Thursday, September 23, 2010

Mad Men

My husband recently declared that we just had to watch Mad Men because some of our friends loved it and he was sick of feeling out of the loop. Therefore, we conformed with the masses, glued our behinds to the couch and got watching. And watching we have been. Hooray for season DVD sets.

I like the show. I do. However, I'm so frustrated with the amount of skipped opportunities for tension and mystery time lapses between episodes that I want to smoke a carton of Lucky Strikes and pound a few bottles of gin, vodka and/or anything else sitting around.

People have babies and nothing more is said about it until way later, months go by making me wonder where the hell we are at the start of each episode, people argue and then are fine without any explaination, people leave meetings and we find out later that they were fired. There's plenty of tension still there, but I can't help but think of all we are losing because of missed opportunities.

Neck deep in room temperature vodka and without a secretary to bring me more ice, I pledge now to persue all avenues of tension when writing.

Interesting things about Mad Men I have noted while speeding through the first three seasons:

No one ever says "goodbye" before hanging up the phone until season three, episode nine - yet when this momentous dialogue does happen it's as if the character is offended because the person he's talking to didn't say it. For some reason, all calls in this one episode end in "goodbye". Did no one actually say goodbye in the 60's? I don't remember ever noticing that before.

In a scene where the family goes on a picnic: when they are ready to go, they pick up the picnic basket and shake out the blanket, leaving all their trash on the grass. I honestly yelled at my tv, chastising these characters for their blatant 1962 littering ways. In fact, I was still mad about it hours later. Yes, its was acurate for the time, but still infuriating with our current social consciousness.

The writers earned massive bonus points for cutting off an up and coming antagonist's foot with a lawnmower in an office in a way that totally worked. I bow to the NaNoesque absurdity of it.

Everyone will sleep with everyone else as soon as they kiss or share the slightest googly-eyed gaze unless they are gay, then they have the magical power to say no.

The first think a man will do after arriving home from a long day of drinking at the office is pour himself a drink.

You can't film a scene depicting the 60's without at least one person smoking unless its a scene in church. Even then, I'm sure they are all being directed to think about smoking.

We're almost caught up to season four. I'm finding spoilers are everywhere. Don't tell me!

6 comments:

  1. Drinking at the office? No wonder everybody went to rehab in the 70's.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's absurd - which is probably the point - how much drinking and smoking is done at work in that show. We've started a game of 'who will drink or smoke' first in each scene while watching.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Don't recall drinking actually at the office, but where I first started work back in *^&hmmpff**ty-two we didn't think twice about the occasional Friday liquid lunch. And the chap next to me chain-smoked all day long. My clothes and hair would reek of smoke by the end of the day, but nobody thought anything of it.

    How things have changed!

    ReplyDelete
  4. P.S. Yes, I had hair back then :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Having a few drinks at lunch is one thing, but a bar in every private office? heh. That's a whole new level of on the job entertainment.

    I'm so glad there's no smoking in the office anymore. I'm sure it was all that second hand smoke that made your hair disappear! :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. I recall a liquid lunch or two - special occasions at the time. But I've heard stories about 'three martini lunches' that would make anybody run for cover.

    ReplyDelete

Join the conversation. It gets lonely in here without you.