Inside TV+Movies with Daniel Fienberg

TV's Best of the Decade: No. 3 - 'Mad Men'

Matthew Weiner introduced viewers to Jon Hamm and Don Draper, taking us back to the '60s

By Daniel Fienberg Tuesday, Dec 29, 2009 2:55 PM

Jon Hamm of 'Mad Men'

Credit: AMC

Of all of the shows at the top of this list, I know that "Mad Men" is the one that's most likely to make me look foolish in five or 10 years.

No, nothing is ever going to happen to the show's first 39 episodes to make them any less satisfying. The carefully plotted arcs of each of three seasons won't be unravelled. Carefully preserved on Blu-ray discs, the show's tremendous superficial qualities won't be impacted no matter what happens to "Mad Men" as it continues its run into the next decade.

But there's something to be said for knowing how the full series played out. "Deadwood," "The Sopranos" and "Arrested Development," the three shows I placed in a block with "Mad Men," are set in amber and I've rewatched enough of all three shows to know that they aren't going to look any worse in the near future.

As for the other active shows in my Top 10, "American Idol" is unlikely to have a twist ending in which we wonder whether or not Bikini Girl whacked Kara DioGuardi (though if that happened, it might be worth a retroactive raise for the FOX competition show). It's almost built into the "Lost" DNA that the ending is going to be monumentally awesome for some fans and monumentally disappointing for others. And the legacy of "Friday Night Lights" is secure, since the writers have already hit a nadir with Season Two and crawled out of it. Even if Killer Landry strikes again, it probably won't impact my love for seasons one, three and half-of-four.

But "Mad Men" is a work-in-progress and anything could happen from here. Sure, it was a bluff when Lionsgate faked in the direction of finding a new showrunner to replace a negotiating Matthew Weiner after Season Two, but maybe next time it won't be? Or maybe Weiner will take a leap too far next season and seeing Don Draper and Joan navigating the Summer of Love will be less satisfying than we might imagine? Expectations can be a crushing thing and "Mad Men" has completed a three-season run near the top of TV's drama heap. Who knows?

All I do know is that with "Shut the Door, Have a Seat," Weiner and company ended their third season with an zippy, twist-filled finale that would have marked a satisfying series finale and definitely caps off one of the strongest creative spurts of the decade.

That's enough to place AMC's "Mad Men" at No. 3 on my list of TV's Best of the Decade.

[You know the drill by now... More after the break.]

It's good that Weiner and "Mad Men" ended their third season with one of the show's best episodes, because I did my pre-list re-viewing (I've been doing pilots, finales and favorite episodes since I finished my "Battlestar Galactica" marathon) on what is probably the show's worst episode: The pilot.

Award voters disagree with me here. Weiner won an Emmy for writing "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and far be it for me to question the wisdom of said voters. It's the episode that put "Mad Men" on the map and that made AMC a player in the original scripted drama business.

Personally, I like the idea that a show could start with a pilot which seemed perfectly decent and even, possibly, exceptional at the time and simply outgrow it. That's what happened with "Mad Men."

Weiner's primary previous credit was "The Sopranos," where he was credited writer on many of the best episodes in the show's final season. He came off of one show about slovenly murderers in modern times and created another show about impeccably attired murderers in 1960. Yes, the advertising masterminds in "Mad Men" are dressed to kill, but the pilot finds our main characters struggling with the challenge of how to market cigarettes in an environment in which people were finally realizing the health risks associated with the cancer sticks. It turned out that the risk of death was less important than the aesthetic and short-term physiological advantages. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) recognizing that the way people live their lives and the way people say they want to live their lives are often at odd and that, in the end, people just want to be told "You are OK." The tag line of the show was "Where the truth lies" and those sort of superficial ironies abounded.

Now don't get me wrong, here. "Mad Men" has always been a show built on ironies contrasting surface and substance, the part of your life where you sell something and pretend to be something else and the part where you have to be who and what you really are. For the better part of 38 episodes, that has been a theme. In the pilot, the ironies are shouted and over-articulated to the rafters. For a series usually so subtle at detonating its various emotional bombs, "Mad Men" got a pilot where little mushroom clouds are flying everywhere.

