summer viewing
It seems that every summer I get hooked on a TV series that I haven't previously watched. Last summer it was Sex and the City - after I was dragged to the see the movie by some girlfriends, I was inspired me to watch all the seasons. This summer, it is Mad Men. I just finished watching the last episode of season 2 and am left craving more. Unfortunately, the third season doesn't debut until the end of the summer and the likelihood that the show will air on any of the channels we catch with the rabbit ears (yes, it is 2009 and we have rabbit ear antennae affixed to our HD TV) is dubious at best.
At first, I wasn't sure what it was about the show that I enjoyed so much. The premise is not overly enticing: the lives of people (mainly men) working for an ad agency in NYC in the 1960s. But the way the show is delivered is compelling and satisfying. Like a good novel, the show achieves a perfect balance between setting, character, and plot.
The setting is superbly aesthetically appealing. 1960s Manhattan. The fashion, the decor, the food, the drinks. The setting is artful and humorous and camp and kitsch and beautiful and sexy - combined in a way that is thought-provoking and natural. The characters are deep, rich, complicated, and believable. The plot is slow, but subtle and challenging and rewarding. The opening credits do a good job of capturing the feel of the show:
What I enjoy most about Mad Men is that it doesn't use a rosy lens to depict the 60s. The show feels real - like a glimpse into the not-so-distant past, into an era that my grandparents and parents experienced that is simultaneously so different from today yet very much the same. From the show, I get the sense that so much of what is commonplace today was just below the surface in the 1960s - and, to some extent, vice versa.
For instance, women's rights and racial equality and open homosexuality and counterculture were all just emerging in the sixties and are typically considered to be rather mainstream today (kind of ironic that counterculture has become mainstream). Conversely, smoking and littering and fedoras were the norm in the 1960s but are far less common now.
Many of the themes of the show are similar to those explored in the movie Revolutionary Road, which I also enjoyed. These themes remind me of the song Mad World, originally by Tears for Fears and covered more recently by Adam Lambert (yes, I'm a fan). For those who didn't get caught up in the American Idol hype, this is what all the fuss was about:
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