Mad Men - Season One
Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 07/01/2008 Run time: 616 minutes Rating: Nr
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Mad Men - Season One Reviews
I missed the whole first season. Talk about people with issues, everyone in this show has something to hide, just like the sixties, they never tell what's really on their minds until it is too late.
My neighbor filled me in on a few things from last season, but that was not enough, so I bought this. How is that for obsessive.
I watched all four discs in just two days. Now I've preordered season two, but I digress.
Then I watched a couple episodes of the second season and was HOOKED. Can't wait for season three.
Must have been in a cave.
We began watching Mad Men during the second season, and found a lot of "holes" - things we could not understand. Having lived as a young "business man" in the 50s and early 60s I could see a lot of my "friends" in Mad Men (perhaps exagerated a bit - but maybe ONLY a bit). Watching the first season's shows cleared up nearly all of our confusion. On the whole, Mad Men, season one, was well worth the price.
Excellent character development, but a bit of a downer with the protagonist being an unhappy man.
The brilliant costume designer Janie Bryant also provides wonderful commentary. Her commentary drones through an important part of the Draper story (Don looking at old photos of his brother). But that's my only criticism, one small quibble. For instance, in Jon Hamm's, January Jones', and Elizabeth Moss' commentary on the last episode, 'The Wheel', Elizabeth Moss' comments on the padding used to show her weight gain. Each episode has at least one commentary track, usually two separate commentary tracks.
I wish some of the other commentaries had been edited, though. The DVD set is marvelous and if you're a Mad Men fan it will add substantially to your enjoyment and insight into the show. This is an interesting aside, but Moss' commentary goes on far too long and it's all trivial, with no insights into Peggy's character. I'm glad I bought the DVDs the commentaries and extras make it worth every penny. I'm not going to add to the ample reviews of this show. Mad Men is an absolute masterpiece.
Instead, I would like to comment on the generous extras included in the DVD set. I debated a long time before buying the DVDs since I own the season on iTunes. Of the ones I have listened to, Weiner's are definitely the best, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, and Jon Hamm also provide interesting depth. I haven't listened to all the other commentaries yet.
She repeats the same stories again and againfor well over 10 minutes. And there are other extras - a 20-minute piece, "Advertising the American Dream", a 10-minute video on scoring Mad Men, and the hour-long 'Establishing Mad Men'all excellent. I agree 200% with all the rave reviews here. It's a shame that we miss Hamm's commentary during that emotionally moving portion of the episode. A word about the commentaries the ones by creator and writer Matt Weiner are superb, very insightful and interesting.
The series certainly scores high style marks but substance is woefully lacking in this rather narcissistic view of 1960 Madison Avenue. Seems Don Draper can do no wrong, although he appears to have an increasingly hard time at home as his lovely wife Betty comes apart at the seams like Sylvia Plath in the Bell Jar. After 12 episodes, I feel like I've had enough, although fans of this series keep telling me how things pick up in season two.
You get the sense that Peggy is a younger version of Helen Gurley Brown who had worked herself up from the mailroom of the William Morris Agency to become one of the highest paid ad copywriters of the early 60s, eventually taking over Cosmopolitan and turning it into the magazine we know today. I was really looking forward to this series after reading the rave reviews but I have to say I was disappointed by this tepid view of the heyday of advertising. Sexism was pervasive at the time, but this show seems to revel in it, with little sense of irony.
It takes 12 excrutiating episodes to find out about his hidden past, which in the end doesn't appear to make the slightest impact on the story as Cooper dismisses Peter Campbell's revelatory scene out of hand. The episodes are painfully slow and Don Draper is painfully boring. Once past the good looks, crisp lines and jaunty banter, I found myself wondering "where's the beef." The directors seem to revel in this decidedly man's world where women seem little more than muses, except for Peggy Olsen who finds herself quickly rising up the ladder with her honest view of products.
Maybe so, but the first season didn't do much for me. The firm of Sterling & Cooper comes across as a sexist bastion during a time when many women were breaking through such barriers.
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