Last night I caught the first episode of Mad Men, and I loved it. It’s a new dramatic series on AMC focusing on a late 50s Madison Avenue Advertising Agency. In the first episode we get dropped into an incredibly well-realized world of cool attitudes and high-pressure accounts, skinny ties and suits, Vitalis hairstyles, and constant smoking. A world where men are in charge and women are expected to show some leg and get the coffee. The only black person we see is a waiter in a posh nightclub who explains that he smokes Old Gold cigarettes because they were given to him during WWII. The show also uses Amy Winehouse’s great tune “You Know That I’m No Good” from her album Back to Black, which is in my iPod right now.
Don Draper is a creative executive who pitches two accounts in the first episode. The first is Lucky Strike cigarettes, in an amazingly well-imagined meeting where he invents an actual Luck Strike slogan. The second is a pitch to the daughter of a jewish retailer who has the nerve to demand that her store be positioned as a high-end brand “like Chanel.” He walks out of that meeting, saying he’s not going to let a woman talk to him like that. Any guy who did that now would be fired on the spot.
So what will happen with the new girl and the skeevy junior exec? Does Draper really not believe in love, or is that a line he uses to impress the ladies? And will we see any great Paul Rand-style modernist design? I’m got my DVR set to catch upcoming episodes. Would love to get it on DVD for a design history and ethics course.
Update I discovered Jason A. Tselentis’ review of Mad Men on Speak Up, a TV review which, oddly, leads into a series of book reviews. His recommended titles are solid.
By: 