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Mad Men

chalkitdown1

Anyone else seen this? The first season aired in the US last Summer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men

I decided to check it out since it picked up a Golden Globe for best Drama a few weeks ago. Been watching it for the last week and a half or so.
What a fúcking show! Just finished it last night. Jon Hamm is just incredible in the main role. His character is one of the most well written I've ever seen. There's just so much depth to him. Totally deserving of the Golden Globe he picked up. The final shot of the season(and the music playing over it) was so perfect. The scene with the slideshow in the finale was inspired, too, infact the last 5 or 6 episodes were all incredible. I can't wait for the second season. I just hope John Slattery will be back, though. He was one of the best things about it but kinda disappeared at the end.

It's certainly not for everyone, though. It's a pretty slow burner. It took me a good 5 episodes to warm to it. There are no plot twists, no gimmicks, no cliffhangers, no action of any kind, just brilliant, brilliant drama with some superb acting, writing and cinematography. A lot of the creative team behind The Sopranos moved onto this once that ended, and it really shows.

I can't recommend it enough. It's shot right up there as one of the best tv shows I've ever seen. I'm definitely gonna be re-watching it again, sooner rather than later as I probably missed loads of stuff in the first few episodes, when I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

I'd recommend it to anyone who was a fan of Six Feet Under. It has that same kind of depressing brilliance about it. It's certainly not something you'd watch to cheer yourself up.

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mike65

I have been waiting for this on BBC4 - it starts in the next week or two.

Mike.

seabee

Has anyone seen Mad Men? What do you think? It's starting on BBC next week and RTE have bought it too. More info here:
Writer and executive producer Matthew Weiner of The Sopranos fame is the man behind

mike65

I'll be watching on BBC4 without the ads. Everyone seems to be raving about it - a cut above the standard drama series.

Mike.

ixoy

I've seen 11 of the 13 episodes. It's a VERY well made show - the production values are flawless in its recreation of 1960. They've obviously invested a lot of time into it and understanding the culture of the time - the casual sexism (and its acceptance by the women) is quite shocking but interesting in showing how we've moved on in four and a half decades.

The pacing of the show is glacial - be warned. Nothing much happens, ever. This isn't about people in authority or in a position where danger lurks - it's about advertising executes and their lives. Amidst it all is Draper, a sort of enigma - excellently acted by Jon Hamm.

It's very interesting to watch, but I do think it requires a degree of mental adjustment if you're used to shows being fast-paced. The immersion in the area and the people of the time makes it worthy viewing though and the revelation of characters, slow as it is, is satisfying. Not gripping viewing (in my mind) but I can definitely see why it gets the critical accolades that it does.

chalkitdown1

I made a very successful thread about this a few weeks ago. I'll just repost what I said about it then.

I decided to check it out since it picked up a Golden Globe for best Drama a few weeks ago. Been watching it for the last week and a half or so.
What a fúcking show! Just finished it last night. Jon Hamm is just incredible in the main role. His character is one of the most well written I've ever seen. There's just so much depth to him. Totally deserving of the Golden Globe he picked up. The final shot of the season(and the music playing over it) was so perfect. The scene with the slideshow in the finale was inspired, too, infact the last 5 or 6 episodes were all incredible. I can't wait for the second season. I just hope John Slattery will be back, though. He was one of the best things about it but kinda disappeared at the end.

It's certainly not for everyone, though. It's a pretty slow burner. It took me a good 5 episodes to warm to it. There are no plot twists, no gimmicks, no cliffhangers, no action of any kind, just brilliant, brilliant drama with some superb acting, writing and cinematography. A lot of the creative team behind The Sopranos moved onto this once that ended, and it really shows.

I can't recommend it enough. It's shot right up there as one of the best tv shows I've ever seen. I'm definitely gonna be re-watching it again, sooner rather than later as I probably missed loads of stuff in the first few episodes, when I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

I'd recommend it to anyone who was a fan of Six Feet Under. It has that same kind of depressing brilliance about it. It's certainly not something you'd watch to cheer yourself up.

Be sure to watch those last 2 episodes, ixoy. They're incredible, particularly the finale.

