I can’t deny that Matthew Weiner’s masterpiece had me at the pilot, but increasingly I find I’m haunted by the themes, images and characters of Mad Men. It has been a long wait for the fourth season and I’m glad to see it return in my life.
I’m almost overwhelmed by the beauty of the series, and how much it feels like the world of my parents but inhabited by real, flesh and blood people. But and idealized version of their 1960s world, and one inhabited by characters I simulatanously want to be and loathe.
I want so badly to be Don Draper. But at the same time I know I lead a richer, more full life than he does.
I don’t watch a lot of television. I firmly believe I can only really keep up with at most four shows, and one has to be a bit more inane than the others (Big Bang Theory FTW!). But I cannot over recommend Mad Men to anybody. It is so pleasing to the eye, so filled with style and grace, how could you not watch?
I typically try and avoid writing about product endorsement, but Mad Men is different because too many people are turned off by the elevator pitch – and the pitch sucks, no question. “Explore the mysogyny of the late 1950s and early 1960s in a New York ad agency” or “See an ad exec throw away his family due to his philandering ways” just doesn’t ring the same way other shows or movies could. But spend more than 30 seconds this summer and invest your time in watching a couple of episodes of Mad Men.
Every episode causes a conversation, a deep and real conversation with our family. Every time I see great design I note it can’t hold a candle to the best Sterling Cooper (or SCDP) can put out. And it will challenge your morals, about why our society went down the path it did in the 1960s.
