Mad Men: Season One
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Movie Reviews of Mad Men: Season One
Movie Review: The richest show on TV
Summary: 5 Stars
"Advertising is about...happiness." So declares Don Draper (Jon Hamm) to a client in one early scene of Mad Men, the richest and most complex program on television right now, at least in terms of its portrait of a specific period in American history.
Since so many of the great reviews here provide detail about the setting and basic premise of Mad Men, I won't repeat. I will simply say that no current TV show deals either directly or obliquely with so many interesting ideas and concepts as does Mad Men. Ostensibly about the New York-based ad industry in its early go-go days near the dawn of the TV age, Mad Men is really about a host of things, including:
The male-female dynamic in the pre-women's movement workplace, and its debilitating effects on women.
The rampant and causal repression of blacks, gays and women and the sense of entitlement among professional white males of the era that the world was their oyster.
The growth of a post-war generation of newly affluent Americans and how the ad industry played on their wants and desires to create artifical demand for unnecessary products, and in the process helped create a culture of consumerism, materialism and envy that is having ramifications even today (witness the mortgage crisis).
The early warning signs of the coming fractures in society that would explode only a few years down the road in the late 1960s.
Bottom line, Mad Men beautifully illustrates the irony of Draper's comment. Advertising, it argues, creates unhappiness - by convincing us that we always need to smell better, look better, and own better things, that nothing we currently have is as good as what we could have, whether that means our refrigerator, our car or our spouse.
But I hope I haven't given the impression that the show is a downer. Far from it. Mad Men is also a treat for the eyes in terms of how it captures the styles and artifacts of 1960 America - from the burled wood and frosted glass of the ad agency offices to the omnipresent ashtrays to the sleek Hart, Schaffner & Marx suits. The dialogue is sharp, the performances terrific (especially Elizabeth Moss as naive and ambitious Peggy Olson, Christina Hendricks as the secretary of every man's dreams, and John Slattery as roguish Sterling-Cooper partner Roger Sterling) and the production design impeccable.
Buy this now and catch up as quickly as you can. Season 2 is well underway and is equally compelling.
Movie Review: Homework Was Done, Beware Spoilers
Summary: 5 Stars
The extreme accuracy of detail in depicting those years is impressive. Most interesting, however, is about content. Discussing this Series with my wife, I absentmindedly said, about the character of Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, "He's a good man." She said, "No he isn't!" I then realized, and told my wife, "That's how he gets away with it!" What does he get away with? Well, everything. He is such a good point man for the company the owner/boss does not care when the weasel tells the boss about his identity theft. A side issue there is, of course, the weasel, Pete, who has committed a Federal crime by opening mail that is not his, is so smart he is stupid. Why? It's the same reason Draper willingly takes him into the boss's office to reveal the ID theft, realizing that Pete is not realizing that the real big killer info is that Draper is a Jew. Don might as well quickly take Pete up on his threat to go to the boss, rather than submit to blackmail, as soon as possible before Pete gets around to thinking about the real career killer, right? That is not in the show yet, but I bet it will be, eventually. (Wonder why Don got along so well with Rachel?) If Pete had deduced that, then Draper would never take him to the boss. Telling the boss about an upsetting issue the boss would not care about is a whole lot different than the worst thing anyone, anywhere, even his wife could find out. Notice how Don did not hesitate taking Pete to the boss? You wait. At least that is what I would be writing into the scripts. With the archaic attitudes of that company's brass, about Jews, that info would have gotten Draper fired and blacklisted, which, of course, from our point of view now days is about as stupid as smoking all the time. Thank heavens things have evolved!
Don's wife is played so well. Don is so good at everything she is happy to be the zero she is. Constantly made aware of how lucky she is, she sits in agonizing unhappiness, the reason for which she cannot explain nor express even to herself. She is so unhappy. They all are. This show is so well done that it ranks right up there with the best of Shakespearian Tragedies. At every turn we are shown their pathetic, truly unhappy existence, all of them, all the time, no matter what any of them are endeavoring to accomplish, no matter what roles they play. It's genius! It's one of the saddest stories ever produced in the entertainment world.
Movie Review: Total immersion in 1960 Manhattan & the Burbs with NO apologies
Summary: 5 Stars
FABULOUS, FABULOUS! Better than Sopranos, which is better than anything else on TV.
