BlogHer - "Mad Men" and Their Mad, Glad, Sad, Bad Women - Comments

Don and The Boys..And Girls are Advertising the 21st Century Way

Megan Smith — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:04:46 -0500

I'm happy the video clip is the type of embed that you can start playing yourself. I can't stand the ones that start playing as soon as you load the webpage.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

AMC encouraging bloggers to share sneak previews

Elana Centor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:44:00 -0500

At the end of last night's show the announcer said something like for a more detailed preview go to the website. -- They are encouraging bloggers to embed the sneak peak on their blogs which of course I blogged about this morning at FunnyBusiness

elana
Blogher Contributing Editor,Business&CareersFunnyBusiness

Tony Soprano and Don Draper

Megan Smith — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:14:54 -0500

Hi Letty,

Tony Soprano and Don Draper do have quite a bit in common---except for the guns and murder. At least so far.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

Don "Make You Swoon" Draper

lettynola — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:09:03 -0500

You're right. Don Draper's sex appeal allows him to get away with absolute murder. But that's not new news if you know what I mean. There is such a parallel between he and Tony Soprano and you can't help but notice that both shows were created by the same person. There are so many similarities. Both men struggle with leading double lives and being good at home, but bad when away. All in all, I think it is a great show, but I'll agree it is tough to watch, and they are going to have to be careful with that....not to loose their female audiences. It can get really raunchy at times, but then ole Don seems to always suck you back in...feeling sorry for his upbringing...qualifying his behavior. Some of the best scenes, at least for me, are when he is at home, and NOT at the office. But probably most married mothers relate more compassionately with those scenes.....duh. But as for the show being offensive, it seems to me, that the creator and writers have made those issues so "over the top", that I can't really seem to get miffed, it's comically absurd. It's so blatantly crass, it's almost supportive. We've come so far! And and when you really "get down to brass tacks", some of the more seductive female roles on the show, have waayyyy more power over Don Draper than he over them.

The Secret Of The Sex Appeal

Megan Smith — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:08:44 -0500

Hi Elana,

It's those starched, white undershirts!

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

"Mad Men" Mania

Megan Smith — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:04:28 -0500

Hi Nordette,

My cable service doesn't have "Mad Men" on demand anymore, so I finally bit the bullet and ordered the first season of on DVD so I can fill in the gaps I missed.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

"Mad Men" And The Role Of Men

Megan Smith — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:30 -0500

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for your comments.

The point you make about "Mad Men" being "a show about the struggle for men to survive the hideous project of 'being a man'" is one reason I found Kevin's take at Return To Manliness so interesting. The "good old days" were often used as a template to show modern men how "to act like men," but with the changes in the workplace and in the home, the modern man needs to make more of an effort than to just copy a previous era.

"Mad Men," to me, makes that more obvious than ever.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

One of the addicted

Elana Centor — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:23:27 -0500

The story telling is a delight. The characters are multi-dimensional and there is something very powerful in getting to know each character's personal "tension" that they dare not display at work.

Don Draper is not a likeable guy and yet....there is that sex appeal.

elana
Blogher Contributing Editor,Business&CareersFunnyBusiness

sooo addicted to that show

Nordette — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:00:18 -0500

I've said that to you before, Megan, but had to go on the record one more time. I didn't watch the first season, too busy with my own mad life. But last weekend I spent the entire weekend watching the first season on demand. Now I'm a Mad Men junkie. So much to learn, love, and hate on that show.

Nordette is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is hosted on another site at this link. Most recent BlogHer post, Baby and Me Behind Bars.

One of my favorite shows...even though it's difficult to watch

Rebecca Walker — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:14:52 -0500

I am mad for MadMen, even though it's a tough show to watch. I find it to be an incredibly astute deconstruction of (white) masculinity--revealing the racism, sexism, homophobia and other callous aspects, but also the human being inside the suit, the man trying to hold on to and heal his wounded self. To me, it is a show about the struggle for men to survive the hideous project of "being a man."

Author, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence. Blog, SEEDS, at the Root. (And for the purpose of this post, check out my book on masculinity--What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future.)

I Think You're Right

Megan Smith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:33:49 -0500

Even the people I don't like, I find interesting and the 60's visuals are impeccably done.

Megan Smith
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/YouTube
Megan's Minute: Quirky Commentary Around The Clock

Everyone is flawed

sassymonkey — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:01:45 -0500

I've only seen about half, maybe even less, of the first season. I think part of its appeal is that everyone is flawed - there really is no completely good character.

Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

"Mad Men" and Their Mad, Glad, Sad, Bad Women

Megan Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:27:53 -0500

The ad men of AMC's "Mad Men" are sleek, stylish and mired in a 60's culture that's been meticulously recreated. They smoke like bad oil, they drink like cheap dates and they sleep around like they've earned the right.

