This unique series from AMC needs a few qualifiers. The first is, you can't watch just one episode from the middle of a season and form an opinion about it. Taken out of context, an individual episode will seem mildly interesting for the costumes and hairstyles, but for most viewers, it will be slow and dull entertainment.
The beauty of "Mad Men" lies in what's under the surface, the subtext, and that can only be appreciated by watching the entire series, starting at the beginning.
"Mad Men" starts in 1960. The period has been duplicated with 99.99% accuracy. The missing 0.1% is that a) though IBM Selectric typewriters are shown in 1960, they weren't introduced until 1961; and b) Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in 1962 is 36 years old, which leads one to wonder why he was in Korea and not WWII. There's a third thing from season 3 that I won't mention right now. The hair, the clothes, the smoking, the drinking, the littering, the references, having Jean Shrimpton in an ad, the products - Mohawk Airlines, Utz, etc., the huge copy machine, the Catholics, the Latin Mass, the rampant sexism, the kids in front of the TV, the programs - phenomenal. When the firm is called in to work on a Sunday, and a priest stops by Peggy's (Elizabeth Moss) house, her mother says she's sick. Why? Catholics aren't supposed to work on Sunday. I love it.
The characters inside and out of Sterling and Cooper: There's the handsome, mysterious, conflicted and private Don Draper (Jon Hamm) who's a brilliant ad man and loyal to his clients to boot; his Grace Kelly-ish wife (January Jones) who smokes, drinks wine, and goes to a psychiatrist; Peggy, a gal with a big secret and a big brain, who is trying to fit into a man's world; Sterling (John Slattery, who auditioned for his role 9 times), full of wit, heart problems, and women; Cooper (Robert Morse), old but shrewd; Joan (Christina Hendricks), the va-va-va voom secretarial supervisor; the wormy Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser); the closeted Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt), and many others, all interesting and all fleshed out.
Some of the lesser characters "put on" the '60s style and don't inhabit their characters. But you won't find that in the major actors. Hamm is extremely internalized and may seem like he's not doing much, but when Don Draper blows a fuse, you know he's coming from a real place. It's a subtly powerful characterization. Slattery is great, as is Batt, Kartheiser, Morse and the rest of the ad men. Moss is also giving a deeply internalized performance - the character of Peggy is hard to read, as she should be. January Jones does a marvelous job as Don's unpredictable and unhappy wife, and she's stunningly beautiful to boot.
I saw one episode from season 2 in August and wasn't impressed. When I started watching the Netflix disks at a friend's house, I couldn't stop. Mad Men has a unique power all its own. It's not easily appreciated; it's not for people who want something obvious that they don't have to think about. It's for people who want to become completely lost in this world and absorbed in its characters. It's also a trip down memory lane for those of us who remember the '60s. Like the agency of Sterling and Cooper, "Mad Men" is not for everybody. However, it's definitely for me, and I'm addicted.
The beauty of "Mad Men" lies in what's under the surface, the subtext, and that can only be appreciated by watching the entire series, starting at the beginning.
"Mad Men" starts in 1960. The period has been duplicated with 99.99% accuracy. The missing 0.1% is that a) though IBM Selectric typewriters are shown in 1960, they weren't introduced until 1961; and b) Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in 1962 is 36 years old, which leads one to wonder why he was in Korea and not WWII. There's a third thing from season 3 that I won't mention right now. The hair, the clothes, the smoking, the drinking, the littering, the references, having Jean Shrimpton in an ad, the products - Mohawk Airlines, Utz, etc., the huge copy machine, the Catholics, the Latin Mass, the rampant sexism, the kids in front of the TV, the programs - phenomenal. When the firm is called in to work on a Sunday, and a priest stops by Peggy's (Elizabeth Moss) house, her mother says she's sick. Why? Catholics aren't supposed to work on Sunday. I love it.
The characters inside and out of Sterling and Cooper: There's the handsome, mysterious, conflicted and private Don Draper (Jon Hamm) who's a brilliant ad man and loyal to his clients to boot; his Grace Kelly-ish wife (January Jones) who smokes, drinks wine, and goes to a psychiatrist; Peggy, a gal with a big secret and a big brain, who is trying to fit into a man's world; Sterling (John Slattery, who auditioned for his role 9 times), full of wit, heart problems, and women; Cooper (Robert Morse), old but shrewd; Joan (Christina Hendricks), the va-va-va voom secretarial supervisor; the wormy Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser); the closeted Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt), and many others, all interesting and all fleshed out.
Some of the lesser characters "put on" the '60s style and don't inhabit their characters. But you won't find that in the major actors. Hamm is extremely internalized and may seem like he's not doing much, but when Don Draper blows a fuse, you know he's coming from a real place. It's a subtly powerful characterization. Slattery is great, as is Batt, Kartheiser, Morse and the rest of the ad men. Moss is also giving a deeply internalized performance - the character of Peggy is hard to read, as she should be. January Jones does a marvelous job as Don's unpredictable and unhappy wife, and she's stunningly beautiful to boot.
I saw one episode from season 2 in August and wasn't impressed. When I started watching the Netflix disks at a friend's house, I couldn't stop. Mad Men has a unique power all its own. It's not easily appreciated; it's not for people who want something obvious that they don't have to think about. It's for people who want to become completely lost in this world and absorbed in its characters. It's also a trip down memory lane for those of us who remember the '60s. Like the agency of Sterling and Cooper, "Mad Men" is not for everybody. However, it's definitely for me, and I'm addicted.