Mad Men

Just wanted to drop a quick note in about Mad Men, apropos of nothing really. I'm currently enjoying Season 2 and what prompted me to put my thoughts down here so that I don't forget was that towards the end of episode 5 I realised that as I watched I was grinning broadly. I laugh a lot but I rarely smile from enjoyment and yet something about this programme clearly hits deeply home. And yet I can't pin it down to anything specific.

After concluding Season 1 (watched in two long late-night stints) I had Season 2 on order and, for one reason or another, the dealer took a couple of weeks to get it to me. During that time I decided that it was important for me to take a break from it and come back to Season 2 afresh, that was in late Autumn of last year. I didn't think about it too deeply, I rarely do, just followed my instinct. With hindsight I realise that I was becoming spellbound by the show and it is happening again.

Intellectually, I could put up a pretty cogent and persuasive argument that Mad Men is one of the great TV shows I have ever seen. I love it for its intelligence, the fascinating thematic ground it covers (kudos too to Sloan Wilson's The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit; a great book), its confident pace, the razor-sharp deconstruction of a pivotal time in modern history, the tremendous performances and apparently simple yet devastatingly complex character arcs, the beautiful contrast between artifice and reality and for the spare but terribly profound writing.

But Mad Men's intelligence doesn't leave me grinning like that. No, I find myself beguiled by the stylised beauty of the piece. Vanity and an obsession with the aesthetics of the period make me a sucker for the programme. It isn't just the beautiful suits- and I do love how each man's stylistic taste is consistent throughout each costume, subtle but definite- or the stylish women, or the wonderful decoration, or the beautiful but much underrated score (why does no-one ever comment on the music in Mad Men? It is sublime). It is something bigger than all of those things and yet not separate from them.

But I can't quite say what it is yet. And it isn't the smoking- as attractive as that is in the absence of it's pungent acridity. No, if Serge's breathtaking Intoxicated Man didn't make me a smoker, nothing will.

The question remains, then. What is the power that Mad Men has to entrance me thus? Maybe I'll know when I reach the Season 2 finale. If not, then all my hopes lie with Season 3 which is months from screening here in the UK and I don't want to wait that long to learn the secret of my infatuation with the world's most beautiful TV show.



The picture of Peggy Olson, by the way, is there in place of the predictable Roger and Donald looking cool shot because her character's progress gladdens my heart. Feminist thought and progress of the period is a particular field of interest for me as it directly relates to my wife's Doctoral thesis. Although Peggy isn't especially likable, warm or attractive a character I'm behind her all the way.