In the pilot, you see the broad strokes that got wisely smudged and replaced as the series progressed. Or maybe they weren't smudged and replaced so much as Weiner decided that, having practically exposed the underbelly in the pilot, he never needed to shout so loudly again. Don Draper's insecurity at being replaced by a younger version of himself (Vincent Kartheiser's Pete) was wisely put on the backburner so that Draper's real insecurity in the first season was being supplanted the former version of himself, Dick Whitman. Joan Holloway's (Christina Hendricks) tour for new girl Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) is a pilot highlight, but it was so blatant and on-the-nose that Joan didn't need to make "Find yourself a husband!" and "Show more flesh!" speeches again and could become more ingratiating and awesomely insidious. And poor closeted Sal Romano (Bryan Batt), after objectifying every hunk of man-meat in the pilot like a Tex Avery wolf, was able to return to a point where you could almost imagine his co-workers not knowing he was gay. Weiner had to get these things out up-front so that they could get reburied within the text.

Weiner also had to make sure that you knew this was 1960. The historically driven dramatic irony was the thing I disliked most about the pilot when I first saw it, which I asked about at the show's very first TCA panel, and which plays the worst now after seeing how well Weiner has subsequently avoided the pitfalls. The "Mad Men" pilot is glutted with lines that are intended to make contemporary viewers chuckle at the quaintness and ignorance of the characters in their practically pre-historic plight. Multi-line phones? Typewriters? No such thing as a Xerox? Dick Nixon? Hilarious! Only not really. What "Mad Men" figured out, almost immediately, was how to live in the 1960s exclusively, rather than living in a 2000s-filtered version of the decade. [The third season fell victim to a minor relapse with the death march to Kennedy's assassination, but that event felt so formative and unavoidable that I was in a forgiving mood, even if it was a bit like yelling, "Watch out for icebergs," to a passenger embarking on the Titanic.]

The dumbest thing that pilot does, and non-critics probably don't even remember this as being an issue, is treating Betty Draper (January Jones) and Don's children as a shocking twist. We were supposed to be amazed that after 43 minutes of tomcatting around New York City, even proposing marriage to Bohemian Midge, that Don returned to the suburbs to a white picket fence suburbia. Reviewers were actually asked not to reveal the end of the episode, which reduced Don's domestic life to a cheap punchline, rather than the very real source of drama that they would become.

That doesn't mean that the "Mad Men" pilot fails to set many of the show's templates.

Perhaps in part because it's the only show in my entire Top 10 that aspires to any kind of cinematic glossiness, "Mad Men" stands uncontested as the decade's handsomest show, setting a difficult-to-top standard for cinematography (Phil Abraham and Chris Manley primarily), art direction and production design (Christopher Brown and Dan Bishop, plus a vast team), costuming (Katherine Jane Bryant), plus hair and makeup. What "Deadwood" did for frontier grime, "Mad Men" did for 1960s glamour, except that you have magazines claiming that "Mad Men" has helped reshape contemporary fashions, while Consumptive Cowboy Chic never really caught on in Manhattan.

The pilot also established the beloved Don Draper Is Magical moment. As long as viewers get four or five of these moments every season, we're happy. It's the moment where the clients are getting anxious and where suddenly Don Draper's eyes go blank. A little bit of music plays in the background and then Don makes the Greatest Pitch Known To Man, usually snatched from the heavens. In this instance, Don Draper isn't just The World's Best Ad Man, he's also The Most Sincere Man in the World. It's the "Mad Men" equivalent of the House/Wilson moment where The Good Doctor grabs the impossible diagnosis from a snippet of his best friend's conversation. Don Draper doesn't need a Wilson, though, since he has Dick Whitman.

Really, what the pilot establishes better than anything is Jon Hamm, who prompted a feeling of instant revelatio, sending more than a few of us scurrying off to the IMDB on "Where the heck should I know him from?" missions. Perhaps if I'd watched "The Division" or "Providence," I might have recognized Hamm, but maybe not. I didn't exactly remember him from "What About Brian" or "Point Pleasant."

Not to put too much pressure on Hamm, but he's emerged as the central and perhaps lone figure fighting to reclaim American masculinity on television in the Aughts. Hamm is doing on TV what George Clooney is doing in movies, which is holding off the invading foreign hoards with their generic Mid-Atlantic accents. It was a decade in which, more and more, casting directors determined that if you wanted a manly American character, you had to look across the pond, that no matter how sketchy their accents might be, it was better to cast a Simon Baker, Damian Lewis, Kevin McKidd, Jason O'Mara, Stephen Moyer or Jonny Lee Miller than to attempt to find an American capable of providing the same machismo. And those were the more successful examples. Does anybody remember "Viva Laughlin" star Lloyd Owen? Will anybody remember "Past Life" star Nicholas Bishop in five months? And how quickly can we forget about Joseph Fiennes on "FlashForward"? Casting directors starting looking elsewhere because their needs weren't being met at home.

