Mad Marg: March Madness, More Mad Puns. (Yay! Mad Men!)

Mad Men makes its shockingly-long (17 months!) awaited return to AMC tonight. I've been playing around with how to write about the show for a few days now. So much has already been said about this spectacular drama that while I certainly don't want to be redundant on the internet, it is probably unavoidable.

I'm just so damn excited, you know.

Roger looks so tiny!

It's so good.

If you don't watch, you don't have time to catch up before tonight - but that's sort of okay? I discovered the show online (Netflix has all 4 previous seasons!) and also caught a bunch of episodes at first on some marathon on like Showcase or something like that.

Unlike the network comedies that I feel are constantly in crazy-stressful danger of being cancelled, thus breaking my heart forever, cable shows have some reprieve. As long as some people are watching (even just a few!), either live or PVRed or on-demand, and even more people are streaming (legally!) and buying DVDs, and as long as their showrunners still feel like making new episodes, then you have far less worries about your favourite show going off the air completely. Yes, you have to wait a long time between seasons (not unlike the British model), but it's okay. You know it's coming back, after all.

Cable shows certainly do get cancelled - a prime example is the Dustin Hoffman star-vehicle Luck on HBO, which despite being initially renewed for a 2nd season, was cancelled before finishing its first. Now, numerous factors came into play with this cancellation, including less-than-invigorating ratings but also the sad deaths on set of three racehorses. Who is to say if Luck would have picked up viewership if allowed to continue, but of course, those incidents didn't help its chances.

Poking about the Nielson website puts a lot of the ratings business into perspective, the main thing is simple that cable shows aren't expected to hold the same crazy ratings as network shows. And this is an awesome thing. Without the threat of being axed just because of a conventionally low rating, cable shows are given a lot of creative stretching room.

AMC and HBO and Showtime and so forth, these are the places where serial storytelling is given the space to breathe. I love serialized shows! I want to make a commitment to plot and character! I want to feel robbed and lost if I miss an episode - this puts me in a minority, but at least there are enough of us to warrant a wide selection of interesting television choices at any given time from cable (on the internet, and on DVD, yes, but still from cable for the most part).

So why was the lack of new Mad Men episodes such a dry expanse of TV wasteland for me? Well, it wasn't, I had lots to watch! BUT, it is my favourite drama, even compared to other cable offerings, and here's why:

Unless you are really into graphic violence, which I am not, then Mad Men comes out tops. The storytelling is complex and nuanced - it is a show that expects so much from its viewers. A simple, quiet scene about anything - workplace protocol, a picnic with the kids, anything! - has any number of different layers and subtext. It is a very distinctive show-not-tell style of writing, that leaves most things unsaid. Your experience watching is made all the richer if you have an understanding of politics, life, and culture in the 1960s - you can watch this scene (below, context: Joan was sort of rude to Paul's African-American girlfriend at a party) without a knowledge of race relations in the 60s and think maybe Joan is just being a (slightly racist) bitch - but when you know what was actually happening at the time, with an understanding of how someone in her position (class, upbringing, gender, race, so forth) would see the scenario, and suddenly you see that although she's... well, wrong, she's also right.
 

And Joan! Oh Joan! She is one of my all time favourite women on television. And she's a prime example of how well Mad Men constructs its female characters. Unlike for example, The Walking Dead where the female characters are one dimensional and for the most part, useless, Mad Men has created these rich portraits of the three lead women on the show, Joan, Peggy, and Betty. Even actresses only appearing in a few episodes have been given dense material to work with, and that is such an exciting and positive turn. For a show based upon a womanizer, and set in a sexist and tumultuous environment, Mad Men is great for women!

Give me your dress, Joan.

One of the other appealing things about Mad Men, which other cable dramas lack, is that although there are many bad things that have happened to its characters, there is always a sense of hopefulness. It is hardly a bright and shiny light drama (although, there are moments of pure humour, notably in the excellent 4th season), but we always recognize that there is another day tomorrow. You may chastise me for only watching a few episodes of Breaking Bad before finally admitting to myself that I didn't want anymore of it - but my god, what a hopeless show... there is no way that anything can turn out well for any of those characters. I eat The Walking Dead up with a spoon, but c'mon! The zombies are probably going to win that thing, and how depressing is that?

Maybe it's because it is 2012 and I can imagine Peggy Olson as an adorable, spunky 73 year old who probably knows how to use Facebook!

-Marg
@acuteinsomnia