After hearing a lot about how awesome Mad Men is we finally watched it. While the Art Direction is indeed good, there’s some major problems with the show:
- The acting is not very period – it reeks of contemporary cable drama. I realize the challenge of getting actors to act like people in the 1960s, and even that it may not be desirable, since the audience might not be into it.
- The writing is a bit overconfident: Some of the history jokes and flourishes the writers add are incorrect in stupid ways:
- Flourish example: A long “brilliant” speech declares advertising is about telling people they are happy, and that everything is alright – but even an incredibly stupid advertising person could tell you that this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what advertising is about. The basic message of all advertising is “you could be MORE HAPPY THAN YOU ARE NOW with this product.” Nice try, nerds!
- Anachronism joke example: “There’s no magical machine that duplicates things” or something – making reference to the audience that there are not yet copy machines. Ho ho weren’t things primitive then! But actually there were ways to duplicate documents – they were called mimeographs.