More Mad Men

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Since my previous post about the TV show Mad Men from AMC back in November I have now watched the entire first season (13 episodes) and thought I would share some thoughts about the show. Mad Men is a drama about a prestigious ad agency in the beginning of the 1960s at midtown Manhattan New York, revolving around the life of creative director Donald Draper.

Working with advertising in the 50s and 60s was one of the most glamorous jobs you could have along airline pilot and stewardess. And if you were working in Manhattan, you were pretty much the king of the mountain. Big agencies like BBDO and Leo Burnett ruled the creative output of American copywriters, artists and directors. Creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner tries to capture the essence of all the glamor and does it to a certain degree quite well with the decorative set pieces, lush environments, cute references to that period and music straight out of a Doris Day movie, but is that all there is?

At first I was very impressed by the first episodes, the writing was good, the characters were intriguing, even though a bit cliché at times. In the center, the life of creative director Donald Draper, mysterious, dark and well dressed. So far so good. But there is always a weakness, the different writers of the episodes tries to explore alot of areas, too many doors are opened and we can glimpse what is beyond, but that's it. It gets confusing after a while. I for one would have loved if they would have kept the doors to a minimum and dug deeper into the lives of some of the main characters instead of throwing everything at us at once.

Maybe fearing that they would only be allowed to to one season they creamed as much as possible into a time constricted space. Leaving us with a well designed nicely packaged mess to sort out for our selves. Even though I highly suspect that there will be a season 2 of the series, there is honestly not much there that indulges me. The only reason I can think of at the moment for hanging in there a while longer would be me being the sucker for retro design, advertising, architecture and what not. One can only hope that series 2 will clear up a lot of the what happened in the first season, slow it down a notch and focus on the important issues.

Update
Mad Men won two Golden Globes for best performance by an actor in a television series - Drama Jon Hamm (Donal Draper) and for the best Drama television series. If you live in Sweden you can catch the show, weekly on Kanal 9.

Related links
Official website

Notice: spoilers can be found in the comments section.