Unlike a lot of Johnnie come latelies I've been watching Mad Men since season 1, episode 1. I was impressed by its complexities, its pacing, its acting, its dialogue and of course Christina Hendricks's formidable assets. Season 1 was as good as TV gets, especially Roger's one liners, everything about Pete Campbell, and Betty Draper's slow burn mental breakdown. Season 2 fell off a little, but so far season 3 has been very disappointing, almost sloppy in its writing (that flashback, the fire alarm, yikes) and its directing. (The acting, fortunately, is still brilliant). So why has everything gone pear shaped? Some possible reasons:...
1. It's AMC's fault. Episode 1 was a reboot for all the new viewers AMC was expecting following the good Emmy news, which is why they made Matt Weiner recap so many old stories instead of advancing into new territory. It felt like we were treading water, but we had to do that to give new viewers a chance to catch up. Episode 2 was the real episode 1 laying out slowly the themes of the new season. Things may therefore get better as we go along.
...
...
2. Mad Men has jumped the shark. Comedy series usually hit their stride in season 3 but drama series tend to stumble in their third year. The writers used all their best ideas in the pitch and season 1 and their next best ideas in season 2 and by 3 they were exhausted. This is true of: The Sopranos, ER, Battlestar Galactica, NYPD Blue and many other shows.
...
...
3. Hubris. Matt Weiner has forgotten that you need a slave standing next to you in the chariot whispering "you too are mortal and will die some day."
...
...
4. They wrote themselves into a corner by letting Betty get pregnant. A pregnancy is usually a very bad thing for a show, cf: Lucy, Bewitched, The Flintstones, Friends etc. etc.
...
...
5. Nothing's wrong. All we are doing now is slowly circling the major themes in typical Mad Men fashion. This isn't Law & Order or House, chum, Mad Men demands viewer attention and patience. Just relax, sit back and all will be well.
52 comments:
In what seems to be my usual fashion these days, I'm watching this thing totally out of order, meaning that I am now watching the end of season two, will move on to the new shows shortly, and maybe someday get back to season one.
It is beautiful to behold, like a heightened dream of an early sixties that never were, but I can't say I'm all that impressed with the story line. There's something that feels false about it all the way through, as though they caught the surface, but not the depth. And of course, I guess it is about the false world of advertising, so maybe that's intentional. It seems very soapy to me, and though that's not necessarily a bad thing, in this case, I think it makes the characters as written too stock. But you're right, the actors are excellent, and do manage to transcend this at times.
I think you're right about season three often being disastrous for dramas. My theory is that by this time, the people in charge of the show, whether writers or directors, either understand what there show is about or they do not, and if they don't the show runs away with them in some relatively predictable fashion--the baby, the marriage of hot couple, whatever.
I really liked "The Guardian" for the first couple of seasons, but it got derailed in the third season--in retrospect--by letting the Nick Fallin/Lulu relationship take over, when the central relationship, quite obviously, had been the one between father and son. It was where all the stakes were. They could have run a couple more seasons off the fuel of that without introducing any babies at all.
Friday Night Lights dipped in its second year (although it had its strengths, and was hurt by the writers strike) then came back very strong the 3rd year.
I must say, I appreciate aspects of Mad Men - some of the acting, the writing, the production - and perhaps it's my fault that I've never loved the show as a whole. It just leaves me cold.
Yes,the difference between the first and second season of FNL was noticeable, though it still wasn't a bad show the second year. But the first year was not like any other show and the second year was a lot like a lot of shows, and that's the difference. I'm glad to hear the third year improved, because I wasn't attending to it very much at that point and only caught a few.
I've just started to try and watch the show. And yes Christina Hendricks chest is something not from this world.
And I would disagree with the Season 3 comedy thing. I think The Office peaked in Season 2 and 30 Rock's first season was brilliant but everything since has just been ok.
It must be pretty interesting for her to play that role, don't you think?
I mean, what with things having changed so much...
Seana
You have to watch it in order. There's a big spoiler in season 1.
One of the things no one has mentioned about Mad Men is the fact that Bewitched is about a 1960s Madison Avenue ad man who lives in Westchester Country with his wife. Samantha Stevens doesnt seem to have the existential angst that besets Betty Draper, even without the witchcraft I dont think she would - not all women in that world were doormats back then.
Matt
I can see the cold, but I like the chilliness and the fakeness, people were more uptight back then and there was that claustrophobic intensity of the drinking and the smoking.
