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57 comments in total

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96 out of 128 people found the following comment useful :-
a losing campaign, 24 July 2008
Author: gurghi-2 from Lexington, Kentucky

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Three episodes was enough. I got it: the 60s were racist, sexist, unhealthy, and unsafe. (Also, very stylish.) And aren't we viewers today so smart for knowing better?

Must every character be such a louse? So tiresome. Not that they need be likable; The Sopranos was riveting, yet almost entirely devoid of anybody I'd ever want to be actual friends with. The difference, in the 3 episodes of this I saw, is that where The Sopranos insisted that the viewer be held responsible, Mad Men seems content to be superior. It wants to both revel in the tawdry details and be righteously outraged at the outdated mores it puts on display. I don't much care for either, and a television show that asks me to do both pushes the limits of my credulity. I could feel my strings being pulled.

No, Don's 'big secret' wasn't enough for me to keep watching- and when I was told what it is, I wasn't sorry in the least. Snoresville.

Undoubtedly there are many, many shows on television that are much, much worse. I don't watch them, either.

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124 out of 217 people found the following comment useful :-
Every Episode Is Exactly the Same, & Never More Than Mediocre, 2 September 2007

Author: Xander Seavy (RiffRaffMcKinley) from United States

I stuck it out with "Mad Men" for a few weeks. I was trying to see the fantastic new show everybody kept talking about. Sadly, it wasn't there. I think people like it because it's the first scripted AMC series since "Hu$tle," because of the colors, and because it comes from Matthew Weiner of "The Sopranos." The few things I like about it are mostly style and atmosphere, not story or performance quality. In fact, the stories are very similar-- it's kind of like a miniseries that is now running indefinitely-- and the performances are actually very bad, except from Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss-- and the lines they deliver are still not that impressive. The attitude of "Go ahead and do this stuff-- it's not gonna kill you" would have been interesting back when we first found out that the products these people sold actually killed us. However, the show now feels clunky and dated. Then, of course, there is the sex that happens in (at least what seems like) every episode. It's almost as if viewers would dry up and crumble if they watched a show where everybody kept their clothes on. All that aside, this isn't a bad show-- just an insipidly bland and indistinguishable one.

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105 out of 183 people found the following comment useful :-
Going Nowhere, 14 August 2008

Author: thomdavid from California, United States

I am generally not a fan of series TV shows, since I don't have much time to devote to them. Still, having heard the hype surrounding "Mad Men," and seeing that the entire first season was being repeated on InDemand, I figured to make the time commitment.

The first few episodes were strong, well-written, and full of promises to come (or at least I thought). Every show of this type needs to establish its characters, relationships, and plot points. But with each successive episode, I began to get a vaguely unsettling sense that the show was actually going nowhere.

Soon, little things became bigger and bigger annoyances: I began to notice an almost fetishistic obsession with "things:" typewriters, fish sticks, bric-a-brac, as if the art director wasn't confident in his ability to establish a time period without beating us over the head with how "authentic" everything was (and it isn't, as I know this period well). Then, lead Jon Hamm plastered a single expression on his face and left it there, episode after episode, something between chronic constipation and wizened incredulity, and even the charms (there are many)of Christina Hendricks couldn't overcome my irritation.

So much could have gone right with this show, that to see how much has gone wrong is downright painful. If you're gonna write a show about reprehensible people (and nearly everyone in "Mad Men" is exactly that), then you either better have a kick-ass plot (think "The Sopranos") or give me a reason to care about what happens to the characters. Sadly, "Mad Men" fails on both points. It coulda been, but probably never will.

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114 out of 204 people found the following comment useful :-
Yet Another Hyped-Up Disappointment, 1 August 2008

Author: Gawain O'Donnell from United States

This is apparently becoming the norm in TV Executive circles: If your show doesn't appeal to the public, just hype it, hype it and hope the press doesn't notice.

What those tactics bring to the networks I really don't know. What I do know is that because of them, we are bombarded with shows that are really not that good and that are sold to us are being, somehow, great.

Case in point is Mad Men, a dread, colorless, poorly acted series. It's a show that just does not add up to much and definitely does not hold the attention, as exemplified by its ratings which were dismal.

But we are told that it's supposed to be great. Well, Emmy Academy, "supposed to" does not make it great, but it does make the Emmys into a joke.

And it leaves us stranded with yet another bad show that will not die.

