Subscribe To This Site

MAGNIFICENT MAD MEN
by Daren Foster

Search WILDsound

Reviews/Movies/Columns

WATCH FILMS
2008 Shorts
2007 Shorts
Drama Shorts
Comedy Shorts
Horror Shorts
Animation Shorts
Action Shorts
Thriller Shorts
DOC Shorts
Experimental
Musical Videos

CLASSIC FILMS
2000s Reviews
1990s Reviews
1980s Reviews
1970s Reviews
1960s Reviews
1950s Reviews
1940s Reviews
1930s Reviews
1920s Reviews

BY GENRE
Drama
Comedy
Action
Comic Book
Western
Animation
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Thriller/Suspense

2009 MOVIE REVIEWS
Drama Movies
Comedy Movies
Action Movies
Thriller Movies
Animation Movies
Horror Movies
Kids Movies
Romance Movies

OUT ON DVD

See what's out at the comfort of your home!

2009 MOVIE TRAILERS

See the trailers of the UPCOMING TOP movies!

Movie Reviews

2009 DRAMA MOVIES

All the dramatic films from 2009

2009 COMEDY MOVIES

All the comedy films from 2009

2009 HORROR MOVIES

All the horror films from 2009

2009 ACTION MOVIES

All the action films from 2009

2009 KIDS MOVIES

All the children films from 2009

2009 ROMANCE MOVIES

All the romantic films from 2009

2009 THRILLER MOVIES

All the thriller films from 2009

2009 ANI-
MATED MOVIES

All the animated films from 2009

DAREN FOSTER PODCAST August 18 2009 - PRESS PLAY TO LISTEN

MAGNIFICENT MAD MEN
by Daren Foster

***Top notch, top gear TV!***

Finally. Mid-August and it has arrived. Finally.

No, not the traditional hot, sticky summer weather that’s recently deigned to grace us with its presence up here in the great northeast, for good or bad, depending on your inclination toward sweating while simply sitting or breathing. That’s not what I’m so eagerly embracing, although do put me in the camp of those who love to wallow in our own rank juices for days on end every summer in order to elevate our inner core temperatures in preparation for the long winter ahead. If you’re not grateful when a heat wave snaps then it wasn’t a real heat wave and the next 10 months are going to be gruellingly miserable.

Or they would be if it weren’t for the arrival of Mad Men’s third season to keep us all warm and cozy through to November or so. In case you’ve been living in a cave for a decade or so and aren’t aware of the fact that the phrase in case you’ve been living in a cave for [an allotted period of time] means that you’re completely and hopelessly out of the loop, Mad Men is the latest addition to the Must See TV brand and not the bullshit Must See TV label NBC attached to Friends and Seinfeld and all the dreck they tried hiding in and around those two shows. We’re talking honest-to-god must see TV that puts everything else on the airwaves to shame. The very, very exclusive club that has fewer members than you can count on one hand. The Sopranos. The Wire. Arrested Development. Deadwood. And Mad Men.

I have previously written about the show but in truth, not nearly enough. Irresponsibly and quite possibly, criminally and negligently so. My cable provider did not provide the AMC network as part of its package, forcing me to be a latecomer to the party. I had barely ramped up to season 1 when season 2 came and went. I’m not sure why I wasn’t all over it in print at that point, raving as it deserved to be raved about. There certainly wasn’t much else out there to fawn over and to clutch to my chest like a long lost artifact or something that I once had some sort of emotional attachment toward.

So allow me to step up and do that now.

If you aren’t watching Mad Men, if you haven’t gone back to the very beginning to fully immerse yourself in it, you are simply a certifiable idiot. You are a child with no grasp of artistic complexity and your life should be filled with shameful remorse. You are a poor excuse of a sentient being. Nothing you do or say will be meaningful in any way. You are merely occupying space upon this planet and if you had even a modicum of self-awareness, you would do us all a favour and take your leave, freeing up room for others who might make better use of it.

Yes folks, the show is that good.