ShoulderChip

From the GuardianMen behaving badly

Set in 1960s New York, the golden age of advertising, Mad Men portrays a world of wealth and clashing egos. Can it live up to its billing as the new Sopranos? Jonathan Bernstein thinks so

Saturday March 1, 2008
The Guardian

As writer and executive producer on the last three seasons of The Sopranos, Matthew Weiner has the blood of Bobby Bacala and Christopher Moltisanti on his hands. His new series, the critically worshipped, Golden Globe-winning Mad Men, is another close study of a secret fraternity where egos clash, tempers flare and bloody vendettas are launched. Mad Men takes place in the Madison Avenue of 1960, when advertising was seen as a sexy, aspirational profession rather than one that needs to be prefaced by an apologetic explanation.

Article continues
Don Draper, the series' lead character (played by the previously little-known but soon to be big-known Jon Hamm), embodies every attribute that once made advertising guys the envy of the nine-to-five world. He's suave, he's prosperous, he looks good in a suit, he has a bottomless repository of cynical quips, he glides through life in a haze of cigarette smoke, fuelled by martinis and the ministrations of a chic, discrete boho mistress who soothes away the pain of the day before he swans back to the suburbs and his perfect model-pretty wife and high-spirited, unblemished kids.

But Don Draper is an unknowable empty shell, hiding a secret past and utterly detached from his equally at-sea model-pretty wife. And, just as Don has made himself a sexy success by presenting a glossy, smoky facade, so his Manhattan-based agency Sterling Cooper, which made its millions by playing on America's insecurities about all the things they don't have and didn't know they needed, is a barely-hidden house of pain. Women are seen but rarely heard beyond the squeals of pleasure accompanying the regular, friendly slaps on the butt. The mousey girl who shows an aptitude with copy and makes the rare transition from the secretarial pool to the copywriter's desk is regarded with pity and suspicion by all the other females in the office. The only visible black faces are the cleaners who leave in the morning moments before the staff roll in. When a Jewish client comes in for a meeting, a frantic search culls the agency's lone Jew from the mailroom. Sterling Cooper's sole gay employee works overtime presenting himself as a ladies' man and comes close to unravelling when a male client makes a pass at him. The agency boss Roger Sterling (John Slattery, the only nominally recognisable cast member) can't control his raging appetites even after he's felled by a series of heart attacks. And, on the eve of the Kennedy- Nixon election, the pulse-takers of the agency are, almost to a man, convinced of a Nixon victory and confused by the prospect that times may be changing.

For all the secrets and the affairs and the personality clashes and even the physical confrontations, Mad Men unspools at an almost hallucinatory pace. Characters listen and consider what others have said. There are long leisurely moments devoted to people thinking about what has just happened to them. By TV standards - by life standards - Mad Men requires a considerable amount of attention. "Someone was joking with me," says Matthew Weiner. "They said 'you know what your show is? It's the phone's ringing and someone walks into the room but they don't answer it.' I can honestly say that the directorial style and the pace of the show is determined by how I like things. There's so much subterfuge, so much lying and dishonesty when people are together socially, that a lot of what you're seeing when it gets slow is the honesty. Some people have described it as dreamlike but there's always a story being told. I hope that when people watch it they're not doing their chequebooks and talking on the phone because they're going to miss something."

Despite the treatment meted out to anyone who isn't white, male and the right kind of rich - Sterling Cooper's ambitious, privileged twentysomething is an almost universal object of contempt - Weiner is an ardent admirer of the era whose foibles he chronicles: "1960 was just such a fruitful, interesting time in the United States. There was so much intellectual activity going on. There's amazing musical things, amazing books were coming out. Because of the prosperity of the time, people were starting to pay attention to materialism. And also, it really was the apex of New York City. It was the centre of production, publishing, fashion, playwriting, television. It was the biggest port, and then the pill came out in 1960, which was one of the greatest challenges to ever happen to humanity. And at the bottom of all that, advertising was on the verge of a revolution." But when we think of that time in America, our first impressions are the white picket fence and the happy family. "There's such a dichotomy in the culture between the way it's been presented to the world versus the way people were actually living. A lot of the cliched depictions of the 50s - and I picked 1960 as the height of the 50s' [popular US sitcom] Leave It To Beaver and the ideal family with the dad in the hat driving the car - people were laughing at these things back then. We have a perception of the way it was and it's not even close to the way it was."

