Yes, I’m a couple years late to the party – I just recently sat through all the episodes of Mad Men season one and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I avoided the series while it was one because I just didn’t have the time for another weekly series… and I didn’t want to get involved with something in the middle. I had a feeling I would like the show, but I really underestimated just how much I do.

First off, my reaction was – this sure looks a lot like the 1960′s movie of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. And I’m sure that was an inspiration for the look of the piece. But as it continued on and grew on me and I did some research into what other people were saying about the show, I began to connect to it on a deeper and more nostalgic level.

I spent my early childhood in the 80′s – but in Taiwan. I’d like to think that Taiwan in the 80′s was a lot more like Manhattan in the 60′s. So despite being the MTV generation, my memories of my father as an engineer working along other horn-rimmed glasses wearing shirts with tight cross patterns in the office, closely resembles the art direction of Mad Men. That world and lifestyle was the basis of why I decided to go into business school. It’s considered “nerd chic” by today’s standards… but it was how I remember my father.

And the relationships… the core to any show that wants to stay on the air after the initial “novelty” value wears off. Don Draper is Jay Gatsby, and he does suck you in, but it’s everybody else on the show that keeps you hooked. As much as Draper’s past is interesting, it would have been boring if that was the only thing going on. I don’t think I could say that about House where it’s really the title character and everybody else is just a side show.

A couple critiques against the show that I have read and I will tend to agree with. First off the pacing of each particular episode is very slow. If I were watching this one hour at a time with a week in between, I think I might have bailed. It’s too slow for episodic – it’s marvelous if you can sit down in a few sessions and watch the whole season. Even then there were some episodes that just felt like the story never moved along.

The second critique was the “look how much better we know now” air that the show has. Yes, the first few episodes had quite a few shockers about how the women are treated, their blindness at the long term damage smoking causes, and a bunch of other things that we know much better now (I was waiting for a sucker punch on the Nixon thing, but they played it very historically accurate and classy). But as I’m starting to learn – these little novelty items are always stuffed into the first few shows for titillation and then they back off. I saw it in Californication where the first few episodes were choked full of nudity and then the T&A factor petered away.

I have a lot to ponder as I think about this show and how it affected me… So many subtleties in direction, visual language, story… This isn’t over…

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