I am totally hooked on the TNT series Mad Men. Tim Goodman, the TV pundit at sfgate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle website, has written a brilliant analysis of episode two, which premiered last night. The article is written at a very high level of observation and perception, as are the comments attached to it, as is the show itself.
It’s a cable TV prime time soap opera fer crissake, surely not as important as health care reform, or the proper role of government in a free society? But the depth of the analysis is superior to 95% of political punditry, and the comments are vastly (I do not use that adjective lightly) superior to comments on anything political that appears on the web, including here, on your humble blogger’s blog. The show itself is as subtly conceived, written, directed, and acted, as anything I have seen, movies or TV, ever.
There is a great deal more intelligence, passion, integrity, and courage entering such diverse fields as professional sports, cable TV drama, technology, and, dare I say it, blogging, than is going into politics these days. I assume this bodes ill, but as long as entertainment is improving, what the Hell? I already have Medicare, I get Social Security starting next year, and I can read books and watch TV about John Adams and Alexander Hamilton and Andy Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. It is my children and grandchildrens’ problem.
But, I gotta say, looking back to the 50’s, and the early 60’s, which were part of the 50’s, we have come so far. I was there. I am here. Here is better. This reverse nostalgia is not a point that Tim Goodman makes, but for me it is a fundamental element of the program’s attraction. It is fun to watch everybody smokin’ and boozin’ and oppressing women and wearing ties and reclining on Danish furniture, but it is not a reality to which I wish to return. And I don’t have to.
Episode Two takes place in 1963, a year after Bob Dylan’s first album, and the year in which President John Kennedy was assassinated. I was 19.
Denise and I love “Mad Men.” We never miss it. In your review you don’t mention Jack Lemmon’s brilliant movies of that era—”The Apartment” and “Wine and Roses” to name just two—reflections and echoes of which appear often in “Mad Men,” a kind of homage. I like your post.