My Weekly Wonders: Mad Men

Last weekend I came down with a flu that stuck me in bed for the majority of the Easter holiday. Although my sickness was not happily accepted, it did give me an opportunity to continue a long lasting tradition. Whenever I'm sick, whether it's a few days or a week, I feed into my guilty pleasure and begin watching a new show.  This probably sounds like an unhealthy obsession that contains no productivity, but honestly when I'm sick there is no way I can be productive. So, in order to follow my past tendancies, I began watching Mad Men, a show I have been meaning to watch for quite some time. Here are my thoughts.

Although I wish I could say I would have liked the show regardless of the buzz around it, I'm not sure.  If you haven't lived in a cave for the past few years, you know that Mad Men is a widely successful show that has won numerous awards and hearts of audience members around the world. Whether you needed that cliche introduction or not, there you go! Anyway, the show is based around a 1960's advertising agency in New York called Sterling Silver. As it's genre title would alude to, the show holds much drama. Their office consists a lot of drinking, smoking, and of course a few a lot of jokes thrown in about women and Jewish people. But hey! It's the 60's. It's what they did back then apparently.

The main character on Mad Men is Don Draper, sort of the head honcho of the advertising agency, but not the main boss. I definetly don't know any terminology for what his position is, sorry! Anyway, I really enjoyed the pilot for this show because Matthew Weiner (the creator of the show, name pronounced wy-ner!) introduced Draper in a really intriguing way. He showed him in the various stages of his day, a visit to an old lover, meeting a new secretary, coming up with a pitch to a tobacco company on the spot, and having a drink and flirting with a female client. By the end of the show, Draper drives back to where we realize is his home and all of a sudden he is greeted by his wife and he kisses his children good-night. Although not something that makes you gasp exactly, I thought it did have an innovative shock value because of Draper's player-esque personality traits that we watched throughout his day. From the first episode Weiner sets up a relationship of Draper and the audience. We know about the many lives he lives, and gradually crave to see more.

So who is this Matthew Weiner, and why do I keep talking about him? Although I have never mentioned him on my blog, he has always been one of those people I have admired and wanted to learn about.  He worked on Sopranos, another hugely successful and very well done show. He's kind of become my obsession, especially after I started watching Mad Men.  I think this is partly due to my envy of his position. Getting to work on a show is one thing, but an amazing one is another. And it's not like he "got" to do anything, he truly has the talent and amazing writing capabilities that have gotten him there.

Anyway! Sorry for the creepy fan-girl paragraph... You might be thinking, "why is she so late on watching this show that has been wildly successful for four years?" Or maybe your still wondering "who the heck is this Weiner guy she keeps talking about?" Either way, Mad Men has always been on my list of shows to watch. It's not like I have an infinite amount of time to watch shows! Okay, summer doesn't count. In all honesty, last weekend I saw Mad Men on Netflix and got really excited. I have wanted to watch the show for a while now, but I wasn't sure if it was on the internet somewhere (sadly I never have time to watch anything on actual TV). We'll see if I actually have time to continue watching the show, or whether I will have to painstakingly wait until summer to continue it. In summary, the show is great. I love the writer. Yes, I'm slow on trends.