http://disqus.com/people/curies/enMon, 28 Jul 2008 18:36:46 -0000http://newcritics.com/blog1/2008/07/25/mad-men-the-dawning-of-those-who-think-young/#comment-1024812Mad Men is, as The Sopranos was before it, a series that's overpraised (a rare worthwhile SNL skit was the one mocking the fawning over The Sopranos) and for many of the same reasons - novelty, or image over substance, in this case, a period piece of a period people can argue over. For those who think the misogyny is being exaggerated - I considered going into the ad game and, after reading Ogilvy on Advertising and a dozen other books, I "interviewed" a lady who worked in the field, all this well before "mentor" was a buzzword. She told me matter-of-factly that any female rep was expected to sleep with the clients and that this was simply understood - and I mean all comers, fat, pregnant-looking, smelly, all of them. One acquaintance, who was terrified of dying in a back-alley abortion, had a child to raise as a result. Pat Benatar, in a video interview, told of working in an office in which the women were required to wear skirts, no pants allowed, and the men had placed their desks under an open-design staircase. I'd like to see the script handled by someone who knows what delicious tension a mystery can produce, the kind that keeps you turning pages when you've got to get up and go to work in five hours - it's been so long since a series got this right. Hamm is an actor who can convey angst without looking constipated and he's largely being wasted (his delivery of his final line when leaving the beatnik apartment is a beautiful thing). They want to tease us, understood, but delicate timing is all important in a successful tease - otherwise, you've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, as the writers are doing of late. The success of the show is making the cast, with one or two notable exceptions, more and more self-conscious, so that where we used to have snappy dialogue the likes of which haven't been heard since Loy and Powell, it now feels as though these people are waiting for a round of applause - the momentum is built and then squandered. The season opener had more than one may-as-well-hit-the-bathroom moments well before the ending bit. "When you hear the silk rustling in those seats, you've lost them."curiesMon, 28 Jul 2008 18:36:46 -0000