Customer Reviews

Mad Men: Season 1

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm a devoted viewer of this show and was thrilled to own this first season DVD compilation. It depicts the world of pampered ad execs at a high-profile Manhattan firm in 1961 where cocktails flow before noon and sexual harrassment is the norm. Creator Matt Weiner is a stickler for period accuracy, so everything from the fashions to the breadbox on the kitchen counter reflect the late 50's/early 60's mileu. Smart writing and multi-dimentional characters also sets this show apart. I'm always riveted as endings are rarely predictable - often shocking, sometimes poignant and always original. Main character Don Draper is the gorgeous ad exec who all perceive as the confident and unflappable creative head at Sterling Cooper. We discover, however, that he's a complex protagonist whose troubled childhood haunts him and influences his many secrets and deceits. One of his secrets is pivotal and keeps the viewer completely engaged. But despite his mistakes and flaws, the writers have created a protagonist who is inately humane. The other characters are deliciously complex as well and not what they appear to be....Can't say enough about this show. It's simply brilliant.

Mad Men is an entertaining and dramatic romp through life on Madison Avenue in the 60's. It should come with a warning that viewing is addictive!

Very enjoyable to get back into the first season. This tells me why I like the show so much! Excitement, deviousness and the 1960's as they were! Can't wait to see the rest of them!

I am hooked on this series. It is one of the best shows to be on television in a very long time. The accuracy of the representation of the sixties is remarkable. The clothing is exact, the office environment is accurate. I worked in an office such as the one represented in this show (not advertising) and I can tell you it was very much like the way the t.v. show depicts it. I think they overdo the sex side of things but sexual harrassment in the workplace was the norm, as was the smoking. I find the series very good, intense characters with depth and complex personalities especially Don and Betty Draper. They both have problems and insecurities which add to the storylines. The inclusion of current events of the time are accurate and make the show more real. I would strongly recommend this series. However, if you like "cut em up, eat em up" and modern car chases this isn't for you. This is intense complex drama and that is why it is so good. Very well done indeed.

My father dislikes this series. I understand why; this is not an historic re-creation of the late 50's and early 60's. My father is of an age with Don Draper, he lived through these times, and he knows that they little resemble this series. The inaccuracies irk him. I understand his point, and I would probably feel the same way about a series that purported to represent the 80's.

It's funny that while people intuitively understand that futuristic stories are really about the present, they naively assume that stories set in the past are not. The show deliberately highlights things which we "moderns" find shocking - the young girl playing in the dry-cleaning bag, for example - but the time period itself is fundamentally a vehicle for plot and characterization. Anyone who imagines that this really is 1960 "as it was" is missing the point. Not that the directors are terribly clumsy about making the setting realistic, mind you - I swear they used all of my grandmother's furniture for the Draper home.

That noted, what I love about the series is the characterization. Don Draper is fascinating; Betty Draper is a bizarre mix of little girl, doll, temptress, and real person struggling to stay alive; I loathe Peter Campbell about as much as I can loathe a fictional character; and as for Peggy - well, no spoilers. Eminently watchable, intelligently written, periodically amusing, moving, and disturbing.

Love the packaging, and the show! I hope they make a nice season 6 box set, as season 5 was a disappointment. I hope they go a few more seasons with this show!

When things get bad, we tend to look to the past. And the bleaker the future looks, the further back we search for comfort. As the new millennium keeps disappointing us, TV shows set on the 50's and the 60's (once a rarity) keep growing in numbers. Many have tried and failed. MAD MEN tried and closed the deal. And have been doing so for 5 seasons now.

Meet Don Draper (Jon Ham), a Madison Avenue water-walker (and based on the real life ad men Draper Daniels and Rosser Reeves). He is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. He is brilliant and secretive and wants to keep walking the tight rope with no safety net. And definitely no contract. He is a chain-smoking, hard liqueur guzzling, womanizing alpha male. He is a loving father of three, married to a picture-perfect ex model. He has it all. And he always wants more. Because he learned early on that the world is always at your heels to yank everything you love away.

From bursting with joie-de-vivre Roger Sterling (hilarious John Slattery) and ever scheming Pete Cambell (baby-faced Vincent Kartheiser) to the gorgeous women (such as barbie January Jones as Don's wife), the cast is one perfect pick after another. And the writing is brilliant, reproducing the tastes and smells and nuisances of the era around Camelot, while drawing you in to the personal stories of characters polished yet inevitably flawed.

The 50's and the 60's were before my time so it is not nostalgia that makes me love the show. Yes, I find the era mesmerizing and (probably undeservingly) less complicated. If nothing else, though, back then they knew how to dress. Women looked feminine and men looked manly. You see January Jones on the red carpet, for example, all dressed up and groomed for a Hollywood function - and that modern image cannot hold a candle to herself dressed for everyday(!) life in the 50's. When did we loose it? When did we decide men should stop wearing suits and hats and women should start wearing sweat-suits outside the house? I, for one, blame the hippies!

This is one of the best TV shows ever and this box-set includes season 1. There are four more. Season 6 is eminent whereas season 7 has already been green-lighted. As I have said again before, good TV is best watched on DVD. Make weekends out of it. It is much more enjoyable to watch an entire season in a couple of days than having to wait week(s) between episodes. And (quite ironically, in this case), you will not have to suffer the...commercials.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Since I missed the start of this series, I purchased the DVDs and was amazed with the acting and the script. I grew up in the 60s so I can relate to much that is said and done -- this is really how it was in an office environment during the early 1960s!

I bought this after reading alot of good reviews and I can say honestly they didn't hype this show enough. I don't watch very much Television outside of a few HBO programs, but this is something different. It's by far the best series to come out in years, in fact the only show I can think of with the same quality of writing would be the Soprano's, and this has even more to offer.
Give it a shot, your gonna love it.

Amazing cast, costumes, story and characters. Everyone is flawed at Sterling Cooper and trying to make their name in the advertising industry while dealing with personal issues that were prevalent during the 1960's. Donald Draper is so flawed yet tries to show he is flawless and can always get the job done.