We have been active fans of television program MADMEN, created by Matt Weiner, for the past 8 or 10 months, seeing the first 2 seasons as dvd video from our Public Library and Netflix. It has been sooo nice to see television that is worth watching. (I will have to comment elsewhere on Ken Burns' new National Parks epic, also fabulous.) I don't have much of a stomach for cop shows or CSI-style guns and hospitals interactions, and I don't go for Soprano mafia dramas, even though it is an appropriate metaphor for modern life, plus I realize Madmen's Weiner came from the Sopranos writing stable.
Although Madmen has been up and down, leaving you wondering what happened to half of the characters introduced in previous episodes, the general truth to period (the early 1960's) and quality of acting and story has remained at a very high level, and finally sets the bar for television back up where it should have been. I realize we are perhaps in another golden period of television, partly brought on by an economy that demands budget entertainment. If the human race is condemned to a future of television, as the Intel Corporation said in September: The Future is TV Shaped, then let it continue in this vein of quality. I remain amazed at how many people I meet have shows they watch, calling them their own, how important TV remains to people. Television as a medium remains hugely successful and I think challenges the personal computer for distinction as the end all of our technological path. Even now as I type on this laptop I wonder: Is this a personal computer or really just another mode of conveyance for television content? A youTube window opens up to answer me...
Anyway. Madmen is the best television I've seen since Twin Peaks. And like Twin Peaks it has had its ups and downs: the silly lawn tractor over the foot episode for instance, as Twin Peaks had some very silly motorcycle romance themes. But when Madmen is good, and it has tended to be about 70% of the time, it's very good. reminds me of the cinema of Douglas Sirk, high melodrama wrapped in well researched historical baggage. The first season followed current events of the period really well, with a particularly good playing of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This recent season, which I have not seen all episodes of, also had an adept handling of the Kennedy assasination, which was a date I felt they were avoiding or forestalling for months. The show slagged a bit as the writing team figured out how to move through 1963 towards that gruesome day, which many of us consider The End of Democracy Day, and now it's all mafia movies coming from the GOP. The political references speak to the "reality" presented on this show, a real window on that important era. Makes so-called "reality TV" look like a true joke.
