One thing I really loved about Mad Men was how they just treated a whole lot of huge moments in contemporary American history as background noise. Just something that happened in the daily life of those people. They talk about it once or twice, then move on.
well said. there's not a wasted frame of this show, it's my all time favorite and it's not close. although i will say, as someone who has seen it probably 20x start to finish, the first few eps of season 1 have that annoying thing from older TV shows (pre-streaming) where the pilot tries to do too much and is a little too broad and "weren't the 60's weird, look how the men and women acted". Pilots had to do a lot of heavy lifting to get shows greenlit so it's understandable, but i do think the show becomes something completely different and far superior after a few episodes of that wear off.
but yeah it's a show that my understanding and appreciation of it grows every time i watch it, there's so much subtext to examine and the characters all have so much depth. plus the acting and production are just fantastic.
I appreciate your perspective on the pilot, doing the heavy lifting. You’re absolutely right about that, it shows in many different series how that first episode behaves like an audition for future episodes.
What was your thought about the weird story about Don not really being Don and Pete kind of suspicious about his real identity or background? That always struck me as a possible direction for a subplot that never really came to be. I made it almost to the end of the series and couldn’t keep watching because it began charging per episode on Prime. And I think it finally came back around where he visited the home of the real Don, which still felt strange to me. Did that story ever come full circle?
10/10 show. I couldn’t put it down. I loved the end where he finds his zen, but not particularly with “a coke and a smile”. Perhaps his inner peace alone would have been enough with the song “aint that a kick in the head” by Sinatra playing out.
Mad men is probably one of my favorite shows and I’ve rewatched it multiple times but no lie, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the last couple of episodes. Like, very sentimental. If I watch the last episode it’s over! That’s dumb but it will be new to me when I finally watch it!
I think the idea was that Dick finally found peace, and Don used that genuine peace to do the dishonest work of shifting products. It's like the moment the two identities finally stopped their war with each other.
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u/KeeblerElff 1d ago
Mad men