I Finally Have an Excuse to Write About Mad Men
For anyone that will give me the smidge of a chance, I’ll be happy to talk your ear off about Mad Men, a glorious and cutting and masterful drama centered around a fictional advertising agency in New York City circa 1960. It’s easy to miss as it’s on AMC, but I highly recommend this show. It matches the incredibly fleshed out characters and deft humor of The Sopranos (and indeed Mad Men’s creator Matthew Weiner exec produced and wrote for that show, perhaps the best to ever hit the small screen) with precise details that pull you into another world and time and place.
Thankfully, I finally have the chance to spread the gospel of Mad Men a little bit here at OMC, as I found a Mad Men Guide to New York (via TV Squad). Locations from the show – both real and fictional (such as ad agency Sterling Cooper) – are guesstimated on an interactive map of New York, replete with anecdotes and show notes. Very fun to check out the locale of the Gaslight Café on MacDougal Street (also the street where you can find some of the cheapest and very best falafel on the planet these days), where protagonist Don Draper slums it during one episode, dragged along by his mistress and her beatnik friend. The scene also featured an absolutely haunting version of a song I believe is called “Babylon.”
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September 28th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Eric, I agree that Mad Men is a wonderfully written and produced series. I hope a bunch of people find it lurking over there on AMC. The show is set in 1960, when I was 11 years old, and everything– from dialog to set design to the ever-present cigarettes and the fish sticks for dinner–is absolutely, exactly how I remember it. A great piece of work..
September 28th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Dirk, good news for us both and fans of great TV as it was announced recently that Mad Men has been picked up for a second season.
I’m a little younger (born in ‘74 !) but I still see a world on the show that hearkens back to my youth, and certainly one that feels very fresh and real.
The social mores and attitudes are one of the more fascinating aspects of the show, and they do a great job of highlighting that 1960 is a very different time/place than 2007. I’m thinking particularly of the scene where a little boy accidentally knocks over a vase during a booze-fueled birthday party at the Draper’s…
September 30th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Would I be shallow if I only said that the chicks were way way hot esp the beatnik mistress?
October 1st, 2007 at 12:18 am
I think we can allow for some shallowness every now and again.
By the way, Mrs. Draper (January Jones, I believe?) is gorgeous — amazing that Don would even think of straying, though this week’s ep provided some more insight into his past and why he is a nihilist I suppose thriving in what is theoretically a highly ordered universe.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:28 am
More January Jones! Beautiful but troubled. Her repartee and body language at dinner with her husband’s boss was great. I’d like a little more of her back story to go along with her husband’s.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
The two-episode arc that led up to Don getting revenge on Roger after about a 12-martini (and oysters!) lunch was nothing less than brilliant. And as for Jones, it was so crushing to see Don get angry at her for being “overly friendly” to her husband’s boss.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:58 pm
That’s the other thing “Mad Men” gets painfully right: The impossible role of women circa 1960. If your husband’s boss makes a pass at you, it’s your fault. If you are a secretary and you don’t cover for your boss’s absence at work, and let him pat you on the ass, you aren’t being a “good sport.” Makes me cringe. It really used to be that way.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Asia is still out of reach in information and knowledge, but the region is going to dominate world. Read a great new book: China and the new world order, by some Chinese journalist named george zhibin gu, which offers huge ideas on what is going on in Asia and around the globe. That is sort of information people really need.
October 19th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
The latest episode of “Mad Men” had a classy end-of-show credit sequence with Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” over the top of it.I’m even willing to forgive them the fact that the song came out in 1963, and this first season is set in 1960–unless they’ve done some serious fast forwarding that I missed.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:30 am
adsense premium
November 7th, 2007 at 3:15 am
.. And I finally Have an Excuse to Watch TV Again!
Boy, am I ever glad I gave this show a chance.
How did Matt Weiner come up with such a stellar ensemble of actors?
This excellent show may have turned out to be just another uninspiring pre-fab period piece had it not been for the creative genius of Matt Weiner and the talented cast he chose to brilliantly portray a group of 1960s corporate ad executives and the female satellites that orbit around them.
Jon Hamm and the rest of the extremely talented cast will have you, in turns, laughing, gasping in horror, commiserating, or squirming in your chair. One thing you won’t be doing is looking at the clock as this is one series you just don’t want to see end.
PS: The office party scene was hilarious.