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73 out of 125 people found the following comment useful :-
"Mad" About You!, 20 July 2007

Author: ldavis-2 from lalaland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I watched only because I love the period covered. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to root for somebody. Instead, I had the "pleasure" of wasting an hour of my life on an amoral prick with a Beatnik Bimbo in the city and a clueless Marilyn Monroe look-a-like wife stashed in the suburbs. The other characters are even more one-dimensional: the men are horny a-holes, and the women (save for the token lesbian researcher) are ambitious sluts! So what the hell else is new?!

As the sneak preview made a big deal out of how "period" this was, I Googled the Reader's Digest article that had the characters' panties in a collective bunch. "Cancer by the Carton" warned that the new low-tar cigarettes which promised a "healthier smoke" were anything but. It was published in 1952 -- 8 years before the series is set!

At least the Big Tobacco Big Shot was right about the (pre-Columbian) Native Americans "giving us" tobacco. In case anyone cares, tobacco as used today was perfected by a Frenchman named Jean Nicot, for whom Nicotine was named.

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79 out of 138 people found the following comment useful :-
Yet Another Hyped-Up Snoozefest, 22 September 2008

Author: Leonardo VanZandt from United States

Amazing the types of shows Hollywood will spend its money hyping...

Mad Men is pretty much the exact opposite of what you'd expect reading the hype.

It's dull, boring, uninspiring and features really, really dull and wooden performances, especially by the lead who is as expressive as a piece of carved wood.

If you need a show to watch to put you to sleep, Mad Men is your show.

If you want quality, you'll learn to avoid shows that get "emmy recognition" for what they are: hyped-up snoozefests.

Just another bad show.

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89 out of 159 people found the following comment useful :-
Lacks a spark, 12 September 2008

Author: robert-laird from United States

When this series first came out I watched it...at least the first four episodes. It looks good, the sets, the wardrobe, the actors general look. I grew up in that era and can remember what is was like. I lost interest when I came to the conclusion that the characters were all clichés, the dialogue consisted of actors making speeches to each other and the stories were boring.

I also had a problem with the amount of smoking and drinking that occurred. It soon became a distraction. Even if offices that allowed smoking and drinking, they would have never allowed as much as happens during Mad Men.

I would not recommended this series to anyone. It reminds me of a product I used to purchase, Fiddy-Faddle. The box was interesting, but what was inside was only popcorn.

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94 out of 169 people found the following comment useful :-
Not what it seemed to be, 12 September 2007

Author: Jiri Fiala (stooovie@volny.cz) from Brno, Czech Republic

This show started off brilliantly, like edgy view of a period that is constantly being imagined as naive and kind. It's nicely lit and shot, acting is very good. First episode was brilliant, writing was razor sharp and well observed.

But during the first season, the show seemed to lost its focus. It sort of jumps between business, politics, personal lives and love affairs. It lacks consistency. None of these themes is fully approached and realized. I for one think it should focus a lot more on the business side of things. This way the show could work as a vehicle for revealing principles of advertising to the audience, which is bound to be interesting for the show's demographic. Too bad it doesn't.

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29 out of 41 people found the following comment useful :-
Boring and Uninvolving, 12 November 2008

Author: Aaron Tuffin from United States

If this is the Best TV can offer, then maybe it's time to trade in your TV for something more productive.

In truth, Mad Men is very, very, very far away from the best TV can offer.

Mad Men is boring, trite and poorly acted. That its channel has decided to hype it to high heaven and went so far as to mount massive PR campaigns to get it awards it doesn't deserve only shows that bad taste and lack of respect for the audience reign in parts of Hollywood.

Speaking of bad quality, Jon Hamm has to be one of the worst actors in his generation. He is as emotive as a piece of cardboard (or perhaps wood) and deadpans most of his scenes in a fashion that kills what little excitement there may have been.

Overall, this is yet another example of Hollywood hyping a bad product and they really need to learn that quality will prevail in the end, not hype.

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81 out of 145 people found the following comment useful :-
It's just like a retro ad! It's nice to look at, but lifeless..., 5 September 2008

Author: judrmo from United States

I really wanted to like "Mad Men", but you shouldn't have to force yourself to enjoy something. The set designs and costumes are great, and they really seem to capture the era they represent very well, but the acting and story lines leave much to be desired. Much of the acting is done in a style in which the actors don't seem to allow themselves to actually take on the persona of their character, which results in a very wooden performance. The storyline moves very slowly and ironically advertises the business of advertising as a very boring and simple career which anyone could succeed at, which I hope for the sake of advertisers is not true. This show has received rave reviews from many publications, but that may just be a response to the lack of good dramatic television and the fear of a reality television takeover. While I do think that "Mad Men" is a step in the right direction in terms of 'New American Television', I don't think it's as magnificent as it's been touted to be by other critics, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, unless of course a better baby is on the way...

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