Three weeks into the show's second season and just a few weeks before going for sixteen primetime Emmy awards, "Mad Men" is maintaining its buzz.

Though I've only seen parts of the first season, I haven't missed a thing from the second, and so far, I like pretty much everything. Except Peggy Olson's hair, that is. That authentic 60's "bangs and ponytail" look of hers gives me the heebee jeebees everytime she's on screen.

Veritie Parlant of Whose Shoes Are These Anyway left a comment on my "I've Got Emmys On My Mind" post saying she watched the first season on demand recently and was totally hooked. It got me thinking that now was a good time to check out what the rest of blogosphere thought about this season's "Mad Men."

Media Maven at Media Maven Musings loves the show but isn't always sure why. From her recap of this week's episode:

Maybe I feel entertained by the chauvinistic, slick dialogue
that emanates rapid-fire from Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and Pete Campbell (Vincent Karthesier). But no matter what, during and after each and every episode of this riveting series, I truly feel something, which is more than I can say for most series on the air these days.

Mommy Manifesto is a fan of the show, but thankful that she wasn't in the workplace during the "Mad Men" era:

The sexism on this show makes me realize how lucky I am. Many, many
women (some of them my co-workers today) braved a lot of good-old-boy shenanigans and took a lot of crap so that women like me and my daughter wouldn’t have to. Thank you ladies!

Francine Hardaway wrote in her recent post on BlogHer that she was one of the women among the "Mad Men" when she got out of college:

Ironically, I think I succeeded because I did not drink at lunch, all
the men did, and I was sharper in the afternoons. I also capitalized on
being a woman. I presented myself as one of their daughters. I was
careful to admire them. I allowed myself to be "mentored" by people who
didn't know one tenth of what I did. I did what it took. I buried fear, anger, anxiety, and depression.

"Mad Men" has its controversial moments as well. Meredith at A Suburban Mom was very disturbed by a scene in this week's episode:

I'll admit, I have a soft-spot for the haunted, unfaithful cad that is
Don Draper, for a multitude of reasons. But this episode unnerved me.
I'm obviously referring to THE scene in the restaurant when Jimmy
Barrett's wife/manager Bobbie threatened to destroy, for a second time,
a big potato chip account of Don's. His response was to pull her head
back by the hair with one hand and shove his other hand up her skirt as
he reciprocated the threat.

For me, the scene was not only unsettling because of the threat of sexual violence, but because Bobbie was so dislikeable, I wasn't as sympathetic to her predicament as maybe I should have been.

There was even more controversy in the episode as the ad men tried to convince a lipstick company honcho to sponsor an episode of the TV show "The Defenders" with a plot that revolved around abortion.

Tami at What Tami Said is a "Mad Men" fan and recently wrote an excellent in depth take on how the show deals with race:

As I've explored several forum threads about the show, I've discovered
that viewers are eager to minimize the way racism is deftly presented
in "Mad Men." The sexism, viewers can digest. But mainstream society
has come to an interesting place: Calling someone a racist is more
disturbing than actual institutional racism. Short of witnessing a
lynching, there is always some way to explain away race bias.

She goes on to discuss a recent episode where one of the "Mad Men," Paul Kinsley gets interesting reactions from his co-workers when they meet his black girlfriend. (Insert Gasp)

For a man's point of view, I went to Kevin at Return To Manliness. He wrote a fascinating post about "Mad Men's" "manliness" quotient.

We typically look to the past to find manliness and manly behavior
as our guide in how we are supposed to act. We believe that men knew
how to be men back then. They treated women with the utmost respect,
knew how to take care of their business and the icons of the era are
still bigger than life.

However, when a show like "Mad Men" comes along, as a true characterization of how things were in New York City during that time, we are reminded that not everything back then was as chivalrous, gentlemanlike and virtuistic as we might want to
believe.

Heather of Heather's Pop Culture World isn't too happy with January Jones who plays Betty Draper:

She has one pouty look, one leaden way of delivering her lines and kills every scene that she's in.

Trixie's Beauty Blog is fascinated by the hairstyles:

Last season there were several shots of Betty Draper, the lead
character’s wife, in pin curls, and shots of her neighboring wives in
the infamous curlers and scarf get-up that some of us remember seeing
in our childhoods.

To round things out, Daisy at daisychurch.com is an animator and artist. She's trying to post a drawing a day on her blog in 2008. Check out her "Mad Men" Girls drawing.

"Mad Men" airs on AMC, Sunday nights at 10 PM.

Megan Smith is a BlogHer Contributing Editor covering Television and YouTube and she too is very glad she wasn't in the workplace during the "Mad Men" era. Her other blogs are Megan's Minute: quirky commentary around the clock and Video Runway.