on mad men

“Don Draper: Stop talking and make something of yourself.
Roy: Like you? You make the lie. You invent want. You’re for them… not us.
Don Draper: Well, I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.”

I was discussing why I watch Mad Men with two different friends last week. In both conversations, we lamented the slow pace of the show, the claustrophobic airlessness in its endless scenes of offices and hallways. One friend laughed that she would fast-forward through some of the very slow scenes in the middle episodes, and still find herself watching a sedated piece of television. I tried to introduce the series to a friend, a week later, he point-blank responded that it was "shittily boring."

Yes, it's slow sometimes. But the characters, particularly the protagonist, are so compelling.


There's a theory floating around that nowadays, the best tv drama series, shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and yes Mad Men,and so on are doing the work the literary novel used to do. I fervently subscribe to that idea. It's through television that we now get the expansive, complicated, grand narratives... and i ask you-what film, what book over the past decade has given us Tony Soprano or Walt White from Breaking Bad or DON DRAPER from Mad Men?

(I know i could go read Jonathan Franzen and etc. But honestly i don't i have the necessary attention span anymore, like it or not. And i don't.)