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Rating:
I've always hated TV shows, they bore me to death with their stretched-out scripts and mediocre actors, not to mention storylines that drag on season after season, rehashing a plot that's already been overused by them.
I was recommended Mad Men at university just because it dealt with the evolution and dynamics within an advertising agency, which is kind of the field I study. Reluctantly (a lot), I began to watch it, partly to understand how things work in the field and the "back office" dialectics of a sector that never really interested me much— despite its relative success, the series is followed by a fifth of the audience Lost had—and partly for the US sixties setting, which you just can't help but love.
The impact was radically mirrored; the advertising world is used as an excuse, a backdrop to the long and tumultuous socio-cultural evolution of the golden age featuring the first yuppies of business New York. Madison Avenue is the place where the values of bad America are most stirred up with their ripples permeating today's western civilization. Racism, machismo, rivers of alcohol, slutty secretaries and cigarettes in industrial quantities, the agency and its fickle and irritating employees, multimillion-dollar contracts with (real) companies always inclined towards seeking the greatest marginal utility that a catchy slogan or impactful layout can provide, the dominance of image over substance…
In the 4 seasons—so far—on one hand, there's a self-destructive involution (or circumstance-induced) of all our tough and cynical machos confronting pre-'68 ideologies, the excesses, and difficulties posed by their compulsive obsessions (especially Don and the Chief). On the other hand, it's an authentic snapshot of a society in relation to the media and political upheavals of the decade: the Kennedy-Johnson dualism, Cuba, Kennedy's death, Vietnam, the hippies—these latter seen from a perspective coherent with the aesthetic-bourgeois-obscurantist aura of the context: annoying, idle, pathetic, without a reason for constructive dialogue with the Capital Manhattan.
Quotes from Bernbach, Ogilvy, Gossage; campaign strategies evolving from considering the average consumer manipulated by the media to targeting, market research and brainstorming will surely fascinate marketing and advertising enthusiasts.
The characters are excellently characterized; anecdotes, events, and situations seem to evolve with an almost natural metabolism, even though handling many parallel storylines isn't hard to follow; the plot is always incisive and offers significant points for discussion and reflection, though there are regrettable and often evident plot contrivances (albeit dispelled by an excellent script that never seeks rhetorical effect, but is often informal with some classy touches).
Ah, I'm rereading the review now, and it's crap on the can. If you trust my tastes, great; if you know the director Matthew Weiner (the guy from the Sopranos) all the better; at least you have the guarantee that it's good stuff.
To be watched in the original language.
Bye.
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