Mad Men

Mad Men
File:Madmen.jpg
Genre	Drama
Created by	Matthew Weiner
Starring	See Cast and characters
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	13 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	Matthew Weiner
Running time	60 min. (with commericals)
Original release
Network	AMC
Release	July 19, 2007 – present

Mad Men is an American television drama series set and produced in New York City. Created by The Sopranos writer and executive producer Matthew Weiner, the series is broadcast on cable network AMC. It takes place in 1960 at the fictional Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency on New York City's Madison Avenue and centers around a high-level advertising executive and the people in his life in and out of the office; it also depicts some of the social mores of late 1950s America that were soon to change. Mad Men premiered on July 19 2007, and was given an initial production of 13 episodes. After the airing of the pilot, the series received critical praise for its historical accuracy and visual style.

Origin

Creator Matthew Weiner wrote the spec script for the pilot of Mad Men in 2000 when he was working as a staff writer for Becker; television producer David Chase recruited Weiner to work as a writer on his HBO series The Sopranos after reading the script. Chase remarked about the script and its author: "It was lively and it had something new to say. Here was someone [Weiner] who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism." Weiner set the pilot script aside for the next seven years, until The Sopranos was completing its final season – and cable network AMC happened to be in the market for a new original series.

Themes

Some of the most salient aspects of Mad Men, which were accepted facets of society in the late 1950s and early 1960s, include smoking, drinking (alchoholic beverages), sexism, and racial bias. Smoking, which was more common circa 1960, is featured throughout the series; almost every character can be seen smoking multiple times in the course of one episode. In the pilot, representatives of Lucky Strike cigarettes come to Sterling Cooper looking for a new advertising campaign in the wake of a Reader's Digest report that smoking will lead to various health issues including lung cancer. It was not uncommon for businessmen, like advertising executives, to have large quantities of alcohol on a daily basis; sometimes, food breaks in the office were referred to as the three martini lunch. Men were considered to be superior to women, and what would be considered today as sexual harassment was then far from illegal; overt sexism against women was not uncommon either. Engagement and marriage, for men, did not preclude relationships with other women; this is exemplified by Draper's and Pete's affairs with Midge and Peggy, respectively. Racial discrimination was common in workplaces; at the time, employees who did not have a WASP-like ethnic background were rare.

Cast and characters

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is the creative director of Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency; Draper is the series' protagonist. Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) is the naive "new girl" at Sterling Cooper, and is Draper's new secretary. Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) is a young junior account manager who sexually pursues Peggy, despite his pending marriage. Betty (January Jones) is Draper's wife, and mother of their two children. Joan (Christina Hendricks) is the office manager at Sterling Cooper, and she acts as a professional and social mentor to Peggy. Roger Sterling (John Slattery) is one of the partners of Sterling Cooper, and a good friend of Don Draper. Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt), an art illustrator, is engaged in an affair with Draper. Paul (Michael Gladis), Ken (Aaron Stanton), and Harry (Rich Sommer) are two account executives and a media buyer, respectively, who help Pete plan his bachelor party; they are Pete's entourage to some extent. Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff) is the head of a department store who befriends Draper after she comes to Sterling Cooper in search of an advertising agency to represent her business. Salvatore (Bryan Batt) is the (possibly homosexual) art director at Sterling Cooper, and a rare member of an ethnic minority to be employed there.

Reception

Critical response to Mad Men was generally favorable. Viewership for the premiere at 10:00 p.m. on July 19, 2007, was higher than any other AMC original series to date. The Los Angeles Times said that the show had found "a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness". A New York Times reviewer called the series groundbreaking for "luxuriating in the not-so-distant past." The San Francisco Chronicle called Mad Men "stylized, visually arresting […] an adult drama of introspection and the inconvenience of modernity in a man's world". A Chicago Sun-Times reviewer described the series as an "unsentimental portrayal of complicated 'whole people' who act with the more decent 1960 manners America has lost, while also playing grab-ass and crassly defaming subordinates." The reaction at Entertainment Weekly was similar, noting how in the period in which Mad Men takes place, "play is part of work, sexual banter isn't yet harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt, and countercultural confusion." The show also received critical praise for its historical accuracy – mainly its depictions of gender and racial bias, sexual harassment in the workplace, and the high prevalence of smoking and drinking.

On June 20 2007, a consumer activist group called Commercial Alert filed a complaint with the United States Distilled Spirits Council alleging that Mad Men sponsor Jack Daniel's whiskey was violating liquor advertising standards since the show features "depictions of overt sexual activity" as well as irresponsible intoxication.

Production

Mad Men is shot on film and is broadcast in standard definition. It has been converted to high definition for video-on-demand availability from various cable affiliates. Though Matthew Weiner's script for the pilot of Mad Men pre-dates The Sopranos, HBO, according to Weiner, was not interested in producing his script. Alan Taylor, a director of multiple episodes of The Sopranos, directed the pilot of Mad Men and some subsequent episodes. The writers, including Weiner, amassed volumes of research on the period in which Mad Men takes place so as to make all aspects of the series – including detailed set designs, costume design, and props – historically accurate, producing an authentic visual style that garnered critical praise. On the copious scenes featuring smoking, Weiner stated that "Doing this show without smoking would've been a joke. It would've been sanitary and it would've been phony." Since the actors could not, by law, smoke real cigarettes, they instead smoked herbal cigarettes.

The opening sequence features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of a business man in freefall, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of advertising posters and billboards. In promotion for the show, AMC aired multiple commercials and a behind the scenes documentary on the making of Mad Men. The commercials, as well as the documentary, featured the song "You Know I'm No Good" by Amy Winehouse. The documentary, in addition to trailers and sneak peeks of upcoming episodes, were made available at the official AMC website. Mad Men was also made available at the iTunes Store on July 20 2007, for the standard price of $1.99 per episode with a $24.99 Season Pass; the "making of" documentary was featured as a free download.