I think this show is the proof too that it was JFK killed hats for men as part of business attire.
Dylan
Well, Ms Hendricks's assetts are not only up front as Sir Mixalot would not doubt agree. Fine actress too of course.
I thought 30 Rock was very patchy season 1. Episodes 1-5 didnt work that well for me, whereas the episode with Paul Reubens was one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV.
Seana
I do wish they'd stretch Joan a bit more. There was a terrific scene late in series 2 where she showed her real acting chops.
"I thought 30 Rock was very patchy season 1. Episodes 1-5 didnt work that well for me, whereas the episode with Paul Reubens was one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV."
huh. I thought the first season was was on the most edgy comedy's I had seen on American TV. I still end up in stitches at Tracy Jordan running naked with a lightsaber screaming "I am a Jedi!!!" ala Martin Lawrence.
Plus season one found comedy in the day to day events of running a sketch comedy show where everything since then is just about Liz Lemon and Jack. It's still one of the best on TV but not the same imho.
On a side note the Cubs blog that I help run has found a Dubliner who stays up in the early AM hours to watch the cubbies fuck away another season. Watching this years team that late is real dedication man.
It's too late for me to watch it in order. I agree about the late season two acting chops.
My cousin, who was also a day one episode oner probably already filled me in on the spoiler you refer to. We were staying with her when Season Two hit, and had to race down from Wisconsin to see the opening show. As we were a captive audience, she filled us in a bit on what had gone before.
I would be the last person to say that there wasn't a great deal to improve in the lives of women back then. But I grew up pretty much in that era, and though my dad wasn't an ad man, he was in commercial real estate, and there is a lot of similarity in the lifestyle. It wasn't as formal, probably, because this was mostly in California, but there were plenty of dinners with business friends, and certainly a lot of smoking and drinking. But I think my mom was actually fairly content with this world. It's more my critique of her role after the fact than it would have been her own, and of course, she had seen a lot of the world before she ever settled down to the role, and always worked part time or did volunteer work, etc. I think of my friends' mothers and I don't think they were too miserable either. The sense of repression can be a cliche, even if its sometimes valid.
And of course there is the other side. My grandmother was offered a scholarship to I believe Swarthmore, but wasn't allowed to go because her parents thought it wouldn't be right for her to go to college and her brothers not to. So she may have had some of the housewife issues that this show talks about, but she was of an earlier era.
Of course, if she had gone back East from Indiana to college, she never would have come out west after her sisters and thus never met my grandfather, and I wouldn't be here. So I'm a bit ambivalent about her being denied a college education. I know what I ought to think, but there you go. Self-interest will trip you up every time.
I desperately want to love this show. And there are moments, say when the sales guy sells his short story to The Atlantic and the real riters makes fun of him and then one apologizes by saying he knew he'd have to compete with all the copy writers, he just didn't think he'd have to compete with a sales guy too and the guy says, "Oh well, you lost."
But there's just too much cliche and stereotyping and Don Draper is trying waaaay too hard to be an enigma.
Also, and this is just me, they had an episode called The Liberty Campaign but as far as I could see never referenced Jonathan Dee's fantastic novel, The Liberty Campaign about, you guessed it, a Manhattan advertising executive.
Actually, Dee's Palladio is really the novel to read about the advertising industy.
But as soon as the season three DVDs are available I'll trudge down to the rental store and pick them up.
Haven’t seen the movie Beautiful Creatures (in response to a question in another posting), but the context was Kate Winslett, so I wonder if you meant Heavenly Creatures? That was a very well-done movie based on a disturbing true story.
I've not seen Mad Men, but has anyone seen Dexter? I LOVE that series. Talk about disturbing...
Dylan
Well you know that for good and ill I'm a NYY fan. (Spent 6 years in Harlem and worked in the Bronx and Washington Heights so I'd no choice mate) but my NL team is the Cubbies for two reasons.
1. The Blues Brothers
2. The first baseball game I ever saw was Cubs/Padres at Wrigley in the summer of 1990. Might have been Maddux pitching. But it was a beautiful day at Wrigley and the Cubs won. Doesnt really get much better than that.
Seana
Well I think the subversive idea behind season 1 was to kill any notion that the 1950's was a Golden Era. When you look at the racism, sexism, casual anti-Semitism that notion fades very very quickly. And this is New York City. God knows what it was like in say Ames Iowa or the South.
