mr. Gambini, that is lucid, intelligent, well-thought objection...Over-ruled". Mad Men is a throwback and I don't simply mean that literally. It's a throwback because it's not built upon the great plot twist or the enormous explosion. It's built on character development, intrigue and compelling storytelling. It's no coincidence that this show is built on those premises because it's creator was a key figure in a similarly great television show, The Soprano's. Now of course The Soprano's had its killings and whackings and gangster intruigue, but it took the the gangster genre to a new level by making the main character and the world he inhabited strangely familiar and conflicted.

Tony wasn't having people kiss his ring or ask for hits on his daughter's wedding day like Vito Corleone. He wasn't walking in through the kitchen and having a table placed up front for him like Henry Hill. Instead he had a family that occasionally resembled and showed the same problems of our own families (without the murders of course). To his mafia family he was the boss, the alpha male who was as bad and hard as they come. Yet we the audience knew that wasn't entirely true because of his relationship with Dr. Melfi. The conflicted alpha male.


Which brings me to Don Draper. He is without a doubt one of my all time favorite television characters and it's hard for me to define why. Unlike Tony Soprano or Omar Little or Walter White, Don doesn't carry a gun. And yet I think he is every bit as bad-ass as the other three characters. He projects this aura of cool that no other character has in my opinion. When I first started watching the series Don made me want to start chain smoking Lucky Strikes and drink Old Fashions. But why is that cool?

In the office and in client meetings Don Draper is the closer. He's Mariano Rivera in a suit and tie. Or perhaps the better comparison is Michael Jordan. Jordan was, is and always will be considered the greatest of all time. There may be better scorers, passers, defenders and athletes to play the game of basketball, but he will always be considered the best ever because of his killer instinct. He wanted to win even if it meant dying on the court. The high of being the best was his drug of choice. Don Draper suffers from the same addiction.

Like Tony Soprano, Don Draper is an anti-hero. We root for him even though we shouldn't. He's not a good guy. But we can't stop watching. When Don pitches a client, we know he's going to sell them. Just like we knew Jordan was going to hit that shot in the finals against the Jazz. That's not why we watch. We watch because we want to see how he will do it. We watch because we want to be awed by something we know is coming. We know Kodak sold the photo carousel but we wanted to see how Don sold them.

I wish Jordan retired for good after that shot. I wish we could erase his years with the Wizards so that shot could go down as the most bad-ass moment in the history of sports ( I argue that despite his return, that moment is still the most bad-ass). But even in his comeback with the Wizards we still saw the flashes of greatest. His body no longer could perform the greatness his mind was demanding, but every once in a while we saw the old Jordan.

Advertising executives don't quite have shelf lives like athletes do, but we are beginning to see the deterioration of Don. His pitches aren't quite as flawless. His confidence is not quite as mind-blowing as it once was. His Armani suit may look more like a Wizards jersey now than a Bulls jersey but we still want to see greatness.

Those two videos (Jordan's jumper and Draper's Kodak pitch) are awe inspiring. Throwbacks to a different game. We know the game is changing. We know the great ones can't be great forever. We're about to see how the tale of Don Draper comes to an end and I for one can't wait to find out.