Mad Men - Season One DVD Movie by Lions Gate Product Tags: mad men, mad men season, men season, season one	Rating:  Read Reviews (140) Write Comments/Review Price Drop Alert Add to my Wish List Tag This Product

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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful: A brilliant and evocative re-creation of America at childhood's end 9/14/2008 Wow, this series just took my breath away. It is a deeply thoughtful re-creation of America in 1960, as seen through the lives of the people at a fictional ad agency in New York City. This is a period of time that has rarely been explored in modern cinema. I was a small child in the 1960s, but I still have vivid memories of that time. America in 1960 was right at the cusp of sweeping social change. In 1964, LBJ passed the landmark Civil Rights Act; in 1965 he escalated the war in Vietnam. In 1968, assassinations, riots, the Tet offensive, the sexual revolution, the rise of youth power (from what later became known as the baby boomers), and the election of Richard Nixon as President would start a long period that would completely re-make American society. We are indeed a much different society today than in 1960, but the true genius of "Mad Men" is that there is a much deeper layer to the way the series underscores the differences between then and now. I remember the sharply defined gender roles, the men going to work wearing formal suits and ties, the women and their pointy bras, the incessant cigarette smoking (I hated cigarette smoke then and still do), the frequent presence of hard liquor (the style of new American houses of that era included built-in mini-bars for hard liquor and mixed drinks), and the casual racism (I remember seeing a "whites only" public drinking fountain for the first time as a child, and asking my mother what that was all about). Homosexuality was something almost unheard of, and definitely not discussed in polite company. Government sponsored warnings were about marijuana and unbecoming dating habits, not about cigarettes, alcohol, or the dangers of large plastic bags. All of these aspects of 1960s culture are strikingly featured in "Mad Men". The characters in "Mad Men" move about in realistic 1960s fashion - all men smoked back then, because they picked up the habit while in the armed forces, which gave out cigarettes in the ration packs. Married men screwed around regularly in secret, illegitimate children were conveniently packed off for adoption (as a child, in school, it was common to find schoolmates who were adopted), and the wives kept silent and divorces were far fewer than they are now. A gay character in the series has an encounter but has to closet his feelings. We think we are so much smarter and better now than we were in 1960. In this time of Barack Obama, we are talking about a post-racist American society. We have sex education, we have birth control, we have legalized abortion, we have Mothers Against Drunk Driving and police sobriety checkpoints (Roger Sterling would surely have lost his driver's license in today's world), and in case that fails, we have air bags inside the cars. We have smoke-free airplanes, homes, restaurants, hospitals, etc. Smokers are treated like lepers (yea!). Women are empowered, we have Title IX, we have mandatory sexual harassment training in the corporate workplace, we have community property for marriages. But are we really so much better off today than we were in 1960? By some health standards we are. Average life spans have increased. Traffic fatalities per mile driven were far, far higher back then than they are now. Men used to just keel over and die from a "coronary" when only in their 50's and 60's. That rarely happens anymore. Racism has in fact not gone away, only changed in the details. Poor African-Americans in the cities have gone from being openly repressed to being incarcerated. And even though Hollywood now has black actors in every single movie or TV show (one suspects a quota system), many other minorities are still underrepresented. Muslims and Arabs are now the Negroes of the entertainment industry, portrayed only in stereotypical blackface. And as unrealistic as the ideal nuclear family in 1960 may seem to us now, it was very real for the children of that time. I do remember that children were much better off then. We children played freely in the streets and backyards without parental supervision. Children usually had two parents, not one. Most children had stay-at-home moms. Parents had definite roles, parents were around, parents did not just break up and disappear as they do so often now. Today, divorces have skyrocketed, we have children completely unmonitored by either parent because both are working or absent, and the large numbers of children born out of wedlock are no longer given up for adoption to families able to take care of them. Instead it has become the norm for single mothers to try to raise children themselves, often with terrible results for both mother and child. The numbers are huge. One out of three children are now born out of wedlock, two out of three in the African-American community. Women, having become empowered in the workplace, did not at the same time also gain the super powers needed to raise children alone; many men certainly saw this empowerment thing as an opportunity to skip out on their responsibilities as fathers. Even cigarette and alcohol abuse have not been tamed so much as replaced by the worse problems of marijuana and cocaine. The year 1960 was a special and yet transient moment in time for American society, the last moments of a pre-pubescent America, still the na??ve superpower of the post-WWII era, before it began the long, agonizing transformation into the confused, liberated, legalistic, and moralistic America of today. This was a young, earnest, idealistic America that was on top of the world, one that thought it could do no wrong, thought it had the answers for everything. And so finally, at the end of this brilliant first season DVD of "Mad Men", when we look deeper into what it really tells us, we see that what it says is, my goodness, how we have changed! But have we changed all that much for the better? Thank You. Was this review helpful?
