Mad Men Wins Raves, Not Ratings
Newly svelte Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) gives a female co-worker a lesson on interoffice manners, while viewers learn nothing new of the whereabouts of her new baby. Meanwhile, Don’s wife Betty (January Jones) is more than a little curious about the lifestyle led by an old roommate, who she learns is now working as a call girl.
Clearly, the women of Mad Men are starting to appreciate, and flex, their growing cultural clout.
The episode’s humor flows from the arrival of a monstrous copy machine, a device so large it can’t fit easily into any existing office space. That doesn’t stop coworkers from turning the machine into the firm’s de facto water cooler. The copy machine scenes add a welcome dose of levity to an often dour episode.
Still, it’s easy to see why Mad Men inspires such slavish devotion. The series’ period details are impeccable, and its overall production values, from the crisp cast to the wondrous sets, put most broadcast shows to shame. Factor in a refreshing cast of mostly unknowns who merge seamlessly into the era’s trappings and you have the ideal antidote to Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
And there’s precious little original material to compete with at this time of the year.
Yet the show can be a frustrating to process. Wasn’t the first season’s subplot regarding Don’s true identity, and the subsequent war sequences, the kind of stuff you insert into a show’s flagging fifth season?
And why does the new season start without coming to grips with why Betty returned to Don’s side?
Mad Men’s moral ambiguity starts with Don’s character. Just watch him instruct his underlings on how to concoct an ad for a major airline. He doesn’t want the conversation to start and stop with “sex sells.” He’d rather envision the beaming face of a child waiting for her daddy to get off the plane.
But is that a rare attack of conscience, or an indication of the character’s growing affection for his nuclear family?
Mad Men exists, in part, to remind and punish this country’s past transgressions. These were not Happy Days by any stretch.
It rarely takes time to enjoy the era’s pleasures, like being able to leave your front doors unlocked or the wholesomeness streaked through the culture. Don and Betty don’t spend a minute worrying about the over sexualized images streaming from their television sets.
Perhaps that’s why Mad Men has yet to connect with a larger audience. After all, cynicism can be the toughest sell of all.
If you want the opposite mood of Mad Men, watch The Middleman. Optimism and quirkiness where Mad Men has cynicism and ambiguity.
Critics like stuff that appeals to their rarified sense of what is real.
Sometimes they spend so much time in make-believe they get confused as to what is “real” and what many people want to see versus what they think people should see.
Egomaniacs and office politics with a bunch of sexual encounters set in the 1950′s. Um, so what?
Caught the show last Sunday for the first time, during a 24 marathon repeat of the first season. I had never heard of the show. Found it quite interesting. I recommed Robin Givhan’s write up in today’s Washington Post about Mad Men.
Bottom line: I will watch the episode tonight.
NOTHING is more boring then Madison Ave, except perhaps a fictional Madison Ave. Now when the suicide bombers drop a bucket of sunshine on New York, then it will be worth watching, just for that satisfaction of knowing all those a$$holes are radioactive particles floating thru the atmosphere.
“MadMen”, now there’s a show a lady can sink her teeth into. Unfortunately, what masquerades as an accurate portrayal of a 60′s agency is better suited for Fluff, the cocker spaniel to munch on than the viewing audience to waste its time watching.
I suspect their scripts are written by people whose sense of truth and correctness is about equal to a broken clock that’s right twice a day. You know,if real ad writers did the quality of work the script writers do, they’d be out on their ears walking the streets faster than you can say, “Bill Bernbach.
On the other hand, if you want totally fabricated stories about men and women in heat in the 60′s who work in advertising, well, licking lollipops Batman, this show is for you.
But if you want an accurate look at what it was really like in a 60′s agency, you won’t find it with MadMen.
It about as useful a depiction of ad life in he 60′s as, say, a Britney Spears book about child care would be useful to new parents, even with a forward from her sister.
Ogilvy, Doyle Dane, BBDO, Mary Wells, Grey, Della Femina. They were run by single minded people who’s every ounce of energy was spent on coming up with better ideas than the next agency;one probably positioned to pounce, and, given the opportunity, to steal their biggest account.