John
I liked season 1 much more than you I think. I especially enjoyed the pacing. It was so patient with its characters and I dont worry about the cliches so much because the people in those roles buy into the cliches. Unless you're talking about the cliche of Don's secret past - a subplot I always thought unnecessary and distracting.
Don's dialogue has gotten more portentious over the seasons and now he speak-like-wise-Indian or worse like the Pythian priestess giving the judgements of the Oracle at Delphi: "don't expose yourself" "you'll be surprised how much this never happened" etc.
Still I'm hopefull that they can turn this around and I still think its much better written than the Sopranos - those long Edie Falco scenes with the priest or whatever and the whole shrink psychobabble stuff bored me to tears.
Holden
Of course Heavenly Creatures! What was I thinking of.
Kate Winslet in highschool lesbo murderous hi jinks - the movie sells itself.
Havent seen Dexter yet. I think it might have been on Showtime or something. I imagine I'll get to it eventually, although I find that smiling poster of him covered with blood spatter a bit off putting.
I saw a few of those Dexters when for some reason they were airing them on one of the networks for the summer. They seemed well done, although they kind of made me want to read the books that they were made from. I'm not sure how many more sympathetic assassins and serial killers I'm willing to read, though.It seems to be a trend.
It's funny that my whole adult life the fifties have been a subject of scorn and rebuke, so Mad Men doesn't really add much that I don't just assume. On the contrary, I feel like there has been a wave of movies and TV shows that may tell disturbing stories, about how the suburbs ain't all they're cracked up to be, but meanwhile bathe them in the most beautiful light on a visual level so that it's hard not to want to be there, quietly drinking yourself to death.
So, the author of Hidden River, The Dead Yard, Dead I Well May Be, The Bloomsday Dead, and Fifty Grand finds the Dexter poster off-putting? That's rich. ;->
Also, at the risk of sounding like the obsessed fan on Flight of the Conchords, I wanted to let you know that those books are beautifully written and seriously ROCK. Please keep 'em coming.
Seana, the first Dexter book is good, the rest are fair to awful. The series deviates from the book storyline about halfway thru the first season, and the second and third seasons differ radically from the books. Dexter is one of those very rare cases where the movie version is better than the book, IMHO.
Wow, you have a busy blog Adrian. This has just come through on my feeds - magnificent response.
Samantha, HEH. Of course she needed to be a witch. All that damn housekeeping.
I am with you on your no. 5 reason - I'm sure it will be fine. Formula be damned, as it was in Californication (more or less).
Thanks, Holden. So I'll check out the first.
I wouldn't worry too much about being a fan of the dour scribe of Armagh. He is a hopeless fanboy himself, as he has mentioned here on countless occasions.
And I'll just add that it shows you have good taste.
I was listening to the Dan Patrick show last week and the resident Cubs fan chided the Yankees for keeping Joba Chamberlain on a strict pitch count. The resident Yankees fan was shocked.
I enjoyed Heavenly Creatures quite a bit. I'm looking forward to The Lovely Bones - but I fear the trailer gives away a bit much for those who haven't read it.
John, I think it's odd that I'm watching a show on Andy Warhol right now, and he too was held in wide disdain because he was "only" a commercial artist. No one seemed to think he could jump the barrier.
I suppose he hung out with the likes of the Mad Men all the time.
Seana
I do like the alliteration though. Isnt the first one Darkly Dreaming Dexter and the rest are in that vein? I dig that stuff. Except when its The Cat Who Came to Dinner, The Cat Who Ride the Bike etc.
Holden
Yeah I am a bit squeamish. Funnily enought there's a scene in Dead Yard near the end, some poor lady gets a Coke bottle in the head...I actually found that almost impossible to edit. I just couldnt actually read it. And had difficulty reading it over and over for editing purposes. Ughhh.
FOTC? I dont know what the boys are complaining about. I'd love a fan like Kristen Schaal - she's adorable.
Genevieve
The only thing that disturbed me about Samantha Stevens was how she never noticed that her husband had changed into a completely different person. Must have been all the valium everyone was taking back then.
Seana
Patton Oswald has a good routine about growing up in the suburbs and longing to live in a dangerous urban neighbourhood and then living in one and being utterly terrified and longing for the suburbs.
Matt
The fricken pitch count didnt matter much today did it? I think that kid may be toast for the year. I hope not but I reckon he might be. I hope Cashman has a plan B.
I suppose that one breadwinner looks pretty much like another when you're a witch, especially when that breadwinning is totally not necessary.