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful: Madmen Admen 9/14/2008 In some of the Hype for this show the Sopranos is mentioned, do not rate this show as anything like or as good as Sopranos, it is OK, watchable, and how it won so many awards I am not sure about. Anyway; The opening title sequence features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of a business man falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards, accompanied by a short edit of the instrumental "A Beautiful Mine" by Aceyalone and RJD2. The titles pay homage to graphic designer Saul Bass's skyscraper filled opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and falling man movie poster for Vertigo (1958) - Weiner has listed Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series. I was not impressed with the openining titles even knowing the above, it just for me did not fit in with era, and watching the 1st 2 episodes does not compliment it in anyway, it looks cheap. Don Draper(Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss aka Zoey Bartlet The West Wing) carry the first 2 episodes. Elisabeth you were so good and sexy in The West Wing, were you hard up to be in this. Its OK, but its not up there with The Sopranos, The West Wing and all the other great DVD TV packages flying out now. Thank You. Was this review helpful?
3 of 13 people found the following review helpful: Average TV Melodrama 9/10/2008 If we are to believe that MAD MEN is presenting us with an accurate portrayal of the times, people of the early 1960's aspired to be robots (or possibly corpses). The actors simulate these ludicrously reserved mannerisms because "That's how it was back then". Good white collar american automatons. "That's how it was back then" is a sentiment that's often thrown around during each episode. Lines of dialogue intend for us to think very obvious things, like: "Wasn't everything so inexpensive!". After a few episodes this formula becomes apparent and MAD MEN begins to seem like a parody of itself. This is a very contrived show, although, I am morbidly fascinated due to the fact that MAD MEN seems to be the first program protraying this era while being written by people that were born after the fact. There is not a single likeable character; partly due to the aforementioned reserve that is so greatly exaggerated, but also because there's not much depth to anyone. Our square jawed protagonist Don Drummond is supposedly a 'still waters run deep' sort of guy. This is doubtfully evinced by the camera's frequent panning of Don's patented soulful gaze. "Oh look, he's having deep thoughts!". Don doesn't do or say anything all that profound, but those silent looks are enough to convey that this adman has the spirit of a poet! The fact that MAD MEN has garnered such acclaim is a sad indication of the dregs that television programming has sunk. Who am I fooling? TV was never that great, so perhaps MAD MEN truly is the apex. Our sedentary lives are more or less about killing time, so go ahead and watch it. There's nothing else on anyway. Thank You. Was this review helpful?
LOVED it 9/10/2008 omg, we watched the entire first season over a rainy weekend and enjoyed it so much.. great parody of the crazy ways those guys lived in the 50 and 60's.. This is a great series, I hope it lasts. Thank You. Was this review helpful?
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful: Mad about Mad Men 9/10/2008 This is a great new series with brilliant writing,and directing. They have a wonderful cast that portray thier characters with delight. I highley reccomend this series for serious tv viewers. Not reccomended for the likes of reality show lovers. Thank You. Was this review helpful?
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