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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
