Mad about Mad Men

We finished watching the first season of Mad Men on DVD. We made the mistake of trying to watch a whole bunch of episodes over a weekend, but, aside from the fact that I hate watching clumps of TV shows in a short time, Mad Men is really a downer of a show. It's excellent, but the mood is definitely downbeat, so by the end of the weekend, I wanted to slash somebody's wrists--not mine, cuz I just love life so much. We took the last few episodes a bit more slowly. This show, which runs on AMC (Another Month of Crap), has lots of buzz but not many viewers, though after it won the Emmy this year for best series, that may change.

Though it seems to be about the people who work at a big NYC advertising firm in the early 60's, it's really about one guy, Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm (at left), who by the end of the season has been made a partner. He's the "hero" in the sense that we get to know him and generally want to see him get ahead, but he's also a bit of a shit. Some of that is because of the times: he's a man's man at a time when the 60's feminist movement was still a few years away. But we also find out he has a complicated past; during the Korean war, in an attempt to escape a bad childhood, he switched identities with a dead soldier, so he's not really Don Draper, a fact that plays a central role in a blackmail scheme. He doesn't treat his wife (January Jones) very well: he cheats on her with more than one woman, and he blames her discontent on her psychiatrist.

The other main character is a young secretary (Elizabeth Moss, the President's daughter on West Wing) who slowly learns the ropes, and even winds up being given a job writing ad copy, though she also winds up in a rather scary predicament in the last episode, one that will have repercussions next season. There are also a group of ad men, most of whom either worship Draper or are scared of him, or both. John Slattery is the one of the chief partners, and in a recurring role, Robert Morse is the other. I love the in-joke irony of picking Morse for the part, 40 years after he became famous playing a completely different kind of ad man in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Jon Hamm, who is rarely offscreen, is fantastic, giving his all to a complex role, and he really should have gotten an Emmy; except for Morse, none of the other men come close to seeming as natural as he does. Vincent Kartheiser (Connor on Angel), who is Hamm's chief foil, is especially weak; he seems like he's in way over his head as an actor, especially when he has to hold his own on the screen against Hamm--he just can't do it, which makes their big confrontation in episode 12 lots less tense than it should have been. The women, however, are all quite good; I especially like Christina Hendricks (above) as the executive secretary, who does a fine job conveying sexiness with a certain smothered smartness. There are problems with the writing on occasion; most of the characters are a little too one-note, and the story of Draper's past could use more attention. But I really do like this show--it's the rare "adult" show on TV, not in terms of sex or language, but it terms of content: no teenagers, no vampires, no doctor romances, no courtroom shenanigans. I must admit that I wish it had been produced by HBO so Don Draper could let loose with a few of the choice expletives that you know he wants to say.

BTW: 1) Shame on AMC for showing this beautifully shot widescreen series in square full-screen format. That's the main reason we waited for the DVD rather than watch it as it was running.

2) I dare you to play a drinking game in which you have a drink every time a character lights a cigarette. You won't be conscious by the end of an episode.