'Mad Men' Gets It Right: Booze, Sex, Secrets

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), Roger Sterling (John Slattery), Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in AMC's "Mad Men."

(Frank Ockenfels/AMC)
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The Appeal of 'Mad Men' Across Age Groups

"Mad Men" also speaks to a younger generation, who see today's world spinning toward a new kind of chaos: sexual identity politics, escalating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats against a young, new president.

"One day you're on top of the world, and the next day you're run over by a tractor," says Joan, Sterling Cooper's voluptuous head of the secretarial pool, in the recent episode "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency."

After all, January Jones, who plays the stoic trophy wife Betty Draper, who is burdened with her husband's infidelities and a newborn, is only 31 herself.

"I'm not at all like Betty, and I don't have any role models that I can draw from," Jones told ABCNews.com. "I get most of my inspiration from the writing.

"There is such a great difference between the generations," she said. "It's fun to watch people go through drinking and smoking. It's entertaining and beautifully shot. I think it's fun and interesting for young people to care.

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"And I do see the parallels a bit between the Kennedy era and the era of Barack Obama," said Jones. "We feel a little scared, but hopeful."

Cory Kern, a retired middle-school teacher from Bloomfield, Conn., knows the Don Draper character, as her father kept his own dark secrets while raising his family in the 1960s in a Boston suburb filled with aspiring executives.

Kern's mother, who married at 17, spent her waking hours cleaning and being "the perfect wife."

Today, Kern's mother refuses to watch the show. "I lived it," she told her daughter.

Kern's father, a mechanical engineer, never finished high school and fabricated a college degree. "He was brilliant but very troubled," said Kern, now 57.

"He wanted to be successful, wear nice suits and have beautiful secretaries, the well-paying job and the trophy wife and good kids," she said. "He wanted to be the Don Draper type but couldn't figure out how to play the game seamlessly."

Her father's life ended at the age of 39, when he crashed the small plane he was piloting, taking with him the life of her 18-year-old brother.