Christina is a grad student in English and college writing professor living in NYC. She studies Shakespeare and his contemporaries but is also a TV junkie who loves to write about pop culture.
Ah, Mad Men! We were all relieved that our favorite period drama has finally returned after an endless hiatus. In my joy, I’ve been reading tons of post-episode analysis on blogs and message boards—Mad Men is deep enough to stand up to a lot of analysis, after all. But one thing I’ve noticed in all my reading is a tendency for people to predict huge! shocking! twists! for the rest of the season, which makes me wonder: during its hiatuses, do people forget how to watch Mad Men?
Mad Men, while containing soap opera elements, is a show unlike any other. It favors meditative, slow-going storytelling for the first part of most seasons. Eventually, stuff goes down, but it’s never the stuff we expect to see. Sure, during the first season, people predicted Don’s secret identity and Peggy’s baby, but the show has evolved since then. I wouldn’t say that nothing has been predictable during later seasons, but when I think of the show’s classic moments, they are things most of us never saw coming. The lawnmower incident in “Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency,” anyone? Or, from this past week’s “Far Away Places,” Roger dropping acid. We could have predicted that one of the characters would drop acid this season, but I don’t think most of us would have put money on it being Roger freakin’ Sterling.
That is the beauty of this show. It gives us twists and shocking moments, but on its own timeline and in its own way. Even when it is predictable, it’s never presented predictably. So when I see people suggesting things like “Megan has a secret past as a prostitute!” or “Sally’s going to start popping pills!” I have to laugh. Is it possible that Megan is not who she seems? Yes, but I doubt the show would be on the nose enough to make Don married to a prostitute, given his mommy issues. And of course Sally may end up taking drugs (it IS the ’60s) but we can count on Matthew Weiner and company to make it interesting. Maybe when Pauline gave her pills in “Mystery Date,” it started Sally down that road. Or not. We don’t know!
Because the show goes off the air for increasingly long periods of time, viewers forget it is not structured like other shows. For example, “Far Away Places” consists of three short stories with similar themes interwoven together because they take place on the same day. Increasingly, the show has been experimenting with form, perhaps because the late ’60s were an experimentation with form—and everything else. Most shows structure themselves like, well, TV shows. For Mad Men content dictates form, so it is structured like itself, like whatever it wants to be that week. I do enjoy reading all the “Pete/Roger/Megan is gonna die” speculation, and I love that fans are so passionate about the show. But I think to myself, “Yeah, it may happen, but the show will still shock me to the core when it does.”
Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Apr 27, 2012 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
Christina: I forgot how to watch Mad Men after I forced myself through the first couple of seasons last summer, and it was the best thing I ever did.
I kid (a little) — my lack of appreciation for Mad Men is well known around these parts.
Nice Guest Clack; thank you!
Hi Ivey! I think it’s good to acknowledge that the show is not for everyone… in fact, I am always attracted to things like that. The weirder and more experimental it gets this season, the better I will probably like it. There is a lot of pressure for people to like MM, I think, but there is no reason it should be everyone’s cup of tea-or, er, glass of rye. I love it, but hey, I also watch plenty of stuff other people can’t stand (Gossip Girl).
I am the last person to every judge someone’s eclectic tastes (I too watch Gossip Girl, and am the only guy I know who was watching Grey’s last night instead of the NFL Draft, though my Redskins had already picked :P )
. . . . .
*jots notes on Ivey’s activities for possible later “use”*
So regarding “At the Codfish Ball,” while I called Roger and Marie’s hookup the moment they were on screen together, I certainly did not call that Sally would witness i as pat of her continuing growing up “education.” Well played, Mad Men.