Update: I’ve written about the Mad Men women and how I think their roles will change as we wind through the ’60s at TheLoop21.com. And didn’t you love Sunday’s premiere episode? I tweeted about it several times, and Breaking Tweets Entertainment included one in a list of Mad Men tweets. Now I wish I would’ve been wittier, although to be fair, it was the first thing I did Monday morning. Can’t wait for the next episode.
If Mad Men fans ever wondered just how many people are obsessed with the show, we now know the answer: a lot, and they’re all working in media. They must be, since the estimated 1.8 million viewers per week couldn’t keep the show alive on network television, according to the critics. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, The Daily Beast, even Double X — they’re all as ready as we are for more of the undeniably sexy Don Draper and his web of complex Mad women. (I’ll write more about them soon.)
Meanwhile, here are a few of my favorite Mad Men pieces in the last couple weeks:
- Don and Betty’s Paradise Lost, Vanity Fair
I haven’t read Bruce Handy’s piece yet, although I plan to before the premiere. It’s on this list because of Annie Leibovitz’s stunning photographs, which absolutely nail the power struggle of a relationship between Don and Betty. My very favorite is the gorgeous one of them in the red car (on page 3 of the story).
- Drama confronts a dramatic decade, The New York Times
With this piece, it’s as if Fred Kaplan sat down and asked Mad Men creator/writer/executive producer Matthew Weiner everything I’ve been dying to know. Most importantly, how will the show handle the Kennedy assassination? Does he already know how long and how the show will progress? (All of the smartest shows know where they’re going early on.)
Highlights:
“What I always wanted to do,” (Weiner) said in a phone interview from his office in Los Angeles, “is to take this classic American archetype of the late 1950s, with all the trappings of that time, and see how he ends up in 1970 or ’72.”
But when asked if the season will touch on, say, the Kennedy assassination, he hesitated, then replied, “We’re going to handle everything.”
Exactly what I was hoping to hear!
- Mad Men set decorator searches for period furniture in Pasadena area stores, Los Angeles Times
Unless you live in Los Angeles, you probably won’t enjoy David A. Keeps’ piece as much as I did. For me, it was a lot of fun to read about Amy Wells browsing for pieces of the set at stores I pass all the time. I even felt a little inspired to add a more retro feel to my own place, because let’s be honest, the characters and the dialogue are only part of the reason we watch.
Photo by Carin Baer, courtesy of AMC.
Cool video of Don and Betty by YouTube’s Allure75.
