I hope you'll forgive the lateness of this review. Having a year-old baby to look after means that some programs (and films...) remain in my DVR queue longer than I'd like. At any rate, I've now watched every compelling episode of this summer series right up to the finale and all I can say is...wow. Mad Men, a dramatic series from former Sopranos’ writer Matthew Weiner, is surely one of the best efforts on television, summer, winter or fall.
Set in early 1960, sometime before the Kennedy-Nixon election (which plays an important part in later episodes), this is the story of “life” (and work..) at Sterling Cooper Advertising, a high-powered Madison Avenue advertising firm. With lavish visuals and meticulous attention to detail, this unexpectedly riveting period piece paints a picture of life in corporate America as it once was (and how many Republicans would once again like it to be...).
The audience’s entrée into the world of Mad Men comes from the character of young Peggy (Moss), a female secretary recently hired by Sterling Cooper. In the series premiere, the audience is escorted alongside Peggy on a tour of the office. Ensconced on her desk is an electric typewriter and a rotary phone, and her boss in the secretarial pool, Joan (Hendricks) encouragingly suggests Peggy not be “afraid” of all that intimidating technology. Such a quip not only rings true for the characters but suggests the double layers of meaning inherent in this show. To the contemporary viewer – in the age of I-Pods and I-Phones - these over sized, clattering devices look antiquated and so the comment feels ironic or humorous; yet in the world of 1960, these characters are justifiably proud of this state-of-the-art instrumentation.
Later in the same show, Peggy meets the women who control the phone lines – the operators (who are relegated to a tiny rectangular room dominated by large machinery) that connect calls for the ad men - and she is instructed to be nice to them, lest they don’t connect her calls for her boss. That’s how the last secretary got fired, in point of fact: she couldn’t get her boss’s calls connected anymore. Who could imagine doing business that way today?
Mad Men beautifully and artistically depicts the business world of nearly fifty years ago. It is a world of cigarettes and constant smoking, non-stop martinis, and the utter, unquestionable sexual and professional dominance of the white man, the World War II generation. That final piece is what comes across loud and clear here: the manner in which the advertising men rule the roost both at home and on the job. Women truly are second-class citizens, staying at home, caring for children and tending house, while those who do go to work are treated like sexual opportunities. Minorities aren't in good shape, either. They’re waiters or elevator operators and don’t even rate on the hierarchy; they’re invisible, nothing more than wallpaper. And don’t get me started about the way that divorced women are regarded and treated...
This background detail is critically important to Mad Men, which focuses primarily on two white men of different ages and their end-of-season collision. The first character in this rat race is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), an extraordinary war veteran and ad-man who is afraid he is no longer at the top of his game. The name "Draper" sounds a lot like "dapper," and that's one thing Don surely is: all hat and no cattle, so-to-speak because - as we soon learn - his life story is actually as manufactured as his ad campaigns. Don is married to a beautiful but anxious young woman whose hands often shake, Betty (January Jones), and Don is having an affair with an artist in the city. Later in the run of episodes, he has a second extra-marital affair. He’s a cold fish too, skipping out on his young daughter’s birthday party because he can no longer stand the social niceties. This is after boozing it up all day.
Don’s competitor at the firm is the young lion, Peter Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) an up-and-comer brimming with arrogance. He’s an immediate thorn in Draper’s side, though in one episode, “New Amsterdam” the audience sees how Campbell is also trapped, saddled with a grasping, condescending wife and a rich family that has certain "expectations" for him. Campbell is desperate to be seen as a legitimate talent (and in one episode he takes up writing to prove he is as talented as one of his peers), and even more desperate to climb the corporate ladder. As the season ends, he resorts to blackmailing Draper, with unusual results.
The reason to watch Mad Men is not just that the characters and drama are entirely fascinating. They are, but what Weiner has so commendably done here is opened a time-capsule to reveal to audiences just how much America has changed in the past-half century. This is no longer a country where pregnant women smoke and drink. This is no longer a world where going to see a psychologist holds such a dramatic stigma. Instead, the series takes place at the very end of that bygone era, a moving into the world of “Camelot,” which then gives way to the British invasion in music (The Beatles), the controversial Vietnam War, and the Kennedy assassination. Understandably, many people consider this era (of Mad Men) the end of innocence, but what Mad Men depicts is not innocence; just a different world, and an extinct one: a Boy’s Business Club. Many of us tend to wish for simpler times, or to look at the past with nostalgic eyes, but Mad Men dramatically slaps off any such rose-colored glasses. If you were a white man, heck yeah this world was great. If not...tough luck.
