Set in 1960 New York City Mad Men explores the glamorous and ego-driven
“Golden Age” of advertising where everyone is selling something and nothing
is ever what it seems. And no one plays the game better than Don Draper (Golden
Globe – winner Jon Hamm) Madison Avenue's biggest ad man – and ladies
man – in the business.
Episodes:
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Ladies Room
Marriage of Figaro
New Amsterdam
5G
Babylon
Red in the Face
The Hobo Code
Shoot
Long Weekend
Indian Summer
Nixon vs. Kennedy
The Wheel
Special Features:
Slipcase Packaging
Audio commentaries by various cast and crew on selected episodes
2 behind-the-scenes featurettes
Review
Welcome to a world where Monday has a three drink minimum. Mad Men exists
here and it's a fabulous place to visit, back before Betty Friedan's Feminine
Mystique really made much of an impact and before the Surgeon General put
warning labels on cigarettes. It was an America on the brink of social explosion
and Mad Men, which tells the story of a group of Madison Avenue advertising
executives in the early 1960s, captures that surface stillness perfectly,
complete with the growing tension barely contained below the surface.
The show succeeds on every level. HBO famously passed on Mad Men, created by
former Sopranos executive producer and writer Matthew Weiner. AMC picked it up,
and thank goodness they did. From the first episode, Season One becomes an
essential, utterly addictive television- watching experience. Beautifully filmed
and masterfully written, the show manages to present the period honestly but
with little nostalgia, and as soon as you get over the constant smoking,
drinking and treatment of women as little more than “girls” who get coffee
and answer the phone, the complexity of these characters (especially the dashing
Jon Hamm as Creative Director Don Draper) will leave you completely captivated.
Season One features clandestine office romances, shadowy pasts, a ton of
adultery, closeted homosexuality and a lot more drama that seems risqué even
for 2008. But again, one of the most impressive things about Mad Men is that
everything is executed with absolute class, style and elegance. And bonus for
the DVD viewer: Like The Sopranos, Mad Men has a ton of little moments and hints
leading up to character revelations and plot twists that make watching the
episodes over and over continually rewarding. –Kira Canny