Posted on 01/29/2012 3:20:48 PM PST by OrangeHoof
I didn't start watching the television series "Mad Men" until this past September. I had heard things about it from Rush Limbaugh and others and decided to watch the first few episodes online to see if it was worth my time (and because ensemble series always require that you start at the beginning to understand the show). I eventually watched all four seasons on DVD and often went back and listened to the audio commentary to catch the director's perspective.
For those not familiar, the series is about a small advertising firm at the turn of the 1960s and centers around the character of Don Draper (played brilliantly by Jon Hamm). "Mad Men" seeks to show us the unvarnished life of that era, careful to rewind the social and ethical clock back to the way people thought and behaved then. To my mind, the smoking and drinking is excessive but so much of the rest of the show truly takes you back to how it was.
As a point of reference, I was born in 1957, in the middle of the "Baby Boom" as the middle child of five to a middle-class and upwardly mobile New York City bank executive. Don Draper looks a lot like how I remember my dad in the 1960s, adorned in coat and tie with a hat often atop his head, the neck and chin shaved but the five o'clock shadow showing up almost by noon. Don's voice is authoritative yet tender to his children yet he's somewhat distant as a parent, just the way my father often was. There's one major difference - I'm quite sure Dad was faithful to my mother or, if he wasn't, this was never shared with me even later in life.
Dad would come home each weeknight, have a martini and recline in his strat-o-lounger and watch tv. I suspect Don often did this too yet it doesn't survive the editing room. My mother was a full-time homemaker who cleaned the house and made the meals except when Dad could afford to have an African-American help with the "chores".
The racial divide was evident in the North as well as the South. Blacks often had menial jobs as maids and doormen even in the "tolerant" North. Ethnicity, as well as open racism were out in the open then. It was not cloaked in political correctness the way it is today.
While my gender and age are closer to Don and Betty's son Bobby (heck, I was "Bobby" when I was that age), the one who most represents the viewpoint of the children is the older daughter Sally. If you are old enough to know the real Sixties, it means you were probably young enough then to see the world of the Sixties as a child like Sally.
As Don and Betty fight and eventually divorce, Sally is us. She ran around the house inside a plastic bag from the dry cleaners. She flopped from front seat to back seat with no seat belts as Betty drives. She learned to steer the car at the encouragement of her sometimes-senile grandfather. She mixed Don's favorite liquor drink for him when he got home. All of this by the age of nine!
What today might be considered borderline child abuse (certainly child endangerment) was a fairly normal Sixties childhood for Bobby and Sally and, I suspect, most of the other kids in their suburban neighborhood. Nobody really saw any problem with the behavior and extremely few sought to lift a finger to object to any of it.
But, by Season Three, Sally is already rebelling. Her grandfather dies. Her parents are fighting. She decides to cut her own hair and consider make-up. She gets into a fight at school (where Don begins an affair with her teacher - and, yes, we had some hot elementary school teachers when I was a boy, easily singled out because they were referred to as "Miss (blank)", not "Mrs. (blank)."). She watches tv even as the content becomes less suitable for children. She starts hearing about "doing it" from other kids and even tries to do herself one day at a neighbor's house, leading her exasperated mother to send her to the school psychiatrist.
Sally is quick to point out her mother's hypocrisy as Betty indulges her own fantasies and takes up with husband number two. Betty gets angry because Sally is growing up to be a young Betty right in front of her and Betty doesn't like what she sees.
The children of the Sixties, whom I guess are the chief target audience of "Mad Men", were trying to understand and adjust to the changing mores and forces that would define that decade in the only way children know how - by imitating. While the series probably won't extend into the early 70s, one could easily picture Sally growing up to be a long-haired "free love" hippie chick, maybe one who poses in Playboy.
We can see the path Sally's life is taking because many of us saw this all too easily in our neighbors and family. While the exploits of Don, Betty, Peggy, Peter and the others take center stage in this drama, it is Sally who is perhaps the most poignant because Sally mirrors the experiences of most of those watching who remember how it really was and may possibly wonder if it was the proper direction for her generation to take.