Obviously I wholeheartedly agree with most previous reviews. I just want to add my two cents to highlight some areas that I think reviewers didn't quite do justice to:
1. Don's Wife: Betty Draper is often stereotyped by reviewers as being a gorgeous "childlike" Stepford wife type. I disagree. There is much more to her than meets the superficial eye. She is a woman with beautifully portrayed ambivalence--she revels in, and dazzles us, in her in her breezy handling of her assigned role as gorgeous, loving, devoted wife and mother, and housewife. But, inside, there is depression, loneliness, alienation, and even anger and a sense of entrapment. Indeed, her lines reveal this at almost every turn. On the one hand, she is clearly an opinion leader among her neighborhood girlfriends, (e.g. in her persuading her friends to show some tolerance and sympathy for the divorcee who just joined the neighborhood), and she is a complete equal in her intelligent repartees with Don. On the other hand, she is a nervous hostess, full of anxiety to put on the perfect birthday party for her little girl, and she is afflicted with some scary psychosomatic numbness and shaking in her hands, which lead her to the 1960s shrink's couch. Her relationship with Don is a beautifully scripted and choreographed blend of real love, with a partnership of openness and honesty with regard to all of their SHARED life, battling with deception, and clandestine played out escape fantasies in each of their private lives.
2. As many reviewers comment, Mad Men is a real gem of a presentation of an anti-PC, "in your face" 1960s world. BUT, it doesn't simply flaunt and revel in the "capitalist", "materialistic", "vice-ridden" culture.
Far from glorifying this lifestyle, it displays, indeed very much wants to capture the viewer's attention to, all the darkness, the traps, the alienation, the Darwinian competition, and the sickness, that this world creates! Indeed, this very unapologetic flamboyant, and gorgeous, movie quality TV show, treats the viewer with a rare degree of respect--the viewer sees it as it really was, and judges without interference or propaganda, for him or her self. What a rare treat!
Movie Review: DVDs have wonderful commentaries and extras
Summary: 5 Stars
Mad Men is an absolute masterpiece. I agree 200% with all the rave reviews here.
I'm not going to add to the ample reviews of this show. Instead, I would like to comment on the generous extras included in the DVD set.
I debated a long time before buying the DVDs since I own the season on iTunes. I'm glad I bought the DVDs -- the commentaries and extras make it worth every penny.
Each episode has at least one commentary track, usually two separate commentary tracks. And there are other extras - a 20-minute piece, "Advertising the American Dream", a 10-minute video on scoring Mad Men, and the hour-long 'Establishing Mad Men'--all excellent.
A word about the commentaries -- the ones by creator and writer Matt Weiner are superb, very insightful and interesting. I haven't listened to all the other commentaries yet. Of the ones I have listened to, Weiner's are definitely the best, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, and Jon Hamm also provide interesting depth. The brilliant costume designer Janie Bryant also provides wonderful commentary.
I wish some of the other commentaries had been edited, though. For instance, in Jon Hamm's, January Jones', and Elizabeth Moss' commentary on the last episode, 'The Wheel', Elizabeth Moss' comments on the padding used to show her weight gain. This is an interesting aside, but Moss' commentary goes on far too long and it's all trivial, with no insights into Peggy's character. She repeats the same stories again and again--for well over 10 minutes. Her commentary drones through an important part of the Draper story (Don looking at old photos of his brother). It's a shame that we miss Hamm's commentary during that emotionally moving portion of the episode.
But that's my only criticism, one small quibble. The DVD set is marvelous and if you're a Mad Men fan it will add substantially to your enjoyment and insight into the show.
Movie Review: Superb
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes a TV series or movie comes along which hits on all eight cylinders. Mad Men is one of them. I'm a bit young to remember the time period of Mad Men's first season (1960), but the tone of the times feels right.
Casting is wonderful. Jon Hamm as Don Draper is a real find. This guy is perfect in the role, Brylcreem and all. He is a ad genius, a madly successful ad man who thinks on his feet, has brilliant insights, a beautiful loving wife (the unbelievably attractive January Jones), and two smart kids. He has it all, but wants more. He beds a series of women, because he likes them and likes the sex. He just assumes his wife will be oblivious to that; and in those times maybe that happened more often than not.
There are films or series that are mainly set in the workplace, but most don't focus on the day-to-day interactions, at that workplace. We don't learn how to behave or interact in those series. Obviously, there are some notable ones, but most of even those (The Office, NYPD Blue, House, The Wire) feature people we just don't know that well (cops, doctors, comedy writers, (and in the case of the Office, complete goofs)). Mad Men, we can identify with, because we all consider ourselves somewhat of experts on advertising, since we see lots and lots of it, every day.
Very Highly Recommended. An excellent show in all regards. Five plus stars for Mad Men. They have a winner here. Can you believe that HBO passed on this one?
Let me add a bit on the DVD extras. There are a lot of them, and insightful. We learn, for example, that the first show (the pilot) was filmed in New York before moving to LA. The sets feature ceilings, because the director wanted to show the period suspended ceilings (most productions have no ceilings because that's where the lights and other equipment hang).