Mad Men

Having to watch the first three episodes of Mad Men is really up there on my top 3 most enjoyable homework assignments. Before you question the legitimacy of this homework, let me clarify: since the first three episodes heavily focus on Don Draper’s attempts to create a successful marketing campaign for one of the company clients’ cigarette brand, it’s understandable that I am watching it for a marketing class.

Apparently, Mad Men is a pretty mainstream show, as evidenced by two of my work supervisors’ scandalized reactions when they found out I had only just started watching it. It’s apparently also very addictive, considering that the professor warned us beforehand that, in the past, a number of students have told him that they couldn’t stop watching after those first three episodes.

So far, I’m about halfway through episode two, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t see what’s so addictive about it. Maybe something wild and unpredictable happens in the third episode to make me hooked, but, as of yet, I am unimpressed with the plot and the characters’ complete disregard for their health makes me nervous. Two episodes in and my lungs are already getting sympathy pains just watching all these people chain-smoke all day long. At one point, I literally had to pause the show when one of Don Draper’s co-workers dropped a seltzer tab into his scotch and drank it as if it was a perfectly respectable thing to do.

I know the show takes place in the 60’s but there are some lines that just should not be crossed, no matter how much of a 60’s alcoholic you are.

I don’t want to leave this off just saying that I probably will not make it a second past the end of the third episode, so before I sign off, I would just like to point out that, regardless of how much the costume designer was paid for her work, she deserved a raise for carrying the show’s entire aesthetic value on her shoulders.

-L