Mad Men: Season One
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Movie Reviews of Mad Men: Season One
Movie Review: The Eisenhower Era Revisited
Summary: 5 Stars
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?
Movie Review: only hesitation involves some of the commentaries
Summary: 5 Stars
A secretary's allusion to McLuhan four years before the publication of UNDERSTANDING MEDIA has been cited as a rare anachronism in this meticulous reproduction of 1960. Aside from one editing glitch (involving a woman's cigarette that is held upward then lapward then upward a number of times), my main "glitch watch" observation surrounds a home-movie camera that is treated like a videocamera: lacking intense lights clamped to chairs for indoor shooting, lacking the need to hand-wind the film every few feet, or lacking the whir of a motor.
(It's also a kick to see Angel's karate-wheeling son emerge here as a lesser corporate demon. Perhaps Season 3 can link up his character with his own long-lost brother, played by Wil Wheaton.)
This series's main competition for Emmy awards is the excellent DAMAGES. But depraved nastiness is an easy staple for cable shows, while the intricacy of MAD MEN (without excessive, facile cussing and with a minimum of wish-fulfillment fantasy sequences) sets it apart from the conventions of even the best of television dramas.
The series is just about as fantastic as it lauds itself for being, on the commentaries. Its creator "loves" everything, and other commentary participants slobber big wet kisses on each other--as has become a tradition in disk packages of this kind. Clearly deserved for costuming and set design, also appropriate for writing and performances, yes; but pointing out parallel themes (a la THE WIRE) is a frequent achievement of greater value.
Some of the technical commentaries (notably on costuming, producing, editing, directing) are as good as any "field trip" classes I took in grad school, with production personnel at various Manhattan television stations. Film teachers would do well to assign these commentaries at any level of "film production" instruction.
This, however, is countered by the endless redundancy of Elizabeth Moss who, as Peggy Olsen, does a good acting job but, on the commentaries, finds a dozen ways to repeat the same simplistic idea ... over and over and over and over throughout many, many episodes. It's nice to have so many commentaries on the disks, but this actress's vacuous chatter is too often used as filler. She is clearly the production's mascot, but her additions to commentaries for Season 2 should be edited judiciously.
Immediately after watching these 13 episodes about the ad industry in 1960, I viewed MADISON AVENUE (1962) with Dana Andrews as a somewhat older, less complicated clone of Dan Draper, a love interest named Peggy, a Joan-like secretary named Miss Olsen, the actor who later played Larry Tate from BEWITCHED here performing the role of a precursor of Tate, and even the line "You haven't thought this through." Hardcore MAD MEN addicts might enjoy this strangely uncynical addition to the PATTERNS, GRAY FLANNEL, EXECUTIVE SUITE, HOW TO SUCCEED, WALL STREET genre.
Movie Review: The Pursuit of Happiness
Summary: 5 Stars
It would be hard to imagine a more absorbingly intelligent American TV series--in terms of writing, acting, and visuals--than MAD MEN. Just before the final season of THE SOPRANOS began in late 2007, AMC presented us in the summer with the thirteen episodes of this marvelously atmospheric series created by one of the main writers of the series, Matt Weiner, that HBO insanely took a pass on. Ostensibly the series is about a group of advertising agency working for Madison Avenue advertising agency, the fictitious Sterling-Cooper, in 1960, during the Nixon-Kennedy presidential contest; yet on a deeper level the show wrestles with much larger questions about the meaning of obsession with having (and marketing) happiness in mid-20th-century America. The series centers primarily around four characters whose lives are inextricably linked with one another: Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a handsome advertising executive at Sterling-Cooper of few words but enormous creative gifts who hides a mysterious past; his beautiful but childlike wife Betty (January Jones), whom he keeps entirely separate in the suburbs from his work life and his mistresses in the city; Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Don's new secretary, whose naive affect and kind heart belie her tremendous ambition; and Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), the smarmy account executive who trades on his ties to the Old New York "Knickerbocracy" to get him ahead. The four central actors are absolutely first-rate, as are several within their near orbits: John Slattery as Roger Sterling, the roguish partner who is both Don's friend and his competitor; the gifted Christina Hendricks, as the firm's femme fatale head secretary; and Robert Morse, as the firm's wily and eccentric senior partner.