It's a safe bet that Jon Hamm had gone through his career being rejected for parts because his jaw was too square, his smile too broad and because his gift for excessive sincerity came across as inherently insincere. No casting director probably would have articulated it in this way, but he was being rejected for looking too much like a 1950s or 1960s movie star, for being born in the wrong era. Then, thanks to Matt Weiner, Hamm found the perfect vehicle.

There are many lead male acting performances in the decade that I would say were "better," from a technical standpoint. I'm thinking Gandolfini, Laurie and McShane (others will surely add Bryan Cranston and Michael Chiklis). But Hamm's performance as Don Draper is the decade's definitive star turn, a breakout on par with -- here's that name again -- what Clooney did on "E.R." for a brief period of the '90s. All Jon Hamm had to do was convince producers that there was value in Jon Hamm and he's done that in spades. If Weiner has occasionally pushed up against the limits of Hamm's range, it's only because Draper has been written as such a tortured and frequently unravelling character. To my mind, every time you think you've seen Hamm hit a wall, you get an episode like "The Hobo Code" or "For Those Who Think Young" or "Meditations in an Emergency" or, especially, this past season's "The Gypsy and the Hobo."

Although the pilot tried to suggest that "Mad Men" was going to be a one-man show for Hamm, the series became better and better as it expanded on the roles for the supporting characters.

Looking at the pilot and then the third season finale, the dynamic between Peggy and Don looks like the show's core relationship. As he begins the show thinking that Pete is the rival he has to fight off, it becomes clearer and clearer that it's Peggy who has the instincts to be his protege and Don's dueling instincts to both encourage and quash her gifts have been fascinating to see play out. Moss stepped out in the show's second season, as did January Jones. Some dissenters saw Jones' similarly disaffected hosting stint on "Saturday Night Live" as proof that little she's doing on "Mad Men" is really an act. For me, I don't care if boring, chilly and distant are all traits that Jones brings with her to the table, she's also channeling them into the character, who is as infuriating as she is heartbreaking. The Don-Betty marriage went from punchline in the pilot, to second season focus, but the contrast between this season's "Souvenir" and "The Gypsy and the Hobo" were the best showcases for Jones and Hamm's chemistry.

The show's third female part, Hendricks' Joan, is the one many viewers most enjoy, with Hendricks doing her part redefine American femininity in many of the same ways Hamm is restoring American masculinity. The third season finale offered hope that Joan might play a bigger role in the fourth season, since the show suffered in her absence. That didn't mean that she didn't make the most of her scenes, particularly the accordion climax to "My Old Kentucky Home" and the vase smashing incident in "The Gypsy and the Hobo."

With the men, they're more consistently present, but I'd spotlight the Roger/Don interactions in "Red in the Face" and "Long Weekend" and Pete's attempts to blackmail Don in "Nixon vs. Kennedy."

Nods also to Batt, Rich Sommer, Aaron Staton, Michael Gladis, Robert Morse, Mark Moses, Alison Brie, Jared Harris and Joel Murray.

None of the performances or the surface excellence would really amount to much without Weiner, whose has ended up as a credited writer on nearly every episode. If I sounded harsh about the pilot earlier, my intent was really only to show how much more adroit Weiner has become at using his adopted era and our perception of the decade. The disconnections between public and private lives, between surface and substance, remain the core of the story, Weiner just no longer needs to tip his pitches. He can weave historical events into the narrative -- the 1960 election and the Cuban Missile Crisis were dramatic high points for the show, while the Kennedy assassination was a clumsy disappointment.

I also admire how Weiner hasn't shied from putting his characters on the wrong side of progress. Our hero is a brilliant, womanizing drunk, but the characters most likely to be smiled upon by history are Peggy and Pete. The finale of the third season indicated that Don recognizes his own potential obsolescence, but seeing Don and Roger cavort over the years has had the feeling of watching something like "Walking with Dinosaurs." It's been a complex, emotional and occasionally hilarious journey.

