Posts Tagged ‘Mad Men’

  
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

TV on DVD: “Mad Men: Season 2″

by Scott Malchus

41tNjoi6CYL._SS500_Mad Men: Season 2 (2009, Lionsgate)
purchase from Amazon: DVD | Blu-ray

Mad Men, the ’60s-era drama that airs on AMC, had a lot to live up to after its first season. The television series was an across the board critical success, receiving the kind of attention that can kill a series if the writers and directors get too caught up in the hype. But series creator Matthew Weiner is a smart man and has been through this kind of media storm before (he was one of The Sopranos’ producers). He knew well enough to stay focused on the characters and let their lives dictate the direction of the series and the stories to tell.

The second season of Mad Men, now out on DVD, takes place in 1962, picking up 15 months after the end of season 1. The theme of this season was about identity — most importantly, that of Don Draper, the enigmatic, brilliant ad man from the New York ad agency, Sterling Cooper, as played by Jon Hamm. Moreover, this season was also about the identities of Betty Draper (January Jones), Don’s wife who slowly realizes that her husband is a cheat, and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), the young woman who began the series as Don’s assistant and worked her way on to the writing staff with her talent and a little bit of a shove by Draper himself.

With Don, we saw small bits and pieces of his past in season one. His real name is Dick Whitman. He grew up poor and while serving in the Korean War, took on the identity of the real Don Draper, a fellow soldier who died in an explosion. Whitman switched dog tags assumed the identity of Don Draper. Having always been able to just drift into a new town when things got rough, becoming a successful ad man has caused Don to struggles with the idea of staying settled down. He realizes that he loves Betty above all others and despite his wanderlust, losing her would crush him. Of course, his inability to remain faithful contradicts how he feels about Betty, which makes his character so interesting, and sometimes despicable. Part of me thinks that Draper was that kid who was never popular growing up and never had a girlfriend. His fame and wealth has suddenly made him very attractive to women and he just can’t resist. Draper’s second season story reaches a climax in a multi-episode story in which he travels to California for a convention and leaves Pete Campbell (played with wonderful complexity by Vincent Kartheiser) alone at a hotel while he goes off to some commune of ex-patriots to escape. Campbell returns to New York with no idea whether Draper will return. In the meantime, Don goes to visit an old friend and we learn how he has been able to keep the Draper façade alive for so long. (more…)

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Monday, January 5th, 2009

The Three Strike Rule: 10 for 10- A List of shows for My Daughter

by Scott Malchus

Welcome back to The Three Strike Rule.  You’d think I could come up with a better title for this week’s column than that, huh?  Today is my daughter Sophie’s 10th birthday.  When you hear that cliche, “I don’t know where the years went,” believe it.  I have watched a baby grow into an inquisitive toddler, then transform into a bright little preschooler and finally she has become an empathetic (I throw that word around a lot when I discuss my little girl), smart and talented 10-year-old. As I am prone to giving her advice (which she has already begun to ignore), I have opted to dedicate this week’s column to highlighting 10 standout television shows from the past 10 years that I hope Sophie will seek out to be entertained and enlightened.

In the past 10 years, due to DVD box sets, TiVo, and the Internet, we have seen a change in attitudes about television.  No longer is it just considered “disposable” entertainment.  Viewers are seeking out quality programming and making it successful.  Moreover, stars generally associated with motion pictures (once considered the high brow art form) no longer look at television as slumming it.  Instead, actors, writers and directors have taken to TV as a way to create and produce ongoing works of fiction that they wouldn’t be able to do in the expensive film industry.

Since any list is subjective, I’m sure some people will gripe about my selections and what was left off.  I hope so!  he purpose of this great website is ti incite conversation and debates.  In case you’re wondering, my criteria was that the shows selected had to premiere in 1999 or thereafter.  I must confess that I have not seen Dexter and I never went back to The Shield after the first few episodes (i.e. pre-TiVo in the Malchus household).  What I tried to do was pick shows that were consistent in their quality from season to season.  So, even though I loved the first couple seasons of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and 24, the quality in the writing really started to suffer in subsequent years.  Sacrilege, I know, because The Sopranos is considered by many critics to be the greatest TV show ever.  Oh well, it’s my space, and since this is a special list I want my kid to read someday, these are the shows I feel are the best of the last 10 years.

So, without further ado… (more…)

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Monday, November 17th, 2008

The Three Strike Rule: Year-End Rants by Scott and Shaun

by Scott Malchus and Shaun Hamid

Well hey there. In case you didn’t know, this is the last week of The Three Strike Rule until the new year. Hey, don’t get mad at me, take it up with the Editor in Chief. Anyway, it’s been a pleasure writing about the boob tube over the coarse of the year; we’ve had some fun. To wrap things up, my compadre, Shaun Hamid, has joined me in giving you our two cents’ worth what 2007 brought us in television. Until next year, aloha.

BEST SHOW

Scott: Friday Night Lights (NBC/DirecTV) The small-town football series’ 2nd season ended on a high note last winter as we watched it regain its form after stumbling with a soap opera-ish murder plot. Still, NBC ran the final episodes with little fanfare, despite the fact that there was little original programming on the air due to the writers’ strike. The network redeemed itself by striking a deal with DirecTV to co-produce a third season. Since October, the satellite provider has been airing these new episodes and come January, those same episodes will air on the peacock network.

