Is anyone else watching this fabulous show?
Until "Big Love" resumes someday, and until "Battlestar Galactica" finally starts back up in November and I can stop my prayer vigil at last, I wasn't planning on watching anything on TV save for the Food Network and the occasional Daily Show/Colbert pick-me-up . . . but then a friend got me hooked on this.
What a great, matter-of-fact slice of life at the end of the 50's! On top of engaging characters and interesting storylines (though it's still not clear where they're going with a lot of it) I love how they're able to demonstrate just how much life has changed since then, and in a way that isn't hitting you over the head with it, but the impact is still there, simply in the contrast to everything we take for granted today.
Like, people smoke. All the time. And everywhere. In the car with kids, pregnant, whatever. Doesn't matter, no one even thinks about it. Same with alcohol. No one even blinks at a hugely pregnant belly pouring a second or third cocktail, nor at someone pouring themselves behind the wheel.
Child safety? Good luck even putting them in seatbelts, much less requiring car seats, much less regulation ones. A little girl walks up to her mom with a big clear plastic bag over her head. Mom's response? "You better not have messed up my dry-cleaning." Get out of line at a birthday party? If another kid's parent decides to smack you around, well, they just saved your own Mom some trouble, didn't they?
Women in the workplace? Variations-on-Secretary only, please, with precious few exceptions (ones that totally prove the rule), and harrassment is just part of the package - and it's portrayed as just that in the show, which is something that I just love in the way it's directed. When it happens, there's no swell of angsty music, that's just the way it was. And you pretty much were expected to only work until you got yourself a husband (or resigned yourself to being a spinster, of course).
Once you're at home fulfilling your destiny by pumping the babies out - having anxiety? Decide to see a shrink (a stigma in itself)? Rest assured that your psychiatrist will later call your husband and report to him on everything you confided.
Jews? Considered a controversial oddity even in NYC. Blacks? Barely even register on the radar. Asians? Just the butt of jokes.
And then there's the men . . . (In case you're wondering, "Mad Men" refers to the men of advertising agencies on Madison Avenue in the booming ad age of the fifties.)
On top of it all, it's gorgeously styled, and also features one of the sexiest women alive, in MY taste & opinion (Christina Hendricks, a.k.a. Our Miss Reynolds from "Firefly" - only she's even more stacked-to-the-rafters here, if you can believe such a thing is possible). Also, for "Angel" fans - well, see if you recognize one of the stars. I totally had to have it pointed out!
I could go on & on, even more than I already have, heh. So check it out! Tell me whatcha think!
(Note to self: Write Betty Friedan a belated thank-you note.)



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