This has become long and circular, but I hope it has helped to convey at least some of why "Mad Men" stands at No. 3 on my list of TV's Best of the Decade.

Coming up tomorrow? Holy moly. We're down to #2. If a show can simultaneously make millions of Americans smarter and stupider, it's this one.

A full explanation of the parameters for this list.

No. 31 --"Veronica Mars"

No. 30 -- "Grey's Anatomy"

No. 29 -- "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

No. 28 -- "The Amazing Race"

No. 27 -- "Weeds"

No. 26 -- "House"

No. 25 -- "The O.C."

No. 24 -- "24"

No. 23 -- "Dexter"

No. 22 -- "The Simpsons"

No. 21 -- "Undeclared"

No. 20 -- "30 Rock"

No. 19 -- "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

No. 18 -- "Gilmore Girls"

No. 17 -- "Wonderfalls"

No. 16 -- "Six Feet Under"

No. 15 -- "The Office"

No. 14 -- "Pardon the Interruption"

No. 13 -- "Battlestar Galactica"

No. 12 -- "Survivor"

No. 11 -- "The West Wing"

No. 10 -- "Freaks and Geeks"

No. 9 -- "Lost"

No. 8 -- "Friday Night Lights"

No. 7 -- "American Idol"

No. 6 -- "Deadwood"

No. 5 -- "The Sopranos"

No. 4 -- "Arrested Development"

Daniel Fienberg
Executive Editor

A long-time member of the TCA Board and a longer-time blogger of "American Idol," Dan Fienberg writes about TV, except for when he writes about movies or sometimes writes about the Red Sox. But never music. He would sound stupid talking about music.

Related Searches: Best of the Decade, Best TV Shows of the Decade, Best of the '00s, Best of the Aughts, AMC, Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, Jon Hamm, Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, January Jones

WhatTheFDidIDo

At first I was surprised you have MM at #3 simply because it premiered later in the decade then any other show on your list. Then I realized it has aired just as many seasons as AD, Deadwood, FNL(refuse to acknowledge S2 other then for use of killer Landry jokes), and as many seasons as F&G, Wonderfalls, and Undeclared combined.

I'm glad you acknowledged it was a little harder to rank since it is still in progress and evolving. I think I would have given more credit to the other shows ranked 4, 5, and 6 just because we can look back on them as completed works, a few years later, and still say they deserve to be around the top of the list. Although you have said those shows were almost indistinguishable with this one, I think if MM weren't so fresh in your mind you might do the same thing.

Plus, it has the best opening credits sequence of any show not named Dexter.
December 29, 2009 at 6:30PM EST Reply to Comment
- dan WhatTheFDidIDo - There's no question that currency *probably* played a major role in pushing "Mad Men" above "Deadwood," "The Sopranos" and "Arrested Development." But my figuring is that a three-year run as one of the one or two best dramas on TV felt like a worthy body of work, 39 episodes and all. Definitely a big fan of the opening credits... I have a great pen courtesy of AMC that features Don Draper's silhouette falling across the skyline whenever you tilt it... -Daniel
  December 29, 2009 at 7:51PM EST
D

I think the pilot is so broad and seems clunky in comparison to the rest of the series because Weiner wrote it as a spec script before he started The Sopranos, and the script got him hired. Most pilots have elements that get smoothed out in a series (look at the daughter and gay kid next door who disappeared after the Weeds pilot, though the daughter returned three seasons later, or the adverts that appear in the pilot for Six Feet Under). I think you're a little harsh on the pilot, but then most series never live up to the pilot, and Mad Men has easily exceeded its potential.
December 29, 2009 at 7:19PM EST Reply to Comment
- dan D- When I first got the "Mad Men" pilot, I had strong reservations, but a second watching before it premiered wiped those concerns away. But I was just surprised at how quickly they all came back, rewatching it for the first time in years, how wonderfully Weiner has managed to smooth out the clunkiness of the initial effort. But it's not a bad pilot. It's a good pilot. It's just nowhere near on the level that the show would rise to. - Daniel
  December 29, 2009 at 7:53PM EST
- tigger500 Yea, I didn't like the pilot either. Took me about four episodes to give a damn about the show.
  December 29, 2009 at 7:56PM EST
BugKiller

Okay, let me admit this.

I don't get Mad Men.

I mean, I get it. It's pretty good. Great in a few moments.

But just like with The Sopranos, it is SO overrated, especially with the awards it keeps on receiving.

