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This weekend, like a lot of people, I watched all of Mad Men on OnDemand. It’s a good show with a lot of potential, but not quite the second coming of The Sopranos it’s being made out to be (yet). But there’s nothing else on, and the media hype machine abhors a vacuum. One amusing running gag afforded by the show’s 1960s setting are the behaviors that would seem completely ridiculous now but were normal then, like smoking in hospitals. The show can’t use them for much longer, but they’re fun for now. Some lovely person has gone and made a “Top 10 Un-PC Moments On Mad Men” video on YouTube that surprisingly doesn’t include the scene where a very pregnant Francine drinks wine while smoking, but provides a nice overview:
I would have placed the dry cleaning bag scene at #1 because it’s probably the funniest scene on the show so far.
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It’s WAY better than the Sopranos. For one, it doesn’t have all those boring interchangeable counseling sessions or stupid dream sequences…
Well there were ‘dream’ sequences and also counseling but I never felt like fast forwarding through them.
Also, the #1 is rather gross but mostly because, why would you want to sleep with someone not Joan?
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What makes it good for me is that I’m sure the 50s were actually really truly that bad or worse. It’s better than sexist/racist jokes used for ironic comedy.
Though, the fact that Peggy doesn’t know she’s pregnant until she GIVES BIRTH was definitely overkill. It’s not like she was an overweight mother of 12.
Should have put more of an emphasis on the qualifiers “boring” and “interchangeable” in front of dream sequences and counseling, yes.
Max, if the “blatant free-reign use” sexism and racism gets to you, take it up with the reigning consensus in America during that time, not the show. Not to say things are as different as we’d like to think now either…
And as far as the writing being not so good, well, no accounting for taste/takes all kinds/to each his own, and so on and so forth.
What makes the white sexist characters so sympathetic (at least to me) is their boundless ability to suffer greatly yet be entirely blind to the fact that blacks and women also suffer– to a greater degree. I love that tension between awareness and a complete lack thereof. Very Sopranos-like. Highly pitiable. It’s sick how much I love to talk about TV.
i think she knew but was in denial