I guess the suburbs can be pretty scary now too, especially if there happen to be a few meth labs going.
The only thing that disturbed me about Samantha Stevens was how she never noticed that her husband had changed into a completely different person.
She decided she would have liked him to look a bit different, twitched her nose, changed his appearance and the memories of the rest of the world.
Seana
Philip K Dick is the novelist par excellence of the LA suburbs. I've always thought A Scanner Darkly was a great suburbs nightmare book.
Marco
His personality was a little different too. Dick Sergeant was a little more serious, less goofy, less physical. Larry didnt seem to notice either poor fellow.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
We're all going out of town for a few days to Queensland, so if I dont respond to your comment it's not me being rude its just that I dont have an interent connection.
I will read and respond to every comment when we get back on Monday.
Thanks
Adrian...
Tell us a little about Queensland when you get back, will you? I myself know nothing.
Have fun! Supposed to be beautiful. I think it was Queensland Simon Reeves drove thru on the 3rd episode of Tropic of Capricorn.
Have you seen the epigraph on Steven T. Murray's blog?
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com
Seana, Matt
Well its Miami Beach basically in Australia, which I like. The surf is gentle, the people nice. The bush is just behind us but I dont think we're going to get to visit it unfortunately not on this brief trip.
I've seen 5 or 6 birds I hadnt seen before which is a big bonus for me. So far a very pleasant vacation.
Peter
I hadnt seen that. Thats very cool
That is very cool, although to be fair, you lifted a good bit of it from that medieval guy, didn't you?
Since you mention birds again, I wonder if you've read Patrick White's short story The Cockatoos. Some of his books have found their way into our used bin, and I saw this one and picked it up. It's the last story in the collection, and I'm only halfway through, but so far it's very good. I should say I've had an appointment that I failed to keep with Patrick White since I was about 18, which is a long time ago now, when my aunt lent or gave me a couple of his novels that her friend who was mad about him had given her. Riders in the Chariot was one of them. Reading one short story doesn't begin to make up for my slacker ways, but it's a start. I do like him, I find.
Mum said, "I'm not a naturalist, but know that cockatoos don't take root. It's more than likely flown off."
It was true, he knew, but also as stupid as truth can often be. The cockatoo's presence in Davorens' garden was only the half of looking for it.
Seana, the stories are a damn fine way in.
And Voss is almost funny if you read Randolph Stow's kids' book, Midnite, first.
Thanks, Genevieve. I finished Cockatoos, which I thought was very good, but haven't gotten around to the rest of that anthology yet, though Marco tells me that the first story in the collection is very good, "A Woman's Hand" is his favorite, so I'll probably try that next.
Don't know Randolph Stow, though.
Ah, Mr Stow is a bewdiful, bewdiful writer of ours who stopped a little after getting truly started, and has lived and taught in England for many years. Still with us - in his seventies.
All his books are (dare I say it) as interesting and probably more readable than PW's.
Now I feel I've completely hijacked this thread, so I will run off.
Very friendly blog you have, Adrian. I am going to buy one of your books now.
Genevieve
Talk is free around here, you aint under any obligation to buy a book!!!
But I'd stay away from WWII themed topics if I were you.
Stop trying to dissuade people from buying your books, Mr. McKinty. That's what I call putting up unnecessary obstacles.
Don't listen to McKinty; buy his books. The guy lived in the U.S. for years. You'd think the back-slapping, self-promoting American would have elbowed the dour, pinched Presbyterian aside. But noooo.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Well you can take the boy out of Carrick but you cant take Carrick out of the boy.
Seana
You may have a point, but in the BIG scheme of things the obstacles I throw up wont count for much.
hee hee. I have been considering it for a while, Adrian. I get asked for suggestions for a reading program once a year, and I've been meaning to read your latest with that in mind, as I'm not a big crime reader, and yours comes highly recommended.
Didn't mean to embarrass you though - but after all, you are the only crime writer I know who's met Roy Foster.
and this is a very fine blog. And I'm very fond of the song, "Carrickfergus". I don't need any more excuses, so I shan't make 'em.
Experts have talked about this before. How many times have you read about the importance of ‘adding value’ for your audience? How many times have you read about ‘building trust’ with your readers/prospects?
Many, many times. You know it well. Every marketing guru has spoken about this topic. I’m sick of hearing it. But it STILL bears repeating.
www.onlineuniversalwork.com
Post a Comment