The touchstones of these agencies were great, original, award winning concepts; the kind that comes not from inspiration, but sticky, nasty, sweat. If sex ever caused sweat in a real ad man or woman, chances are they were at home in the evening after a couple of cc’s, imbibing spirits in the hopes they’d relax a bit and stop fixating on their chance of being laid off if an account was lost; instead morphing into a decidely more Romantic mood.
Believe me, the numbers of folders in their briefcase were a pretty good indicator that the evenings weren’t spent scheming how the next day could be spent nailing a pert little secretary on the table inside the locked creative director’s door.
In my humble opinion, MadMen’ has low ratings because deep down people are smart enough to be able to separate fact from fiction.
Frankly, if you believe the pap the writers of “MadMen” continue to gladly feed you, well, how politely can I say it; you deserve a job in the mail room.
Having worked as an ad creative (both as writer AND designer) myself, I find Mad Men to be quite a fair and accurate work of fiction. The Sixties details, in both style and political fashion, are also tasty and well-rendered. I love the show, and have since Day One. That it’s had trouble finding an audience is NOT in itself indicative of the show’s quality: Many great and popular shows (MASH, Cheers, Seinfeld, etc.) had trouble in their first year or two. Mad Men has an automatic second strike against them, since they are NOT on over-the-air broadcast TV, where the widest audience is.
I wonder if the unenthusiastic take shown in 4 of the 5 previous comments here is typical of the MM reception, or if PJ Media just tends to attract a rather dour audience. I suspect it’s a bit of both.
I sort of covered this type of show on my blog.
Frankly, I don’t think this show has long to last. Heck, sex + manufactured “controversy” = low ratings. Since you can see all the controversy and icky things you want on the internet, on your terms. The amount of people in a recession who want “edgy/hip” stimulation, instead of comfort and reassurance, is pretty damn small. As are advertisers willing to pay big bucks to hit a few upscale consumers.
End of the “Grant Tinker Strategy” … after the NBC exec who ran Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, Miami Vice, Seinfeld etc. in their first few years when few watched but those who did were rich, upscale consumers marketers paid a premium for.
When Wal-Mart is the leading TV advertiser, you wont’ find too much appetite for niche programming. Heck “Gossip Girl” got renewed at only 2 million viewers, and the whole CW Network is likely to go dark next Winter.
I caught a bit of the show. It was as self-consciously “edgy” as one of those interminable Indie movies.
Actually Mad Men is slowly gathering viewers. The Season 2 premiere was 2 million viewers strong on par with Gossip Girl. I think the problem is barely anyone knows about the show. For a show about advertising they sure don’t have much of a marketing team. I only caught up with the show by chance when they were running a marathon. It’s also on a random channel that is not really known for original programming, the second season should do much better.
Mr. Snitch,
Or, more accurately, Mr. Clueless.
I was a creative director at J.Walter Thompson and acd at Leo Burnett. 28 years in the business. I bet you tell your friends lots of stories about subliminal advertising, too; another sad myth about the business.
Ms. Peepers:
Most of the shows revolve around ad concepts so famous that they are remembered fondly 40 years after the fact, and a good client conference or two. Perhaps you are correct that these concepts were more the product of sweat than inspiration, but showing someone think about it for a few hours wouldn’t exactly be good for ratings, would it? I am surprised that one would have to explain this to a creative director, who is supposed to be open to, well, creativity.
BTW, I am a person that likes Mad Men for it’s faithfulness to the era and open mockery of the current lefty conception of how repressed Americans were before 1968. The entire first season was a hit list of all the things that are now taboo by Americans who are indisputably more politically correct, neurotic and repressed than this supposedly buttoned down era. MadMen depicts a time when you could slap somebody else’s child for misbehaving and expect to be backed up by that parent, punch a colleague in the nose because he smarted off about your wife and not get fired or even hauled off to jail, bring a firearm to work without raising eyebrows, drive your kids around while they bounced between the front and back seats, shoot a neighbor’s pigeons out of the sky just because you can, smoke & drink while pregnant, and reprimand a child for playing ghost with a plastic dry cleaning bag because you suspect they dumped its contents on the floor. We are sissies and prudes compared to what is depicted in every episode of this thoroughly entertaining show.
Mark…Madmen is so politically incorrect that it should be a drinking game…like when Draper told off the hippie……I hope it stays on course. And I mean hope, not hope in the changey kind of way.