Television Review: My Old Kentucky Home (Mad Men, S3x03, 2009)

My Old Kentucky Home (S3x03)

Airdate: 30 August 2009

Written by: Dahvi Waller & Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger

Running Time: 50 minutes

Mad Men is a series dedicated to charting the profound social and cultural shifts of 1960s America, a transformation that, while appearing rapid in historical retrospect, unfolded with agonising slowness from the perspective of those living through it. To portray this glacial pace of change authentically, the show frequently relied on subtlety and slow-burn character exposition, often resulting in episodes where, on the surface, very little of dramatic consequence actually occurs. My Old Kentucky Home, the third episode of the show’s third season, stands as a prime example of this narrative approach. It is an piece of television whose plot is gossamer-thin, its drama largely internal, and its interest sustained almost exclusively through moments of brilliant acting and the surprising, jarring inclusion of musical performances. It is an episode that frustrates traditional expectations of narrative propulsion, yet, in its meticulous layering of social detail and character nuance, it becomes a fascinating, if deliberately uneventful, portrait of a world on the cusp.

The title itself is a loaded signifier, pointing directly to the 1852 ballad by Stephen Foster. This piece, one of the most popular works of 19th-century American music and adopted as the state song of Kentucky in 1928, carries a legacy of racial insensitivity within its original lyrics, a fact that would later force amendments. By invoking this anthem, the episode immediately plants itself in the contested soil of American tradition, heritage, and the uncomfortable truths that fester beneath polished surfaces.

Set on a single day—Saturday, 4 May 1963—the episode follows three distinct party threads and one thread of reluctant work. The most overtly comedic strand involves Peggy Olson, Paul Kinsey, and the freelancer Smitty, who are condemned to the office to brainstorm a campaign for Bacardi rum. Frustrated and uninspired, Paul calls upon an old college acquaintance, Jeffrey Graves (Miles Fisher), who provides marijuana. The ensuing sequence is a masterclass in subtle class humiliation. As they smoke, Jeffrey punctures Paul’s carefully cultivated image of the refined, intellectual aesthete by revealing his working-class New Jersey roots and his once-heavy “Joisy” accent. Paul’s defence is performative: a surprisingly adept and spirited rendition of “Hello My Baby.” Peggy, intrigued and asserting her independence from her fussy secretary Olive (Judy Kain), joins them, declaring she wants “to get high.” Her subsequent experience is telling; she feels “in a good place” and, with a clear head, finds the inspiration to work, subtly underscoring her innate, pragmatic work ethic—a trait that consistently sets her apart from her more pretentious male colleagues.

Meanwhile, in the rarefied air of a country club, Don and Betty Draper attend a Kentucky Derby party hosted by Roger Sterling and his new, young wife, Jane. This sequence is a symphony of quiet discomfort and telling vignettes. At home, before the party, a minor crisis unfolds as Sally steals a five-dollar bill from her grandfather, Gene. The resolution—Sally pretending to find the money after seeing his distress—and their subsequent bonding over Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a beautifully understated moment that speaks to the complex, often unspoken affections within families.

At the party, the social fissures are palpable. Don, ever the outsider despite his success, slips away to the bar where he meets an elderly gentleman named Connie (played with wonderful gruffness by Chelcie Ross, who, in a neat piece of casting, would later return as the historical figure Conrad Hilton). Over the mixing of Old Fashioneds, Connie confesses that decades of wealth have never erased the feeling of his humble origins, a sentiment that resonates deeply with Don’s own fabricated identity. Back in the party room, the episode delivers its most infamous and controversial moment: Roger, in grotesque blackface, entertains the guests with a rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home.” The reaction shots of Don and Pete Campbell, who exchange a look of profound discomfort, are crucial. They signal a dawning, albeit silent, recognition of the practice’s offensiveness, a tiny crack in the monolith of accepted WASP culture.

The party conversation also touches on the contemporary scandal of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller leaving his wife for a younger woman, a move the partygoers lament for potentially handing the 1964 Republican nomination to the hard-right Barry Goldwater. This political aside is not incidental; it frames the entire gathering as a last hurrah for a certain breed of moderate, country-club Republicanism. Betty, glowing in pregnancy, attracts the slightly drunken attention of a guest, Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), who asks to touch her belly—a moment charged with a mutual, unacted-upon attraction. The party culminates with Pete and Trudy Campbell’s impeccably choreographed Charleston, a performance of youthful energy and synchrony that contrasts sharply with Roger and Jane’s slow, strained final dance, and with Don’s intervention to prevent a drunk Jane from causing a scene.

The third party is the most tense and domestically claustrophobic. Joan Holloway (now Harris) and her husband, Greg, host a gathering for his hospital colleagues. Joan is in full crisis-management mode, using all her formidable social ingenuity to steer Greg away from potential arguments that could turn violent. The party reveals the devastating truth that Greg, the supposed brilliant surgeon, accidentally killed a patient. This revelation lands like a physical blow on Joan’s face, sowing the seeds of doubt about his career—and, by extension, the stability of their marriage. Forced by Greg to play the accordion, Joan surprises everyone with a soulful, knowing performance of Cole Porter’s “C’est magnifique.” It is a moment of defiant grace, a reclaiming of agency through performance, and one made more memorable by the behind-the-scenes fact that actress Christina Hendricks herself suggested the switch from piano to accordion, drawing on her own modest skills with the instrument.

What, then, does this episodic diptych of parties and work actually accomplish? Precisely what Mad Men does at its best: it illustrates deep social and cultural divisions through behaviour, not exposition. The sharpest contrast is between the old-world WASP aristocracy, embodied by Roger and Betty, comfortably inhabiting their country-club milieu, and the strivers of Sterling Cooper. Yet, the divisions are more nuanced. Even within the office, a generational shift is evident. Paul Kinsey, for merely being a few years older, seems less “hip” than Smitty. And Paul’s visible discomfort at the blackface performance, despite his own privileged background, positions him as more aligned with the changing times than Roger, who remains blissfully, offensively entrenched in the past. The episode is a study in belonging and alienation, in the performances required to fit in, and the private costs of those performances.

The blackface scene became one of the most controversial in the series’ history. While it is historically accurate for such a gathering in early 1960s America, and while Matthew Weiner’s direction clearly frames it as grotesque and jarring (through the reactions of Don, Pete, and the audience’s own modern perspective), many viewers and critics found its depiction unacceptable and racially insulting. The controversy was potent enough that some streaming services in various countries opted to simply not air the episode, a modern act of censorship that ironically highlights the very uncomfortable history the episode seeks to expose.

My Old Kentucky Home is an episode that demands patience. It is a slow, deliberate, and at times frustrating instalment that deliberately avoids major plot advancements. Its power lies not in what happens, but in how it feels. It captures the stifling atmosphere of a social order beginning to rot from within, where laughter is strained, marriages are fragile, and professional futures are built on sand. The brilliant acting—from Jon Hamm’s silent discomfort to January Jones’s glacial poise, and particularly from Christina Hendricks, who conveys a world of disillusionment with a single glance—elevates the material. The musical interruptions, from Paul’s vaudeville turn to Joan’s accordion lament, are not mere quirks but vital expressions of character and release. The episode, like the Foster song it references, is a relic that contains both beauty and ugliness, a slow, mournful ballad for a way of life in its twilight. It may be an episode where “nothing happens,” but in the world of Mad Men, that nothing speaks volumes about the end of an era, one awkward party and one uncomfortable performance at a time.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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