Why I Don’t Like Mad Men

…the TV show. (I shouldn’t have to explain why I’m not overly fond of the clinically, violently insane.)

I had never heard of AMC’s summer series Mad Men until it began showing up on blogs. Sepinwall liked it, and I’m usually down for whatever catches Sepinwall’s eye.  He reminds me of a grown-up version of my old high-school friend Bill H—-s.  Same taste in music, same taste in entertainment and same dry wit backed up by the power of analytical insight into persons and processes.   If Bill had a blog I’d read that, but I don’t think he does.  Although I understand he’s now a pharmaceutical rep, so it’d be way cool if he did blog–then he could call it something like ‘Drugstore Cowboy’.   I’m just sure that name’s not taken.

Anyway, back to the TV show this blog entry is ostensibly about.   I tried to get caught up on Mad Men this morning, catching a few backlogged episodes on Comcast’s nifty OnDemand service before work.

In all the time I’ve watched TV and movies I’ve only ever seen three other works which have the same utter strength this show has.   The Godfather; The Godfather Part II; and Zodiac all share one unique trait with Mad Men.   With most TV shows and movies you feel a certain remove.  There’s always a part of your brain which understands that “this is ostensibly set in NinteenWhenever, but it was really filmed in this year on a set of some type.”   It’s that scrim of disconnect which allows most viewers a bit of comfort.   It allows your subconscious to reconcile any good or bad events as mere things of the play, and not intrusions onto reality.   But those three films, and now Mad Men as well, lack that.   The creators of those movies have worked a hard spell and actually take you directly to 1946 New York, a 1970s California newsroom and Madison Avenue.    For better or worse you have fallen into the story completely; so much so that it in many ways ceases to be story and becomes immersive experience.

Which is the problem with Mad Men.   I’ll be honest, of the four episodes available to me, I could only make it through two and a half.   Because it is so completely immersive–and there is not one single truly likeable character to serve as the viewer’s Virgil.    Every character is craven or crazy.   They are liars and cheats driven by self-interest.  Every piece of dialogue is a tug-of-war between Angry and Confused.     Added to that dearth of likable characters is the fact that part of the Total Immersion requires a complete abandonment of 2007 sensibilities with regard to ethnic relations and feminism.   One exchange:  “Have we hired any Jews?”–”Not on my watch!…Want me to go down to the Deli and get one?”   Yeah.  That’s entertainment!

Which I suppose is what I’m trying to say.   Mad Men may very well be a masterpiece.  It’s artfully designed in the way that so few things are.   Everything seems painstakingly assembled.   But the world they take you to, the world the creators have gone to such trouble to replicate, is not entertaining.    I would show this program to a class as part of a lecture series.   In fact,  I’ve spent much of today pondering how my parents dealt with a world like that and how they and others worked to make my life experience so much richer than what seemed to be available in 1960.   But to sit down and watch this after a hard day’s work, dog in one hand and a snack in the other?   Not in a million years.