Over the past several months I've been steadily become addicted to watching The Mad Men, a television series about the going's on at a fictitious small to mid sized advertising agency called Sterling Cooper located in - where else - New York City.
Before going any further, I should say something. I am not someone who follows television shows. My preferences when it comes to watching television include (of course), the History Channel, watching football, basketball, and track and field events. I also enjoy watching the Discovery Channel, and a few others. I used to watch current events programs long ago, such as C Span and the Sunday morning talk shows, but long ago gave up doing that since I came to realize that my life was not going in that direction and there was little I could do to influence things. I'd rather read academic journals and magazines for political information, but my time in this world dwindles by the day and there are other things worth doing other than becoming a walking encyclopedia of knowledge which I can't make money off of being.
Getting back to shows I do watch, I did follow Dallas when I was a young teen but quit doing so when I entered high school. I also watched Twin Peaks at the beginning of the 1990's. For comedy, I enjoyed watching Dream On and Reel Wild Cinema.
So what is it about the Mad Men that I find so alluring? Well, I will be the first to admit that the program will not appeal to everyone. One could visit the blog page of the show and read bucket loads of comments from the show's watchers. Clearly this show might have a fairly small audience, but that audience has a wild passion for this program. Clearly AMCTV has listened and has picked up the program for a second season. YES!
My own favorite character (and I should say that I like all of them) is the primary character, the handsome, wildly complicated, but 1950's Organization Man looking Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm. My own favorite scenes involving Draper include his telling off the hippie boy friend of Midge, how he punched Roger into remembering his wife's name after he suffered a heart attack, and most memorably, when he displays his awesome creative genius (which pays the salaries for the entire boat of everyone working at Sterling Cooper) when, in a mind blowing late night piece of inspiration while talking to Rich, he dreams up the name and sales campaign for the Carousel which is presented to Kodak executives. Draper's presentation is so inspiring, it causes Rich to depart the sales pitch meeting in tears because he is having trouble with his own girl friend. It causes the entire rest of the company, including the fiercely ambitious Pete Campbell to tip their hats off to him.
The women have their own dramas, constrained by the roles that were allowed to them by the America of 1960. Don's wife, an independent former model named Betty, slowly wakes up to the realization that her world has shrunk to that of being a housewife. Meanwhile she also (correctly) intuits that she might not be enough of a woman for her husband. That is because Don has also fallen for the strongly independent Midge and Rachel. Meanwhile back in the office, his secretary Peggy has displayed her creative talents, but fell pregnant with a baby she didn't want (remember this was before 1973). She however, admires Don for giving her the chance to be the first woman to get out of the steno pool since before World War II and has allied herself with her unwittingly visionary mentor against the younger hound dogs who size her up and think she should be put in her place.
It's rather amazing. Don finds himself at the end of the first season struggling to keep the hound dog younger 20 something men at bay, while trying to keep his wife and family in their place in suburbia despite his own indiscretions. At the same time he is attracted to women who are not constrained by the conventions of the era. Meanwhile, he has run away from a boyhood which he hated (he is revealed to be the son of a prostitute) and which he seems to have been treated a bit poorly. But at the same time he has a younger step brother (whom he disowned and who subsequently hanged himself) who adored him. My goodness, that has to weigh on anyone's conscience.
There were complaints early on that the show almost tried too hard to display everyone smoking and that nothing really happened. I dismissed these criticisms right away. I realized quickly that this was a show that could incubate a horde of problems and issues. Mad Men was a program that had an immense potential to mine a bunch of rich issues, such as the fact that a pair of lowly staff cleaning people, who were black, were fired for the discretions of a late night office party.
It's almost as though this program is a modern version of All in the Family, but made 35 years later and recast as a serious drama instead of a comedy. Whereas Archie Bunker was a bigoted working class man stuck in his ways, Don Draper is an any man American who has managed, both by the whirls of fortune and dint of genius, to reinvent himself and work his way into a star struck position in American society. Still, Draper finds himself surfing the waves of a swirling and rapidly changing world, though he and everyone around him don't realize how it is changing right below their very feet.
So, the Wizard heartily recommends watching this absolute gem of a program. You can download episodes, but I can't wait for the second season of the Mad Men.
Wizard