Mad Men Season 1

Since I've been killing my liver for the last few hours, I came to realization that I should probably write about one of the shows that makes me feel drunk just by watching the amount of alcohol consumed in just one episode, yes - I'm talking about Mad Men.

Mad Men is one of those shows that I didn't start watching from the beginning, but boy, once I got into it, I couldn't put it down.

The depiction of the era the series covered, appears to be spot on - that is, as far as I can tell, since I did not grow up in that era. This is not the type of show that Hollywood has hyped up, but doesn't deliver. It is an amazing, well plotted, series with wonderful characterizations. Season one is slightly heavy handed in it's depection of the era. As I watched the season progress it became more and more evident when the series was saying "see, look how it was back then!" Be it the massive amounts of smoking and drinking in the workplace, punishing other people's kids, or leaving your trash on the ground in after a nice picnic in the park sometimes I think they were just tying a little too hard to show hos different it was.

The happy-go-lucky facade that people present is just that, a facade. Most of the characters are more than their initial one-dimensional characterization would lend itself to be. The show is very subtle. It takes it time over multiple episodes to build up events before they eventually boil over.

The Set design and photography brings the 60s to life. Each shot, at least seems, meticiulously set up to really bring the era to life. They know what they're designing and they've designed it well.

One of the few times in the last decade where the Emmy win actually means something, at least to me.

**** 1/2 out of *****