The third season has been everything fans of the show love, in particular the study of a working marriage between two of the finest actors on television, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Coach and Mrs./Principal Taylor. They are the heart of the show. If you haven’t watched this show yet, what the hell is your problem? More than any other series on TV, FNL approaches each week with intelligence, humor and heart. At a time when the country is in turmoil, here is a quality show that taps into everything that is great about the America and reminds us of what we can be. Procedurals and medical dramas are a dime a dozen, and aren’t we all bored to shit with the woes of filthy rich people? I said it back in January, and now I’ll repeat myself: WATCH THIS SHOW!

Shaun: Mad Men (AMC) In spite of the remarkable amount of attention this show has gotten critically and awards-wise, it still feels unheralded to me. This show consistently elevates itself above much other dramatic fare. No network, NBC to HBO, has a show nearing its quality and innovation currently. While it can be irritating in its few failures, I think that is a testament to a show that a viewer expects so much from. If you have not seen this show yet, and judging by the ratings that may be a good bet, take the leap. It would be unfortunate for it to meet the fate of another similar luminary in another genre: Arrested Development.

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Monday, October 20th, 2008

The Three Strike Rule: “Mad Men”

by Scott Malchus and Shaun Hamid

This week, something new for the column: I invited my fellow TV critic, Shaun Hamid, to sit in and discuss the highly acclaimed Mad Men.   I hope that our discussion will draw more comments from you readers and start a discussion about this celebrated show.  Consider it a sort-of Siskel & Ebert type of exchange, if you will.

Scott: Last month. AMC’s Mad Men became the first basic cable show to win the Emmy for best dramatic series.  This was quite a feat for a show that airs on the little-watched AMC. Created by Matthew Weiner (an executive producer for The Sopranos), Mad Men (the show derives its name from what the Madison Avenue ad men used to call themselves) is set in the early 1960s, when postwar conservative ‘50s values carried over into the new decade.  Men were the breadwinners, women stayed at home and raised the children, and anything outside of this “norm” was seen as controversial and scandalous. 

Mad Men does a remarkable job of capturing the tone and look of that era in the way the characters speak and act, as well as the meticulous attention to detail. The clothes, the sets, everything is pretty much pitch perfect. The main character is Don Draper, played by actor Jon Hamm. Draper is a rising star in the advertising world and a partner in the firm of Sterling/Cooper. When he isn’t gulping scotch, smoking endless cigarettes and proving that he has an undeniable gift for selling things to consumers, Draper is on his way to becoming a captain of industry and a member of the elite class. Yet, Draper isn’t all that he seems. He doesn’t lead just a double life, this guy harbors so many secrets he carries on a triple and quadruple life.  Born Dick Whitman, he’s the bastard child of a prostitute and grew up poor on a farm.  He fought in the Korean war and when his commanding officer was killed in the line of duty, assumed the fallen soldier’s identity to escape his miserable past.  By age 19, Draper began harboring the first of his many secrets.  That he has been able to rise to the top of the advertising world is a mystery, but it’s a good mystery and one that has kept the cult like fan base watching for over two seasons.

As Draper demonstrates, Mad Men is a show about secrets.  Marital affairs, hidden sexuality, children out of wedlock, discreet alcoholism, and most of all, secret identities — everyone is keeping something locked away. (more…)

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Monday, July 21st, 2008

The Three Strike Rule: Emmy Award Nominees!

by Scott Malchus

Last week, this year’s Emmy Award nominees were announced with AMC’s drama, Mad Men, coming away with more nominations than any other show. What a pleasant surprise, since AMC is a little-watched network — and also because the first season of Mad Men was one of the most remarkable shows on television, not only for 2007, but in the past decade. Whether the series is able to sustain its quality will be answered in the coming months when its second season begins (the season 2 premiere is next Sunday, 7/27). Still, I shouldn’t be all that surprised that Mad Men and FX’s Damages both received a fare share of nominations. This isn’t a knock against either show (I also thoroughly enjoyed Damages), but both were created by people who worked on perennial Emmy darling The Sopranos. The Emmys have always had a tendency to throw their hats with their favorite sons and daughters — how the hell else can you explain Boston Legal and Monk getting nominated yet again? Boston Legal is well written, true, but is it better than Friday Night Lights? Hardly. And Monk barely has the laughs of My Boys or How I Met Your Mother. Yet it seems that every year Tony Shaloub, William Shatner and James Spader are nominated, along with their shows.

The truth is there is too much television to watch (as the 1,000 Emmy award categories indicate). I wager to say that you could find at least one show on any of the hundreds of channels available to keep your interest for an hour once a week. But the nominating committees aren’t responsible for watching every episode of a series to make their final call — that would be next to impossible. Instead, these judges see a couple of select episodes that highlight a particular writer or certain actors. Thus, the Best Series award isn’t really about how a show progressed (or went downhill) over the course of a season, or how well an actor made his character three-dimensional through 13 or 22 episodes. Is that fair? I say no. I say that if a show is going to be nominated for best series, the committee should be required to watch every single one. It’s sad that judges aren’t even willing to spend a short time in the hardcore world of The Wire or the naturalistic Texan life in Friday Night Lights, as evidenced by the lack of nominations for both exemplary programs.

In the end, I’m not sure if the Emmy awards mean much to anyone outside of the immediate television industry. The awards ceremony isn’t even broadcast live in Los Angeles, where all the networks reside. Unlike the Oscars, Tony Awards and Grammys, an Emmy win doesn’t necessarily boost the popularity of a winning series — just ask the producers of Arrested Development. (more…)

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