Mad Men: The Best Show on TV?

I LOVE Mad Men. Love it. From the very first season, I've been intrigued by this show with such stunning directing, writing, and acting. Anyone who's a fan of The Sopranos knows that it was a show where the directors could subtly play with light and dark, where the writers knew how to take already fascinating characters and give them dark secrets to make them even more intriguing, and actors who knew how to take all these elements and make the most of them on screen. Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, was a writer on The Sopranos, and he certainly picked up a LOT while working there.

Seasons 1 and 2 were brilliant, but so far season 3 is my favourite. I think 6 episodes have aired already, and every week I keep meaning to write up something on it, but I keep missing the boat. So I'm writing this on Friday (while Dollhouse is actually on, but my husband is currently commandeering the TV catching up on last night's Flashforward and I'm FREAKING that I'm not watching Dollhouse in real time here!!) to post it on Sunday.

This season finds all of the characters in transition. Don and Betty have just had a new baby, and for the first few episodes, Betty was still pregnant and dealing with her ailing and aging father, who suddenly died right before she gave birth. For me, this is one of the most fascinating and horrific storylines yet -- no, not the whole father dying bit, but what it was like being pregnant in the 1960s!!! ZOMG. First of all, the maternity clothes were HIDEOUS, making this gorgeous woman look like she's wearing a tent the entire time. She smokes, drinks, and does whatever she wants while pregnant. No one worries about her "condition," even if she mentions it every once in a while, and there's no judgement against her for doing things. While I don't smoke or drink, and therefore had to give up nothing for my pregnancies, I have friends who would go out to a restaurant and have a small glass of wine and the looks they endured from people at nearby tables made them wither and push the glass away, ordering a water instead. (But at least their maternity clothes were more fashionable!) And that doesn't even BEGIN to cover the actual birth scene. Yowzers. It's white, sterile, clinical, and they pump so many drugs into Betty's poor frame it's a wonder that kid didn't have to go on methodone as soon as he was born just to deal with the immense withdrawal. Don walks her into the hospital, where she's promptly put into a wheelchair, he's told "your work is done now" and he ends up having an excruciating wait for several hours in the waiting room while Betty deals with nurses who know better, doctors who just jab her with needles to knock her out constantly, and hallucinations that are both vibrant and terrifying. I, on the other hand, remember coming into the hospital through emergency where I had to walk the length of the hospital to the bank of elevators that would take me to triage, and I had to stop every minute to have another contraction against the wall. Where was MY wheelchair??!! Oh, I kid. I'd take that any day over the horrible way they depicted it here. And today's generation often says, "And imagine those fathers who just sat around doing nothing in the waiting rooms" like they were somehow layabouts. I can tell you my husband would have much rather been with me, knowing what was happening, than pacing a waiting room for 20 hours not knowing a thing. And then there's the Bety staying in the hospital for a week, and Don going back to work a couple of hours after the baby was born...

But anyway, on to the rest of the show. There's an early scene where Roger and his ex-wife meet to discuss the impending wedding of their daughter, and the daughter tells the father that in no way does she want his new young wife to be there, because it'll embarrass her in front of everyone. He tells her that there's no way he's going to leave his wife at home, and looks at his ex, picks up the invite and says he'll be sure to tell his wife the date. (The kicker: the date on the invite was November 23, the day after JFK's assassination will be.) He later tells Don that he's not going to let his wife win this one, but clearly he's not considering his daughter at all. War among the exes at the expense of the children, sadly, is not something that had changed at all, even with 50 years under our belts.

Peggy is considering a change of her own, as she's not making nearly the money that the other copy writers are, and is being courted by another agency. Will she go? Meanwhile, Joan's husband was supposed to become the chief resident of the hospital, and she put in her notice to coincide with the day he was going. And then he doesn't get the position and tells her that she'll have to go back to work, which she can't imagine doing now that they've all had a party for her. Will Peggy leave, and Joan will go with her?

Sal has a brief flirtation with fabulousness as he not only gets caught with a busboy by Don in a hotel, but he performs a Broadway routine in the bedroom and his wife finally has that look in her eye like, "Oh. So THAT'S why you're not totally into this whole sex thing..." I wanted this to be the season of Sal, but that might have been it. Oh, and Pete Campbell and his wife perform a choreographed dance for the ages in the first episode that had me in stitches.

Meanwhile, the Brits have taken over the company, and in this past episode (my fave of the season so far), a young buck shows up from England, having gone to the London School of Economics, and he will be taking over as one of the heads, along with Don and Bertram (he forgot to add Roger's name to the flowchart). But Cosgrove, in the meantime, had just landed the John Deere account, and he brings one of their new riding mowers into the office. At the big good-bye party for Joan, everything is going swimmingly, and then Lois decides to hop on the lovely riding mower and ride it around the office. Unfortunately she forgot about the blades, and gets too close to the young Brit... and then this happens.

One of the craziest and funniest moments EVER on Mad Men (and that gif never gets old for me!) Only made funnier by Kinsey telling Roger that he might lose his foot, and Roger replying, "Just when he got it in the door" as a guy is squeegeeing the blood off the windows in the background. My husband and I were laughing our heads off, all the while horrified at the same time.

I wish Mad Men lasted the entire year. I can't believe it's almost done already. Why can't there be more episodes?? Right now, it's the best show on television (while Lost isn't running, of course!) and I think it's extraordinary.

And I'll mention once again that if you haven't already, pick up a copy of Jesse McLean's Kings of Madison Avenue, a book the establishes the socio-political context of the show, and which has made me watch this new season in a completely new and intriguing light.