Mad Men: Season One
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Movie Reviews of Mad Men: Season One
Movie Review: A Super Great Series!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
When this series first started up, I thought it was one I would skip. After it had been running a while, I heard it was very good, so tried out an episode from season one and got interested.
I've now seen all of season one and REALLY liked it.
As I told a friend of mine when recommending it. This tells the story of the era where we come from. I was born in 1960 which is the year of season one.
Shall we say times have a changed a LOT since then. It is hard to imagine that things were as depicted, but they probably were - well, I suspect they exaggerate maybe a tad, but maybe not. Politically correct it is not.
One thing is all the smoking. I mean, it is constant. And the drinking. And "bad" behavior.
People think we live in a more enlightened time now and maybe we do, but still watching this show, I cannot help but feel that we lost something we need to find again in the process.
If you can't remember the early 1960's, take a look. It does seem to be true to life setting wise. They did an incredible job there.
Briefly, the show centers around a guy working in an ad agency in New York starting in 1960. He has a mysterious past which is explained late in the first season. He is a likable guy, but he has some big flaws - at least as we see things now anyway. We meet his wife and family in the series and people he works with as well as many colorful clients.
Give this one a try.
Movie Review: Smart, Sleek, Swank, Swell
Summary: 5 Stars
In terms of writing (story, dialogue, character development) acting, direction, and the great, smoothly polished look of every frame, this fine show is as good as TV gets. And it needs to be said that the best of TV in recent years -- Friday Night Lights, Damages, Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, and going back a few seasons, Everwood, Veronica Mars, Jack & Bobby -- outshines all but the absolute cream of movies.
Alas, the great bulk of television programming is still the "wasteland" it was long ago dubbed, but back in the 60s, 70s and 80s when there was almost nothing worth watching on the tube, I can recall that it was every TV actor's aspiration to graduate to "features" where the best work was being done (and where the big salaries were).
Today, however, for those actors fortunate enough to be working on shows like MadMen, or others of that caliber, they are already working at the pinnacle of their craft. They are collaborating daily with the most talented people in their industry -- writers, directors, producers, set designers and fellow actors -- all of whom share an artistic commitment to do great work. And it shows . . . in every aspect of every episode.
Viewed from the perspective of that kind of fulfilling work experience, the only remaining lure of most movies roles could only be the money.
MadMen is not just TV at its best, it is dramatic art at its best. Check it out -- preferably on DVD!
Movie Review: TV for readers, blistering social criticism
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't want to repeat all the good reviews, because they are all true and this is a singularly great series and blah blah.
What I wasn't expecting from Mad Men was a meditation on existentialism and how close America flirted with nothingness while "having it all". Everyone in the series does what they think they should do, play the roles they think they should play with glee, all while being worried sick that underneath there is pain, unhappiness and baseness, and not much else.
"The universe is indifferent", Don Draper says at one point, coalescing the characters' reaction to the void. Fill it up with instinctive desires and lust for dominance and power and get away with as much as you can. Meanwhile, they live with and romance complete strangers, and immerse themselves in their pre-cut roles while trying to avoid the unseen force that drives their behavior. When calamity strikes these souls, granite shells are exploded and inside there are often scared little children who are ill-equipped to deal with real life and real emotions that they are secretly victims of.
Mad Men shows people doing what's expected of them without bothering to do what they are supposed to do-on Madison Avenue, near the heights of success, as the opening of each episode shows, it's a long way down to the annihilation of everything they are, and a long time to think about it in descent.
Movie Review: Was ANYONE happy in 1960?
Summary: 5 Stars
If there's one thing I've learned by watching "Mad Men", it's that apparently NO ONE was happy in 1960. The men weren't happy and didn't know how to express it because they had to Be Men, and the women weren't happy because they were expected to be little more than mindless serving women. No one could talk about what they felt or what they really wanted, morality was subjective, and freedom was something you had only if you were a WASP, and even then it was the freedom to ONLY be a WASP and nothing else.
"Mad Men", as you doubtless know, tells the story of a group of advertising executives at a New York ad firm in 1960. The men, and they're almost all men, are kings of their domain, but are starting to sense the early stirrings of a peasant uprising. It's this - the conflict around the upcoming rise in freedom and equality for gays, women and blacks - that forms the basis of a lot of the most interesting stories in this show.
The acting, directing and cinematography are all suberb. The plots are intelligent and well-written. You'll even pick up a thing or two about advertising!
I hadn't seen this program on TV, nor seen any episodes of it. I bought this DVD set purely on the strength of what I'd heard about it. I was not disapointed. It may not be the best TV show of the last ten years ("Battlestar Galactica" wins that prize), but's supremely excellent and highly recommended!
Movie Review: Creepy and Weird--But in Good Way!
Summary: 5 Stars
Although I did not grow up as the child of a Madison Avenue type, I recognize this as the world of my childhood. I guess that I was about the age of Don's daughter Sally back then. Mad Men certainly captures the ambiance of that highly sexualized and politically incorrect era. I find Don and his pals both troubling and sympathetic. The men are certainly passionate about their work, but their interactions with their wives and girlfriends seem almost completely phoned in. When Don looses an client--he is shattered--but loosing a girlfriend (or a terrible fight with his wife) hardly makes him blink. Really, the only relationship between a man and a woman that seems significant to me is that between Pete Campbell and his wife Trudy--even though he is fooling around with Peggy on the side.
I also find Don interesting as a sort of interface between the 60's Urban metropolis of his work world and his depression era rural roots. One of my parents came from a rural community and home lit by only kerosine lanterns and devoid of indoor plumbing. Much of my young life was spent trying to come to terms with the modern world as seen through the prism of my parents' rural and small town perspective. Sadly for poor Don though, his childhood was an unpleasant one that left him without the emotional context necessary to find happiness in his personal life.