Watching this show is like hopping in a time machine to see how advertising shaped a decade.
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What do you do for an encore after you help transform American TV drama by writing for and co-producing "The Sopranos"? In the case of Matthew Weiner, you pitch another TV show, and when HBO says no, so what? "Mad Men" is a better fit for AMC anyway.
What better way for the vintage movie channel to get into the trendy business of original TV series than by giving the public a rich period show that completely captures the feel of the early Sixties? Though the pacing in "Mad Men: Season 1" is far slower than dramas like "24," there's something spellbinding about the world that Weiner recreates.
Young people ready to join the work force today will watch this with dropped jaws. "Mad men," we're told in an epigraph, refers to the Madison Avenue advertising men whose golden age was the late Fifties and early-to-mid Sixties, when the selling of America had all the rules and decorum of no-holds-barred wrestling. This was the era that gave us such slogans as "Nine out of ten doctors prefer Chesterfield," and the first thing you notice in "Mad Men" is the smoking. Everybody lights up, whether they're in the doctor's office, a meeting, at lunch, or in the sack. It was also a time when it wasn't uncommon to reach for the bottle at work to bolster one's courage or take the edge off of a particularly stressful encounter. And sexism? The office workers are called "girls" and group-ogled by the lecherous males in this boys' club with all the subtlety of pashas reviewing their harems in order to make their next selection. But as a secretary named Joan (Christina Hendricks) says to a newcomer in the stenographer's pool, "If you really make the right moves you'll be out in the country, and you won't even have to work." Meaning, of course, that she'll snag a husband. Housewives or secretaries--those were the main life choices for women.
The microcosm is the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency in New York City, but the values we see are typical of a whole nation. After all, these are the guys who gave people their perceptions. As one ad man says to his mistress, "What you call 'love' was invented by guys like me . . . to sell nylons."
This well-balanced show gives us two main characters to follow, one male and one female. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is a junior partner who enjoys the same relationship with his immediate superior, Roger Sterling (John Slattery), as Darrin Stephens did in "Bewitched"--though there's no magic left in his marriage to Betty (January Jones). And naïve newcomer Peggy Olsen (Elizabeth Moss, who played Zoey on "The West Wing") feels a little like "Ugly Betty" without the laughs as she tries to "make it" in the business world, conflicted whether that means using her body or her brain. Both characters are complex, with more shades of gray than a knitting circle.
In "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," the season opener, we watch Draper try to salvage the Lucky Strike account and walk out on another big client because she had harsh words for him, and "no woman is going to talk to me like that." And with that slap in the face, viewers are transported back to a time when "sexual harassment" wasn't even a concept, much less the law. The biggest "pig" among these male chauvinists is a newcomer named Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), who's getting married but still is hot to sleep around. "Of course I love you," we hear him reassure his fiancée over the phone. "I'm giving up my life to be with you, aren't I?" Meanwhile, Peggy is told, "They say they want a secretary, but most of the time they want something between a mother and a waitress. And the rest of the time . . . ." She doesn't have to finish that sentence. We get it (and so does Peggy), especially when we're told that Peggy has become Draper's new secretary because he didn't have any interest in the other "girl."
The costumes feel real, the hairdos look authentic, the dialogue rings true for the decade, and the morality is encoded in every scene, which is why "Mad Men" sustains our interest even when there isn't the customary tension to hold things together. When Mrs. Draper asks her husband whether he had a nanny when he was a child, we realize early in the series how little she knows about her husband--which, of course, underscores how little the audience knows as well. Don and Peggy are characters we gradually get to know over the course of the season, and that "reveal" becomes nearly as fascinating as a whodunit. As with "Bewitched," some of the account shenanigans become familiar as the season progresses, but the character development quickly pulls things back on track. "Sopranos" fans will recognize some of the same structures, with a stay-at-home wife dealing with her husband's sometimes shady business dealings and his imagined philandering, and a focus on individual personal stories that makes this as much about people as it is about "the business." Thirteen episodes are included on three BD-50 discs:
1) "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Don Draper saves two accounts, with the unexpected bonus of bedding a client--whom he can barely see through all the smoke.
2) "Ladies Room." The more Roger Sterling encourages Draper to "open up," the closer he seems to play his cards. Peggy, who slept with the engaged Pete in the very first episode, carries a torch for him and deals with the aftermath of office gossip. Pete isn't exactly a closed-mouthed fellow.
3) "The Marriage of Figaro." Pete shows signs of a conscience, especially after getting a lecture from Draper. Meanwhile, a turn in his business relationship with client-mistress Rachel (Maggie Siff) makes Don rethink his own life.
4) "New Amsterdam." Pete tries to assert himself at work and at home, and struggles mightily in both places.
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