Mad Men - Season One

This is the best show on television. It's not just because Jon Hamm as ad man Donald Draper is the hottest leading man, ever. No contest. He's both heroic and fatally flawed. His nemesis, Vincent Kartheiser as Peter Campbell, looks like a kewpie doll and will stop at nothing to get his job. It's funny when sometimes Pete's ideas are better! There is also the "Greed is good," element behind "Mad Men" which was most apparent when Pete Campbell looked down at New York from his penthouse apartment in Episode 4. Every episode of "Mad Men" is a delight.

We are hooked on the second season - but had never seen the first. This is a MUST SEE television series. We are so happy the DVD was available. We haven't watched the whole set yet - just savoring one or two episodes a week, along with the new shows.

It has the makings of a Mamet style with excellent plot development and outstanding characterization.

After watching the first few episodes of "Mad Men", you can be forgiven if your eyes burn and you start to cough. It might be the only television show in history to cause second-hand smoke. Set in 1960, "Men Mad" is really about the 1950's and it captures the spiritual emptiness of the period perfectly. While the Eisenhower era has been romanticized recently as a wonderful time when all Americans had jobs, homes, and cars (and when Republicans were considered "nice" people believing in thrift) this fantasy is true only if you were a straight, white male. And a conforming one at that. Still, the emotion that pervades this series is sadness: no one is happy, no matter how many material goodies they have. Even the beatniks are gloomy and dull.

The men survive by chain-smoking, drinking themselves insensible and attempting to seduce anything in a skirt. The women are treated to such casual and pervasive sexism that, viewing "Mad Men", even conservatives like Phylliss Schlafly would go down on her knees and thank Gloria Steinem. The women themselves are either the original "Desperate Housewives" or trying to stay sane by manipulating the men who prey on them. People of color exist merely as waiters and elevator operators. In the world of 1960 advertising, they are completely non-existent. You see no ads depicting a black or Hispanic family buying a new car, sharing a beer with friends or ogling a new refrigerator. Nor will you for another decade.

Centering around the advertising executives of the fictional Sterling-Cooper agency ("Mad Men" is slang for the admen working on Madison Avenue in New York City, the archetypal Men in the Gray Flannel Suits), "Mad Men" succeeds more from mood then plot. The action is focused on the nuances of facial expression that speaks louder than words at a time when true self-expression was unknown and unwanted. The plot itself centers on rising adman star Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who has a secret past and his relationship with his suppressed wife, Betty (January Jones) who, although in therapy, is treated like a dependent child by her analyst who discusses her case only with her husband, not her. Elisabeth Moss shines as Peggy Olson, Draper's new secretary who is ahead of her time in terms of sexual liberation and professional intelligence. When she finally writes copy for a successful ad campaign (unheard of for the women in the office) she is condescendingly offered a drink, a pat on the back but no pay or no position. She chafes under her treatment and one wonders what the coming of the tumultuous Sixies has in store for her.

Which bring us to the children of the principal characters. All those cute little tykes running around with cowboy hats and cap guns will, within the coming decade, become hippies, anti-war protesters, feminists and environmental activists. Bob Dylan is still a year away from descending upon the scene but if there ever was a time that needed a'changing, it was 1960 America. The Beatles, Vietnam, and Kennedy's assassination are just around the corner but no one at Sterling-Cooper knows this or even has the imagination to envision the cataclysmic changes about to descend upon them. And when they do happen, will they notice or care?

if you missed season 1. scene notes fascinating. i think i will also have to buy season 2.