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« Roush Dispatch
Mad About Mad Men
Mad Men courtesy AMC
I can't remember the last time the most buzzed-about show at a summer critics' press tour had nothing to do with the broadcast network's fall offerings. But this week, the show we can't stop talking and thinking about, and wishing we had more episodes to watch, is AMC's Mad Men, a period drama about advertising men and their professional and sexual exploits at the dawn of the '60s. (It premieres Thursday at 10 pm/ET.) Here's how I logged my first impression of the show in the pages of TV Guide recently, where I gave it a score of 9 out of 10: "Wow. The period look is dazzling: the women's tight skirts, the men's slicked hair. If iconic director Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind) had made TV, it would have looked like this. But this sleek, sexy, smartly cynical drama about selling everything from cigarettes to Nixon also nails the era's attitudes of casual prejudice and sexual manipulation."
In this show, men are wolves and women are pawns, Jews are invisible or patronized, and gays are closeted. The writing is sharp ("Freud, you say? What agency is he with?"), funny, biting, and if the show becomes the hit it deserves to be, the backstory will become part of TV legend. Matthew Weiner, best known before now as a writer-producer of http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/sopranos/100522">The Sopranos, landed his gig on the HBO classic by submitting Mad Men's pilot episode as a spec script to David Chase. Weiner went on to great success with Tony and the gang, and is now poised to make a name for himself on this stylish, thoroughly absorbing show.
Critics' ardor for the show may also have been fueled by a swank party hosted by AMC Sunday night for the Television Critics Association at the revered Friars Club in Beverly Hills, with cocktail waitresses in bouffanted wigs looking as if they'd stepped out of a vintage '60s AMC movie. Jeff Goldblum, at the piano, entertained the gathering with his swinging band, and Mad Men cast member Bryan Batt (a Broadway-musical veteran) wowed everyone with a soaring rendition of Cole Porter's Night and Day.
Regardless of the festivities, most of us were already sold on this one. (The only network show I'm hearing greeted with this much enthusiasm is the pilot for ABC's whimsical fable Pushing Daisies.) Mad Men is one of the sharpest, most entertaining new series of an incredibly crowded summer TV season. I didn't want the Emmy announcement, or the rest of the network news issuing from the press tour this week, to get in the way of touting this show. You really don't want to miss it.
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Jul 18, 2007 8:32 PM
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Alright, Alright... you've never led me to a bad show before, so despite my initial hesitation, I'll be setting this to record tomorrow. (I have a 4 year old and 3 month old... I watch almost nothing live)
Chances are I'll be thanking you Friday morning. I'm sure you'll be patiently waiting for my inevitable e-mail! 
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Jul 18, 2007 9:09 PM
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You've sold me. I'll be watching tomorrow.
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Jul 18, 2007 9:46 PM
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I've been looking forward to this one. I'm anxious to see how well the show captures a very specific time and place in American history. Hopefully, they'll do as good a job, historically speaking, as American Dreams, which I thought did a fantastic job with racial tensions and attitudes as well as the Vietnam war.
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Jul 18, 2007 10:32 PM
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i'm sold.
*sets up dvr*
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Jul 19, 2007 1:46 AM
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Setting DVR...I'll watch it as soon as I get home. I'd only heard a little bit about it and didn't realize it was this good but after that description I can tell I'm gonna like it.
Now if only Pushing Daisies will hurry up and get here. Loved the trailer that ran before the Harry Potter movie. That one sounds like magic, no pun intended.
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Jul 19, 2007 4:36 AM
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I've already got it set to record based on your previous recommendation.
In another blog on this site, in response to a poster saying they don't watch Criminal Minds because you hate it, someone mentioned that it was stupid (or something to that effect) to follow a critic's recommendations and not make up your own mind. I had to respond because I also base most of my TV watching on yours and Ausiello's recommendations. Why else would I read the critic's blogs? I don't have time to watch everything on TV, so if you and Ausiello hate something, I'm pretty confident I will too. I'm confident because you've always steered me to great shows I wouldn't have otherwise watched. The Shield, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Battlestar Gallactica. I got the DVD's to catch up with these shows based solely on your recommendations and I just wanted to say thanks!
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Jul 19, 2007 12:39 PM
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The show brings back unpleasant memories of my days in the business world... We were secretaries back then, not adminstrative assitants. And we were treated exactly as the show portrays. Watching it sort of made my skin crawl. Did I really spend so much time trying to impress the men in the office? Was I really that awed by the male superiors? Yes and yes. Did men really treat women like that? Oh yes. Why did I accept it all so easily without rejecting it. Beats me, milleniums of inbreeding. Thank goodness there are a few feminists in Mad Men, and I'm hoping that before the season is over, some small movement towards enlightenment takes place. The insensitivity of it all at least serves to remind me how far we've come. I still remember people lighting up everywhere and anywhere...although I don't actually think I ever saw a doctor smoke, at least not in my presence. And racist jokes were common. Young people watching today probably think the show is cartoonish, sort of like the first TV Batman series. But I'll stick with it. I wonder if the younger audience will, however... they just can't relate to any of it.
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Jul 23, 2007 10:57 AM
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I'm glad I tuned in. I hope Mad Men has a very long run.
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Aug 3, 2007 1:05 PM
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