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Mad Men

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Inlander:
Is anyone else watching this show? I was sceptical that anything could live up to the hype it's generated so I asked my family to give me the first season on DVD, and I was instantly hooked. I love pretty much everything about it. I've watched seasons 1 and 2, season 3 is just about to start screening in Australia (on pay T.V., but that hopefully means I'll be able to download it from iTunes). (I've refrained from downloading season 3 from, ahem, "other sources", because visually Mad Men is so gorgeous and I don't want to watch it in shitty torrent-o-vision).

Thoughts? Feelings? Martini recipes?

a pack of wolves:
I remember watching the first episode when it was aired and I wasn't that impressed, partly because of the hype I'd guess. But my friend convinced me to watch several of the first series with him and I was convinced. I think it requires a bit more time than one episode to notice the fine way the characters are put together. With a couple of exceptions (the beatnik types) it's almost up there with The Wire in terms of interesting, complex characters on TV. I think that's what threw me at first, a lot of the hype had been about how '60s advertisers had been at the forefront of changes in culture, and about the visual style. And sure, it looks great and they're definitely the best dressed men in television, but it's that simple but incredibly hard to achieve pleasure that comes from fully realised characters that makes it really compelling.

Inlander:
Yeah, I agree. I first episode of any show is always a bad one to base a judgement on - even the Wire's first episode is a bit shaky - and the whole "Look at us! We're in the 1960!" shtick in that first episode of Mad Men is rather laid on with a trowel, but after that the show really settles down. I love the pace of the show, perhaps because I grew up watching European movies and Mad Men seems, to me, to have a really European sensibility in terms of pacing and attention to character. It's just about the only American show I can think of in which more is left unspoken than spoken, and in terms of making as few concessions as possible to the viewer - which is just another way of saying "treating the viewer as an intelligent, thoughtful person" - I'd place it almost up with the Wire.

One more thing: holy shit Jon Hamm's performance is extraordinary. I don't want to harp on the point too much, but again it seems like the kind of performance we'd expect more in a European production than in an American one. If anyone wants to see just how good his acting is in this show, look at the incredibly subtle yet near-total transformation he undergoes in the penultimate episode of season 2, "the Mountain King", when his character gets to completely drop the Don Draper persona.

öde:
Caught part of an episode on TV, going to watch the rest when I can.

KvP:
It's a great show, but every episode is steeped in such heavy symbolism and meaning (because or in spite of the efforts of the show's staff) that I think it's only a matter of time before fatigue sets in.

Meanwhile Big Love is getting pretty excellent!

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