Mad Men; For the Flavour of the 1960s

Mad Men is an American television program which aired from July 2007 to May 2015.  It was set in New York City, (mostly) during the years of 1959 until 1970.  This is the plus of the series, putting you into that time and doing it rather well.

How people reacted to Civil Rights, to the Election and subsequent murder of John. F. Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the death of Marilyn Monroe, all the events of the time.

The behaviour of the people, that is the inter-personal is a bit too rancid.  And one finds the main character, Don Draper, the Creative Director, the Ad Man,  rather repulsive.

Unlike shows like Homeland where from the second episode one wishes the star would die, or like The Fall where the police officer and the serial killed are so similar, Draper has a kind of ‘vulnerability’ which tends to keep you watching and somewhat accepting, until about the 4th season, when you know what anything female around him is going to be in his bed.

His past doesn’t actually ‘exonerate’ him.

The way the back story is told, in dribs and drabs,  tends to be a touch confusing for it might be easy for an American to know a 1959 car from a 1947, which would alert them that this happened years before the action, but if one isn’t aware, the flashes back and forth are a little disconcerting.

How Draper creates and messes up his life is not stunning, it seems, after episodes pass, to be inevitable.

The other characters are as flawed as he, some more.  The most admirable is actually the office manager, a woman who talks like and acts like Marilyn Monroe, who has an affair with one of the senior partners for years, then marries as he does.

It is an interesting show, basically for the culture of the time.   Everyone smokes, everyone drinks,  everyone fools around.    The changes in society tend to miss them as where the youth was moving away from materialism, away from capitalism, those at the Ad Agency remain in the 1950s.

The good part of a series like Mad Man is that it is a set number of episodes and has ended, so that watching a marathon, that is one or more a day in succession, will not leave you waiting until next week or next season to see how the plot twists.

That is the key feature in watching television online; to select completed series so that one can complete viewing.