While fictional advertising men and women are as plentiful now as they were in the days when Rock Hudson and Tony Randall strode the corridors of cinematic agencies, the current incarnation of the copywriter is permanently repenting for the shallowness of their career choice.

Don Draper may be a shadowy figure, unable to fully open himself up to anyone in his life, but he's at his best when he's unashamedly selling, whether it be a product, his agency or his version of himself. "I've always thought that the reason advertising has this appeal is that there's great stock given in jobs that are creative but also make money," says Weiner. "I find that salesmanship is an American religion. It's not about conscience. His conscience should be focused on his life. Business is not about conscience - business is about selling products, which is what he's best at. If you set it now, he would have to be apologising, he would have to be feeling sick about what he does."

As the man behind the suffocation of Christopher Moltisanti and the execution of Bacala in a model train shop, Weiner does not discount the role played by The Sopranos in the ultimate evolution of his subsequent show. "The Mad Men pilot script was how I got my job on The Sopranos. When I got there the show was already a billion dollar success. David (Chase)'s attitude was basically 'serve the story, make sure you're saying something, make everything a little movie'. You start to really think about the audience and surprising them and not giving them what they're expecting. I was there for three seasons, I'd already seen it as a fan for four. It made me raise my game, it made me pay more attention and it made me trust myself."

· Mad Men, Sun, 10pm, BBC4

chalkitdown1

There's about a million spoilers in there^^^, one which only happens in the second last episode.:rolleyes:

Might want to just link to the article or spoiler it.

lizann

started last night on BBC2 great show

ixoy

Finished the first season - very satisfying. The character arc developed very well and there's some nice surprises along the way that never feel forced.

Oh that article above is SERIOUSLY spoiler heavy. Avoid it unless you've seen the entire show.

Earthhorse

lizann wrote: »

started last night on BBC2 great show

Dang, can't watch it on Sundays and didn't know it was on last night.

What time did it air at?

ShoulderChip

you link to this thread and claim it was a very succesaful thread?
what is that, humour?

chalkitdown1

ShoulderChip wrote: »

you link to this thread and claim it was a very succesaful thread?
what is that, humour?

Do I have to answer, or are you gonna have a guess?

mike65

Just watched the first episode off tape - exellent. The production and art design was pin sharp. Not a whole lot happened just scene setting and character establishment but I don't have a problem with that.

Mike.

Amz

ShoulderChip wrote: »

you link to this thread and claim it was a very succesaful thread?
what is that, humour?

Eh, what?

I saw this on BBC2 the other night and thought it was really excellent. Will definitely try to keep watching it.

ShoulderChip

but nothing ever happens in this show,
I felt episode two a let down.

chalkitdown1

Amz wrote: »

Eh, what?

He doesn't do sarcasm, it seems.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055246655

Anyway, this thread should be locked, the other one is garnering far more attention. No need for two.

Amz

Maybe report it and ask the mod to merge..

Mr E

Threads merged, and spoiler tags added to ShoulderChips article (read with caution).

lostexpectation

mad men is brill, nicely complicated

mike65

I watched this weeks episode and the damn thing ended way too soon. Its just 45 mins with the ads filleted out. I could easily watch two back-to-back, maybe BBC missed a trick there. Anyway its wonderfully observed drama and its wonderful to observe

By God if I were born 40 years earlier

Mike.

lostexpectation

60's bras what were they thinking, could they not make em like madonnas bras

the secretary has a scary face, especially after watching her as an impregnated alien hybrid in invasion.

you have to wait for ep5 to get a hint of the story behind drapper

lostexpectation

how did peggy get so fat? its weird, she is wearing a fat suit...

watching ep 11

so is drapper a coward and a cheat and not a sound solid if flawed man like we thought?

ep 13

peggy was pregnant I didn't see that coming!