Mad about Mad Men - But Not in a Good Way

I’ve heard raves upon raves for this show. A year ago, curiosity got to me, so I borrowed Season One from the library (first I watched the pilot episode on www.news-bite.com). Excellent acting, crisp dialog, poignant camera angles. I hated it. The whole thing left me with a queasy feeling, mostly because of the horrible attitudes toward women. And how perkily the women accepted their fate. Okay, I realize it was 1960. Attitudes were different. But why would I want to watch something that made me feel so demoralized? I returned the DVDs to the library. In the year since, one of my sisters, who shares my TV taste (oh, the hours we’ve spent rhapsodizing over Lost, Six Feet Under, Dexter and Glee) began renting the show. She insisted that I would love it. She did. Her friends did. Everyone did. I’m a second chances kind of person, so I borrowed it again. Having already seen the first episode, I watched it with the screenwriter’s commentary turned on. His comments masked most of the dialog and were interesting from an artistic viewpoint. Hmmm, now that I knew what his vision was, maybe I could watch this with the commentary turned off. Five minutes into episode two, my fists clenched, my jaw tightened. But I persevered. There must be a reason why this was the critics’ darling. It was jam-packed with irony - doctors smoking, ulcer sufferers drinking milk laced with vodka for their health. And who could resist all the “we’re so much smarter now” gags such as when a little girl runs around with a laundry bag over her head and her mother harshly warns her not to dirty the dry cleaning. But irony and gags only go so far...