Mad Men is incredible. Very well done.
AMC rocks. Hell on Wheels, The Walking Dead, Mad Men. All great shows.
Never got into Breaking Bad for some reason (the subject matter drugs)but I heard it was good.
Thanks for the synopsis. I’ve heard Rush mention the show with favor. Your review adds a lot.
I agree - excellent series. My complaint is that it’s far too long between seasons.
Thanks for the insights into the series. I have purposely avoided it because the ads for it make it look like a wholesale condemnation of the Fifties and Sixties as a time of nothing but oppression, suppression, behind-the-scenes perversity, and rampant bigotry. As one who grew up in those days, i know things to have been very, very different. And I resent the libs who are hellbent on revisionist history aimed at destroying the basic moral rectitude that played such an integral part of people’s lives at the time.
In short, even growing up in Baltimore’s inner city, my home was actually much like Leave it to Beaver — as were the homes of most of my friends. A perfect world? No. But head and shoulders above the moral abyss in which America now finds itself. And a far cry from what libs try to paint the Fifties and Sixties as. I know. I was there.
If I’m wrong about the shoe — and if it is evenhanded enough to depict the positive along with the negative of that era — I’ll go out and buy the DVDs.
I’m going to have to watch this show one of these days. If nothing else I consider the style of that period to be pretty much the apex of American style. I love the whole modernist thing, and I’ve heard the show’s set designers captured it perfectly.
The "shoe" was what Ed Sullivan had.
Sorry, but Hell of Wheels sucks. Big time. They should have just licensed Red Dead Redemption so that they could use the REAL John Marston character. They also need to learn to write dialog; maybe they could have watched a few episodes of Deadwood, or better yet hired David Milch or ted Mann. Bottom line is that this show doesn’t even make it to second rank. Just rank, that’s all.
And I haven’t even started on the soundtrack. Ugh. Or the sets. Or the acting.
I’ve just started netflix, so i might check it out.
That’s too bad—I was looking forward to catching it on DVD. Sounds like I’m not in for a “Breaking Bad”-level treat...
To be sure, it’s Hollywood liberalism - especially when you look at some of the extra features on the DVD. But I’m willing to accept that if it isn’t preachy and if it is mature enough to poke fun at liberals too.
One white character on the show lived in Greenwich Village because it was hip and trendy and dated a black supermarket clerk to prove he was supportive of “civil rights”. He tried to walk the walk of a good liberal and ultimately looks just as phony and bigoted as others do.
When I used to watch All In The Family”, I realized that the main focus of the show was to skewer the “conservative” bigoted Archie Bunker. But I understood that Archie was a product of his upbringing and that much of his bigotry wasn’t rooted in hatred but the stereotypes he learned from everything in his world. Archie wasn’t about to lynch a black or beat a gay or don a hood. He was simply expressing the jargon of his era.
If you can stomach the typical Tom Hanks historical Hollywood films, you’ll be okay with Mad Men.
I understand the show was originally pitched to HBO and they turned it down. I think if HBO had bought it, there would be more smut, more f-bombs and more liberal preachiness. The fact that it was picked up by AMC, which is “regular cable” in many places, actually made the show far better.
Couldn’t agree more as Christina Fredricks is HOT!
That comment struck me as very funny. I'm old enough to remember the real Sixties. But I remember it more like Sally's Daddy. I was a copywriter in an ad agency in those days.
I've avoided watching the whole series because the episodes I've seen have seemed rather shallow and out-of-context with what was really happening then. I'll withhold judgment until I can get the whole thing on DVD. It was a very turbulent time -- one that can honestly be called a cultural paradigm-shift. On the whole, I think things were much better then.
Christina Hendricks is, too!
I can only speak for myself, but as for me, I’ll take Breaking Bad any day.
My bad, you’re right.
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