This show is NOT better than The Wire.

It's not better than BSG.

It sure as hell ain't better than Buffy was.

I don't get why derivative, largely unoriginal, SOS keeps on gleaning critical and shiny awards acclaim while shows who ARE original, who ARE unique, and who ARE NOT the SOS are ignored.

I don't get it.

Actually, I do get it. Man Men largely conforms to television convention.

So it gets awarded for being kinda vanilla. Kinda bland. In a world of a million procedurals, four L&O spin-offs, and horrible, horrible comedy like Accidently on Purpose, of course Mad Men gets all the awards.

It's not like Mad Men is actually daring, like say, Rescue Me. It's not like Mad Men has something profound to say, like say, BSG or The Wire.

Yeah, Rescue Me might screw up a storyline (or season) or two. But Rescue Me spits in the face of convention. It dares to be great. Sometimes, when you dare to be great, you fall the furthest and the hardest.

When you aspire to the middle, like The Sopranos and Mad Men, you are wrongly called great, and garner all of the accolades.

I get it.

But I just don't get it.
December 29, 2009 at 7:41PM EST Reply to Comment
- tigger500 BugKiller
  
  I'm partly with you here. This show is not as good as Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Veronica Mars, BSG, or The Wire (on that last one, DUH! lol). But it is easily EASILY better than the overrated Sopranos, which is pretty much garbage.
  
  Dan
  
  Glad to see you mentioned the loss of Hendricks this past season. Saffron is dope and bout time she had a vehicle that uses her considerable gifts (though, if America had been smart Kevin Hill would still be on the air and she would be elevating Taye Diggs' acting the way she is doing here with every single cast member with whom she shares a scene).
  December 29, 2009 at 7:55PM EST
- dan BugKiller - Parts of that are true and parts I think I'd strongly disagree with. Both "Mad Men" and "The Sopranos" are character and genre driven more than thematically or issue driven. Absolutely. "BSG" and "The Wire" both reach higher and probably broader in terms of the terrain they're covering. But let's get real: "Battlestar Galactica" is a remake using a sci fi background as a delivery mechanism for contemporary commentary. It's not reinventing the wheel. It's just making the wheel well. It's not like "Star Trek" wasn't a vehicle for using outer space action to occasionally make bigger points. I think you're downplaying or possibly not remembering exactly how boundary shifting "The Sopranos" was when it premiered in early 1999. It wasn't playing it safe in any way. And unless I've been missing decades of glossily produced period pieces on cable television, "Mad Men" isn't as down-the-middle as you're implying either. We're not talking about "The Closer" and "Royal Pains" here. - Daniel
  December 29, 2009 at 8:07PM EST
- Trekscribbler I'm strongly with you here, but I'll admit I've only watched the first season. Outside of the novel use of hats and smoking, I just don't see it as groundbreaking at all. My wife thinks of it as a less-funny, less-satirical male version of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (which I lost interest in very quickly), and I tend to agree with that.
  December 29, 2009 at 8:13PM EST
- tigger500 Also, Bug
  
  I think you do Mad Men a disservice by comparing it to The Sopranos. I don't think Mad Men plays to the middle, so much as exposes the superficiality of the middle's upwardly mobile aspirations. In that way, it's a subversive bit of brilliance like the more on-the-nose "satire" of Arrested Development and Modern Family.
  
  You are not wrong that awards shows do not care for truly original work. If it did Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Tony Head and James Marsters would have two or three Emmy's a piece. And Chris Meloni would have won for OZ instead of being nominated for SVU.
  
  Enrico and Kristin for VMars. Any of the actors on BSG or Firefly or Angel (esp. the central trio of David, Charisma, and Alexis). Shit - Julie Benz deserved a nod for Guest Actress for her two seasons on Angel.
  
  Here's the thing, the list can go on and on. We know this. But Mad Men is not The Sopranos, or even other overrated tripe like Seinfeld or The Simpsons or Curb Your Enthusiasm. It just isn't. It may not be as engrossing as any of the shows we been talking about, but it is well-crafted.
  December 29, 2009 at 8:24PM EST
- WhatTheFDidIDo Bugkiller -
  
  When it comes to your views on TV shows, WE get it. You think The Sopranos is vastly overrated and have taken ever opportunity to repeat this claim. You dont think very many shows were better then BSG or Buffy. Ok.
  
