Hasta La Creative!

On February 5, 1969, ABC premiered a show that was so reviled so fast that it was never seen again. The Cleveland affiliate pulled the plug after the first commercial break and the West Coast didn’t air it at all. That show was “Turn-On,” a sketch comedy that’s been described as “visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics — even people.” The central conceit is that it was written by a computer, perhaps a built-in defense for why the show was unable to connect with humans.

If “Turn-On” was entertainment as made by unfeeling technology, then what does work look like through the same filter? It’s a question that’s on the mind of “Mad Men” this season. In last week’s episode, we saw Jim Cutler realize the agency is falling behind rivals in the technological arms race. In this week’s — which appears to take place less than a month later — Sterling Cooper & Partners is in the process of receiving a new IBM 360. What exactly it will do is unclear besides, of course, serving as a shiny lure for clients. It’s installed in a prominent place, behind glass and, just so you make no mistake about the symbolic import, the blue machine replaces the creatives’ lounge.

At first, this feels heavy-handed, this notion that an ad agency in 1969 would replace creatives with computers. (See last week’s recap for detail on the history of computers and ad agencies.) But by episode’s end, it’s clear the real theme here is not man’s struggle against technology but man’s struggle against an obsolescence that can and will come in any number of ways, a story told through Don Draper’s continued attempts at rehabilitation.

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