As drama, and as an artifact of “another world,” but one that comments rather successfully on ours, this is one of the most fascinating TV series of the year. It has been renewed for a second season, and I’m looking forward to season two next summer.
Set in early 1960, sometime before the Kennedy-Nixon election (which plays an important part in later episodes), this is the story of “life” (and work..) at Sterling Cooper Advertising, a high-powered Madison Avenue advertising firm. With lavish visuals and meticulous attention to detail, this unexpectedly riveting period piece paints a picture of life in corporate America as it once was (and how many Republicans would once again like it to be...).
The audience’s entrée into the world of Mad Men comes from the character of young Peggy (Moss), a female secretary recently hired by Sterling Cooper. In the series premiere, the audience is escorted alongside Peggy on a tour of the office. Ensconced on her desk is an electric typewriter and a rotary phone, and her boss in the secretarial pool, Joan (Hendricks) encouragingly suggests Peggy not be “afraid” of all that intimidating technology. Such a quip not only rings true for the characters but suggests the double layers of meaning inherent in this show. To the contemporary viewer – in the age of I-Pods and I-Phones - these over sized, clattering devices look antiquated and so the comment feels ironic or humorous; yet in the world of 1960, these characters are justifiably proud of this state-of-the-art instrumentation.
Later in the same show, Peggy meets the women who control the phone lines – the operators (who are relegated to a tiny rectangular room dominated by large machinery) that connect calls for the ad men - and she is instructed to be nice to them, lest they don’t connect her calls for her boss. That’s how the last secretary got fired, in point of fact: she couldn’t get her boss’s calls connected anymore. Who could imagine doing business that way today?
Mad Men beautifully and artistically depicts the business world of nearly fifty years ago. It is a world of cigarettes and constant smoking, non-stop martinis, and the utter, unquestionable sexual and professional dominance of the white man, the World War II generation. That final piece is what comes across loud and clear here: the manner in which the advertising men rule the roost both at home and on the job. Women truly are second-class citizens, staying at home, caring for children and tending house, while those who do go to work are treated like sexual opportunities. Minorities aren't in good shape, either. They’re waiters or elevator operators and don’t even rate on the hierarchy; they’re invisible, nothing more than wallpaper. And don’t get me started about the way that divorced women are regarded and treated...
This background detail is critically important to Mad Men, which focuses primarily on two white men of different ages and their end-of-season collision. The first character in this rat race is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), an extraordinary war veteran and ad-man who is afraid he is no longer at the top of his game. The name "Draper" sounds a lot like "dapper," and that's one thing Don surely is: all hat and no cattle, so-to-speak because - as we soon learn - his life story is actually as manufactured as his ad campaigns. Don is married to a beautiful but anxious young woman whose hands often shake, Betty (January Jones), and Don is having an affair with an artist in the city. Later in the run of episodes, he has a second extra-marital affair. He’s a cold fish too, skipping out on his young daughter’s birthday party because he can no longer stand the social niceties. This is after boozing it up all day.
Don’s competitor at the firm is the young lion, Peter Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) an up-and-comer brimming with arrogance. He’s an immediate thorn in Draper’s side, though in one episode, “New Amsterdam” the audience sees how Campbell is also trapped, saddled with a grasping, condescending wife and a rich family that has certain "expectations" for him. Campbell is desperate to be seen as a legitimate talent (and in one episode he takes up writing to prove he is as talented as one of his peers), and even more desperate to climb the corporate ladder. As the season ends, he resorts to blackmailing Draper, with unusual results.
The reason to watch Mad Men is not just that the characters and drama are entirely fascinating. They are, but what Weiner has so commendably done here is opened a time-capsule to reveal to audiences just how much America has changed in the past-half century. This is no longer a country where pregnant women smoke and drink. This is no longer a world where going to see a psychologist holds such a dramatic stigma. Instead, the series takes place at the very end of that bygone era, a moving into the world of “Camelot,” which then gives way to the British invasion in music (The Beatles), the controversial Vietnam War, and the Kennedy assassination. Understandably, many people consider this era (of Mad Men) the end of innocence, but what Mad Men depicts is not innocence; just a different world, and an extinct one: a Boy’s Business Club. Many of us tend to wish for simpler times, or to look at the past with nostalgic eyes, but Mad Men dramatically slaps off any such rose-colored glasses. If you were a white man, heck yeah this world was great. If not...tough luck.
As drama, and as an artifact of “another world,” but one that comments rather successfully on ours, this is one of the most fascinating TV series of the year. It has been renewed for a second season, and I’m looking forward to season two next summer.
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