I agree that this is the best television since The Sopranos, or Deadwood. I love everything about the show that was stated here, but also the fanatical attention to mise en scene. Every detail to what is on each set in regard to the time period is so accurate it is scary. Every cereal box, every feature of the Draper kitchen, for example, is a bullseye, from the knotty pine custom cabinets to the light switches. Same goes for the office. Nothing says success like a room full of clicking IBM Selectrics amidst the haze of Pall Malls, and office meetings taken with whisky and gin.
The other amazing thing that is pure genius is the exact time setting. This is not just a show that is set in "the 60s" but exactly 1962-63, which are years that major cultural/political/social changes are moving like shifting techtonic plates. What I like about the show is that these things are also part of the mise en scene and they are alway obvious to the viewer (especially those who lived in that time). However, the characters are naturally encountering these shifts for the first time. Its like a murder mystery where the reader is informed about whodunit, but the characters in the story have to figure it out.
So the politics of Nixon gives way to Kennedy, as tv advertising starts to win over print media, as photography starts to win over art work content in ads, as 60s youth culture starts to become an important advertising demographic, etc. The characters more or less reliably start to become aware of the changing forces in their markets, their business practices, and their interpersonal relationships both on the job and in their personal lives.
It is interesting to see Betty Draper going from the perfect Jackie-Kennedy-woman-behind-the-man wife and starting on the trajectory as Hillary-Clinton-major-force-in-her-own-right woman. And it is interesting to see how it is developing in her and how Don is beginning to react.
I could go on, but this is stuff you fans of Madmen already know. This show has layers and layers and opportunity after opportunity to not only tell a great story, but to really be a kind of accurate historical novel of a very important time in our recent history.
As for January Jones, I am still reserving judgement. Either I am just captivated by her flawless Grace Kelly beauty, or I am detecting a kind of very understated style of performance both on Madmen and in the sketches on SNL. She gives a kind of Grace Kelly playing Betty White performance where what you see is "flat affect", but underneath is a strong intelligence communicating through the limited range that such a characterization allows. I can see why you might think I am simply besotted, but I am still reserving judgement on January Jones.
Either way, the casting of her as Betty was pure genius.
Oh, one more thing. Don Draper has somehow become multidimensional out of a part that could easily be two dimensional. There is a kind of triple threat going on here where his character is slighly "gothic" due to his hidden past, on top of a post war confidence and masculinity that acts as kind of a force-field that protects him and clears the way before him in any situation. But what is developing now is his surprising lack of self-knowledge for someone who is so good at understanding and manipulating the buying public, and our growing awareness of his personal insecurities which stand in contrast to such a confident man. Don Draper is a perfect post-war but pre-60s American icon of a man. This is the last moments of a time when only intellectuals had much self-knowledge, and moving into a time when self-reflection went from a distraction and started heading on its way to narcissim for almost everyone.
You can be dead sure that the marginalized and suppressed wife Betty will eagerly embrace the new empowerment of the role of women in the coming years, while the Don Drapers will be slow to adapt and be mostly stunned and paralyzed by how quickly the rules will be rewritten in front of his very eyes.
For Don, what seems to be a stable and predictable world with nothing but opportunity, you get the idea that not a minute goes by that in the back of his mind he is asking himself if he really is just lucky. Then on top of that is his growing awareness that the bedrock he stands on is part of a continental plate that is starting to shift faster and faster.
Yeah, I love this show.