I just sat through a repeat viewing of season 2 in preparation for #3 and despite having previously seen a number of the episodes on more than a few occasions, I remained fully engrossed. Watching in hi-def, it is a beauty to behold. The art direction is as stunning as anything I have seen recently on the big screen with a truly eye-popping colour scheme. Screen composition is impeccable. Visually, Mad Men screams “Watch Me!” which is entirely appropriate as it deals with the world of Madison Avenue advertising in the early-1960s.

Not to be outdone, the writing and acting are equally outstanding. Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has as sure a hand on the helm of the series as his old boss, David Chase did with The Sopranos, if not more so. Where The Sopranos teetered at times -- especially in its sophomore season -- seemingly unsure of the direction it was headed, Mad Men has been razor sharp in its focus on the corporate world of big time advertising and the era in which it is set. JFK is elected and serious change swirls in the atmosphere. The postwar and 1950s status quo is under siege and old ways of doing business, personally, professionally and politically, are being called into question. Weiner and his writers deftly use well known historical events like the death of Marilyn Monroe and the Cuban missile crisis to help foreshadow the narrative arc. The Kennedy assassination looms large as Mad Men heads into season 3.

Similarly, the cast of Mad Men is flawless. It is no coincidence that this past decade’s golden age of brilliant (if limited) television has featured the best acting ever to appear on the small screen. Regardless of how strong a script or how smart the directing, subpar performances will derail a project quicker than you can say Kevin Dillon got an Emmy nomination?! Mad Men has assembled an acting ensemble that is second to none. While the series is packed to the rafters with some of the strongest female characters I can remember, I have to embrace my inner male chauvinist to fawn over a couple of the men.

John Slattery has been kicking around for years, popping up in movies and TV as wildly divergent as Traffic, Flags of Our Fathers to Desperate Housewives and Will and Grace. Despite his philandering and quiet political manoeuvring, Slattery’s Roger Sterling is the most appealingly charismatic and ingratiating of the Mad Men. By all measures, he leads a charmed life but wants even more charm and is relentless in his bid to achieve it. The role is a star turn for Slattery and he takes hold of it with absolute assurance.

Then there’s Vincent Kartheiser’s Pete Campbell, every bit Roger Sterling’s opposite. He is an ad man who can’t keep his own counsel, seemingly unable to edit anything that comes to mind. He awkwardly tries to cover raging insecurity with arrogance but cannot hold the pose. Born to wealth, Campbell still expresses feelings of being hard done by and not without some legitimacy. This is a character that should be the one you love to hate but over the course of the first couple seasons, Kartheiser has made him strangely endearing.

Actually, the award for the character who you most love to hate goes to Mad Men’s lead, Don Draper played by Jon Hamm. Going against that tired old saw that your lead character has to be likeable above all else, Don Draper may well be the most despicable leading man ever. And yes, I include Mafioso thug and murderer, Tony Soprano. As a dirt poor farm boy who amorally seizes an opportunity to begin reconstructing a more desirable if fabricated life, Draper is an empty suit devoid of almost any recognizable human emotion aside from lust, anger and a gift for invention. Even as he tries to piece his life back together during the latter part of season two, his remorse and contrition aren’t at all convincing and must be viewed with suspicion. Hamm has a lot of ground to cover with Don Draper and does it with a quiet force that barely registers.

The fact that Mad Men is populated with characters who don’t adhere to the traditional tenets of likeability which viewers can readily identify with and that the overriding sense from season two was sadness, loss and regret, it’s hardly surprising that the series has yet to generate a large audience other than the critics and the industry. Not to mention, its first run on cable network, AMC, has made it unavailable to all TV viewers. Despite the show’s multileveled brilliance, it is a tough slog, emotionally speaking. After watching a couple episodes of Mad Men, you need to switch over to something light and fluffy to set aside the overwhelming feeling of melancholy before going to bed.

Yet the spike in numbers tuning in for the first episode of season three last week suggests that the angst and turmoil is not diminishing viewers. The cult of Mad Men seems to be building. As more of the audience turns to non-conventional methods like iTunes to download their fix, the actual numbers may be significantly bigger. This suggests a higher demand for quality television than the slumbering network giants with their schedules filled with paint by numbers dramas and comedies and creatively bankrupt reality programming might care to admit. With the juiciest bits of the 1960s still lying ahead of them, there may well be a long life remaining in our Mad Men.