Morse's presence ties the series to his famous work in both the Broadway and Hollywood production of HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, and the episodes make intelligent reference also to any number of important American fictional works about the NYC business and suburban domestic worlds of the post-War era, including THE APARTMENT and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING. (Richard Yates's REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and the films of Douglas Sirk are also repeatedly evoked too, if in less direct ways.) One of the pleasures of this fine DVD set are the superb extras which allow us to see the especially thoughtful work done by the series' set designers, hairstylists, and (particularly) its head costume designer. The commentaries are generally excellent, and it will come as no surprise to fans of the series that not only the series creator, Matt Weiner, and its writers are especially eloquent but so too are its actors, especially Hamm and Kartheiser. The eye-catching design of this DVD package (fashioned to look and open, naturally, like a classic American manufacturer's product: a Zippo lighter) has been rightly praised for its innovation but also rightly criticized for its unwieldiness.
Movie Review: Mad Men Season One - Raw, Offensive, Powerful and Highly Addicting!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Mad Men - Season One has completely changed the way I view TV. I generally watch things at random and don't watch a lot of shows consistently. This is a show worth changing that for. It's hard to describe what makes this show such a rare event in TV. Somebody had the vision to put a show on TV that has something to say and is as raw, honest and true to the period it is based on. I, for one, am grateful for that.
The show centers on the NY advertising world of the 1960s. Why "Mad Men?" The old row of famous agencies on Madison Avenue, of course. The men are sexist, rude, slicked up, and well dressed. The women are submissive yet cunning, half accepting sexism and half ignoring it.
There's not a lot of political correctness here. That is bound to offend some. While my first reaction was to wonder as to the motives behind that, the truth is that after watching the show for a few episodes it becomes clear that the bigotry of the period is key to understanding the characters. Plenty that the characters say would get them fired today. For their era, sexist banter in the office was considered par for the course.
There's also plenty of smoking, drinking and sexual situations. If you are very conservative this might not be for you. Yet even conservative people would have to warm up somewhat to the effectiveness of the portrayal. This show makes you believe you are witnessing things as they were. Not having been there, we can't know for sure. Regardless, this sure is convincing.
There are some nice special features and extras sprinkled sparingly throughout the disks. Of course you have your usual commentary tracks on the episodes, which are actually worth listing to in my opinion. Not every show can say that.
The behind-the-scenes documentary section is also standard fare, but well done. It covers the basic elements of how the show is put together, from characters, sets, makeup, wardrobes, and art design. You also get some small extras that are nice like a segment on scoring the music for the show, which is great, and audio clips of some of the period songs that are used.
Because of the way the disks are set up, many of these specific extras are on the individual disks. So you have to search for them. Also, there are only a few episodes per disk (about 3). I guess those extras and commentary tracks took up a lot of disk space. Still, these are minor details.
Conclusion
This is a great show and well worth watching again and again. I hope you will check this out if you haven't already.
Enjoy!
Movie Review: The revolutionary decade, from the viewpoint of the establishment.
Summary: 5 Stars
Who doesn't love a good period drama? I'm certainly not such a person, so upon hearing the idea of a cable series set on the Madison Avenue advertising scene as the nation stood on the cusp of the 1960s had enormous appeal. Especially interesting is the HBO-style (indeed, this was originally pitched as an HBO series, and shot down; I'm grateful, if only because the DVD prices would be that much more severe) unvarnished presentation of the era. Moralists who romanticize this period as a haven of old-fashioned morality will be disappointed when confronted by the truth (or something like it) about contemporary attitudes.
Our main character is Don Draper (Jon Hamm, in a marvelous performance; it is surprising that he doesn't do more period work, because he's absolutely perfect for the look of the 1950s), the creative director at Sterling Cooper, a moderate-sized ad agency run by Roger Sterling (John Slattery, best known to me from "Jack & Bobby") and Bertram Cooper (Robert Morse). He and his team, most notably newcoming Peter Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser, Angel's son Connor on "Angel"), are charged with marketing such illustrious products as cigarettes (and helping the company duck restrictions imposed by federal health agencies). Don is something of a mystery both at work and at home, where his wife Betty (January Jones, in a revelatory performance; I'd previously never thought of her as anything other than a pretty face) is living a life of quiet desperation. Through Don we see the life of a successful male executive; he's got a beautiful wife, more than one mistress on the side (proto-hippy Midge, then department store executive Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), the only woman in the show not occupying a menial position, and she owes that to her father), and is friends with his boss Roger. Below him, Campbell and his cohorts battle for favour and advancement.
Standout performances come from Hamm in the title role, Christina Hendricks as Joan, a secretary well-versed in using her sexuality to get what she wants (she'd be running the place if she lived 40 years later), and Elisabeth Moss as Peggy, a newby secretary with professional ambitions that are well beyond what is expected of women in that era, althoug timid Peggy doesn't seem the type to overtly identify with the feminist movement.
The DVD packaging has been a point of some contention here (see many of the 1-star reviews). The original lighter-shaped box is a nifty design, though you do indeed have to watch while you close it (although the explanatory booklet in the back seems an effective shield on my set).