Mad Men

Mad Men offers so many instantly classic scenes, lines, and characters that you can easily forgive it for at times trying just a little too hard to set up those situations. In the first episode, a wonderful launch, it is difficult to believe when you sit back and think about it that a seasoned ad man such as Don Draper (creator Matthew Weiner's offering to Archetype Central) would (a) tell off a new client two minutes into an initial meeting, and (b) go unprepared into a session with a key advertiser. But the moments pass and Weiner rights the ship quickly, as with this key Draperism in the (b) scene:

Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are OK.

That is flat-out good writing, and it deserves whatever awards it will garner. (It is beautifully delivered by Jon Hamm, who also deserves his awards and nominations.)

There are other areas in which Mad Men occasionally overdoes it (as Six Feet Under did with its mock advertisements in early episodes, a trope quickly dropped). The cultural superiority you feel when Joan says that the new IBM typewriter was designed so a woman could use it, or when Betty Draper shows no reaction to her daughter playing with a plastic bag over her head -- the nail in those instances is being hammered just a little too gleefully. We get it. Similarly, Bryan Batt seems to have been encouraged to over-telegraph Sal's homosexuality; we get that, too, and in the early going it doesn't shape up as one of the series' more promising storylines (but I'm only a few episodes in).

But the splendid moments far outnumber the missteps. Don rejecting Pete's offered handshake in silhouette -- Harry Crane speculating on Draper --

Draper? Who knows anything about that guy? No one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know.

-- January Jones's hurting quality as Betty: these are phenomenal. (Jones is like a Tippi Hedren with superior acting skill -- Hitchcock would have been all over her.)

POSTSCRIPT: One aspect of the series that I don't feel is overdone is the smoking and drinking. Just as you know the "Sixties" are coming to up-end the entire Mad Men culture, you also know that the people you watch are driving themselves into an early grave. Don Draper will not live to a ripe old age: you can just tell. Even his moment as alpha stud master of the world is just that, a moment. It will be interesting to see how the series handles this if it gets to a Season Four or Five.

UPDATE (5/11/2009): I finished watching the first season a little while ago. What a phenomenal show. Don Draper's Kodak Carousel pitch in the final episode is one of the great television scenes ever.