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DVD - Mad Men - Season One
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Rating:  -
I was really looking forward to this series after reading the rave reviews but I have to say I was disappointed by this tepid view of the heyday of advertising. The series certainly scores high style marks but substance is woefully lacking in this rather narcissistic view of 1960 Madison Avenue. Once past the good looks, crisp lines and jaunty banter, I found myself wondering "where's the beef?" The directors seem to revel in this decidedly man's world where women seem little more than muses, except for Peggy Olsen who finds herself quickly rising up the ladder with her honest view of products.
The firm of Sterling & Cooper comes across as a sexist bastion during a time when many women were breaking through such barriers. You get the sense that Peggy is a younger version of Helen Gurley Brown who had worked herself up from the mailroom of the William Morris Agency to become one of the highest paid ad copywriters of the early 60s, eventually taking over Cosmopolitan and turning it into the magazine we know today. Sexism was pervasive at the time, but this show seems to revel in it, with little sense of irony.
The episodes are painfully slow and Don Draper is painfully boring. It takes 12 excrutiating episodes to find out about his hidden past, which in the end doesn't appear to make the slightest impact on the story as Cooper dismisses Peter Campbell's revelatory scene out of hand. Seems Don Draper can do no wrong, although he appears to have an increasingly hard time at home as his lovely wife Betty comes apart at the seams like Sylvia Plath in the Bell Jar.
After 12 episodes, I feel like I've had enough, although fans of this series keep telling me how things pick up in season two. Maybe so, but the first season didn't do much for me.
Rating:  -
I am amazed about the amount of smoking and drinking going on. I really like all the female characters - January Jones reminds me of Grace Kelly, Christina Hendricks is as delicious as Marilyn Monroe. The intrigues, affairs, and secrets are positively tasty. And yet I can not find one single thing I like about Don Draper. Sure, Jon Hamm is a great actor, and a quite handsome man, but the character is very unlikeable. It is hard to feel sympathy, pity, or compassion toward him. The show is pretty juicy and well worth watching though.
Rating: -
AMC's sleeper hit, "Mad Men", is garnering rave reviews. Although the directing is masterful, especially the cuts, and the mood lighting is excellent, both the pseudo-sophisticated writing and the casting are naive and uninformed. The cynical show suffers from the lack of even one major character who could be viewed as a person of integrity. Maybe the author intends to indict the advertising profession? Maybe he intends to present a vacuous domestic life of the 50s and early 60s? Whatever his motives, an emphasis on pathological selfishness weighs down this dark show and leaves the viewer with a bitter taste. An unwholesome bleakness permeates; the scripts lack the occasional light moments of boilerplate soap opera.
There are major anachronisms in the set design and props, such as the electric typewriters, which were not in offices yet in March of 1960 when the show opens. The language also is not period authentic: "Pretty much", a ubiquitous expression today, was rarely employed in 1960.
The meetings with clients often turn confrontational; if advertising folks conducted themselves in this fashion, then and now, their firm would not remain long afloat.
Considering the major failings of "Mad Men," it is the directing alone that qualifies it for hit status.
Rating:  -
Thoroughly enjoyed this DVD at a great price. Can't wait for the second season to come out on DVD.
Rating:  -
The first season of Mad Men, while showing some promise, for the most part just meanders and bores. The production values and acting are there, but the writers just aren't. Far too often they equate creepy with dramatic, which obviously is a false identification. The proof is also in the fact that you can skip the first season and go directly to the second and miss at most one or two important scenes (which aren't even really that important). Which is exactly what I recommend you do. Season Two is as masterful as Season One is dull and repellent.
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