  I don't get why you are complaining about the awards MM has received. Daniel has made it pretty clear that awards are absolutely useless when it comes to determining who actually deserves them(In this case I believe MM does), and they get it wrong a lot more then they get it right.
  
  Why does a show have to be "daring" or have "something profound to say" to be considered great drama? More often then not, great characters, good dialogue, and a good plot are enough for me.
  
  I will attribute your "aspire to the middle" comment about The Sopranos to your overall dislike of the show. After all its only the show that pioneered TV drama into the golden age its currently in.(BTW if it werent for The Sopranos, I doubt your beloved Rescue Me would have ever gotten made). Do you REALLY believe MM aspires to the middle? It aspires to be one of the best period paces ever made, down to the last detail, taking you to a different time and place every episode, and it mostly achieves those goals.
  December 29, 2009 at 9:00PM EST
- BugKiller Cool to see the response.
  
  And of course, there are those who superficially read without understanding.
  
  I do not believe The Sopranos and Mad Men to be bad television.
  
  Overrated doesn't have to mean bad.
  
  It means exactly what it says. Overrated.
  
  They're both very good, with flashes of greatness.
  
  But because they follow safer paths (come on Dan, The Sopranos is the son of GoodFellas and the grandson of the Godfather... if it's one thing critics and awards shows love, is that kind of progression of convention), they garner awards they do not deserve.
  
  The Wire should have won best drama EVERY year it was on.
  
  Rescue Me could win both best drama AND best comedy, depending on the particular show or even scene to scene.
  
  It defies convention and classification. As did Buffy. As did BSG.
  
  And Dan, I know you see BSG as working the big ideas and such, but I've witnessed more nuance and sublime acting on BSG than I've ever seen on The Sopranos or Mad Men.
  
  Eddie Olmos puts Gandolfini and Hamm to shame with his ability to express and emote the whole rainbow of human emotion and human suffering without uttering a single word.
  
  There were episodes of Galactica, like Islanded in a Stream of Stars that were quiet and introspecticve, without any bombast, and then there were episodes like Hand of God, which were full of modern-day allegory, yet at the same time, remains one of the greatest single hours of television ever produced.
  
  The Sopranos and Mad Men are good. But not great. And as such, are vastly overrated.
  December 29, 2009 at 11:19PM EST
- dan BugKiller - I welcome the discussion and debate even if I disagree... After all, "The Sopranos" had episodes that were dream sequences, episodes that were straight-up Hollywood comedies, episodes that played out as horror films. It was a series that mixed tones and styles with the best of 'em... -Daniel
  December 29, 2009 at 11:29PM EST
- BugKiller Okay, Dan... I will concede on a few of those points.
  
  And there were not many more sublimely acted scenes like the one between Bobby and Tony in that last season talking about death.
  
  It's just after the first two seasons, the greatness came in spurts, not floods, at least for me.
  
  I'll admit. It was hard for me to watch The Sopranos than go watch The Wire and feel incredulous at the total lack of recognition being given this daring show.
  
  At least, on that point, I think we may agree, as you are going to have The Wire as number one or number two.
  December 30, 2009 at 8:46AM EST
- lylebot I don't really get it either. I've watched every episode, and it's certainly well-made and not bad by any means. But it wouldn't make my top 10. This is the only show where my opinion is out-of-step with critics like Feinberg and Sepinwall, so I feel like I must be missing something. None of the reviews have told me what that is, though.
  December 30, 2009 at 7:50PM EST
forg

The show is definitely excellent in production, it's a visual masterpiece. But the story is really not my cup of tea maybe because the main plot is not compelling enough unlike fellow AMC show Breaking Bad. But I do understand why critics love this show. But I guess the plot is the reason why this show is not as popular with the viewers compared to The Sopranos.
December 29, 2009 at 11:25PM EST Reply to Comment
Martin

So, what you're saying Dan is that "Mad Men" is number 3 because it of the movie feel to it and the fact that it has done so much in so little time and it still has a lot more years to go? I'm trying to get this right.
December 31, 2009 at 1:11AM EST Reply to Comment
- dan Martin - The look. The feel. The representation and commitment to a period. The literate themes and articulation of those themes. The carefully plotted and arced characters. The performances by the actors, especially Jon Hamm. The feeling I get at the end of a good episode where I feel like I've noshed on something substantive and thoughtful. That feels like enough, right? -Daniel
  December 31, 2009 at 1:32AM EST