Real Talk: Why I Hate 'Mad Men'

***SPOILER ALERT: We're talkin' about Mad Men here. There are spoilers.***

Okay, so “hate” might be a little strong. But I certainly don’t like Mad Men.

I started watching AMC’s critically acclaimed series when a woman I work with, who is notoriously hard to impress, gave the show high praise during a random conversation last fall. Already having an initial interest in the show, I booked it home and got my hands on season one as quickly as I could. I devoured the first season and what had aired so far of the second quickly enough to catch up and watch the last three episodes or so in real time. I finished what ended up being an extremely puzzling second season finale and didn’t give the show another thought until promotion for the third season kicked up this past July.

That’s how important Mad Men is to me: not at all.

I must explain. In recent weeks, as the third season of Mad Men is now well under way, it has become clear to me that this show, much like FX’s Rescue Me, is a television program I do not actually enjoy watching. In the case of Rescue Me, this is because the show deals with incredibly difficult subject matter that makes it hard to watch. Mad Men is also hard to watch, but not because of the subject matter. Mad Men is not enjoyable for a bevy of less noble reasons.

To start, Mad Men is stacked with nameless characters—random Sterling Cooper secretaries and creatives and spouses of Sterling Cooper creatives. There are so many faces flitting across the screen in any given episode that it is simply impossible to connect with any of them. I find it incredibly hard to bring myself to watch a television show that is filled with people I don’t know or care about (I know more about the blondies on The Hills). At times, it appears the majority of the show’s budget is spent on authentic costumes, props and sets rather than quality scripts. And apparently the characters that the audience would want to connect with are being kept from us. Any character who is remotely sympathetic or interesting or even just someone with a potentially interesting storyline is given minimal screen time and development opportunities so that we can watch Don Draper commit some more adultery (your kid’s teacher, really? And like this bitch is the first young, attractive teacher Sally has ever had!). What’s more, the most interesting characters on the show, like Joan, Sal and Penny, have been demoted from Emmy-attracting gems to out-of-place one-liner delivery mechanisms and subplot afterthoughts.

Furthermore, Mad Men walks like a newborn calf on wet grass. It’s all over the place. From Don having a hidden identity to having an identity crisis and running away with some traveling druggie hippie rich people club to the treatment of women before it was normal for us to wear pants to the Cuban Missile Crisis to a nanosecond’s mention of the Civil Rights movement, Mad Men doesn’t know what the fuck it is doing. They pick up and drop storylines like NBC drops TV shows. Where the fuck is Joan, hmm? And why did it take 10 weeks for us to get back to the whole Don Draper is not really Don Draper situation? Not to mention the fact that the show seems to be more interested in rewriting history than it is in writing fully developed plotlines.

The 1960s were an insanely, painfully and impressively complex time, which is why, I’m sure, television masterminds like Matthew Weiner and the heads of AMC programming thought this show would be such a great investment of time and money—there’s just so much to do! Endless possibilities! But it appears that Weiner and company cannot commit. Mad Men never follows through. It’s empty, hollow. They pick an issue to discuss for a 2-and-a-half minute scene and drop it. One second, Campbell talking to an African-American elevator operator and reading Ebony magazine, the next second POOF! Segregation? What segregation?! And I don’t know if I can even get started on the uneven handling of the “OMG Sal is gay!” storyline. It’s actually brought me physical pain.

I know endless articles have been written on this subject—Mad Men is ignoring the issues, Mad Men is screwing with history and so on. For awhile, up until this most recent season actually, I defended Mad Men and Wiener’s vision by reassuring naysayers that the show was obviously first developing the characters and storylines to lead into an eventual exploration of all the relevant social and political issues of the 1960s. It’s been three years. I give up.

In conclusion, I hate Mad Men because the characters suck; I hate Mad Men because Don Draper is a sociopath; I hate Mad Men because the theme music gives me nightmares; I hate Mad Men because it takes the “show, don’t tell” mantra of storytelling far too seriously to be effective at telling any stories; I hate Mad Men because the people who make it think that pretty suits and former models with cool hairdos equate to “good TV”; but, finally, I really hate Mad Men because of everything it could have been but is definitely not.

Unfortunately, I am unable to bring myself to quit watching the show. I feel like if I’ve come this far, then I must continue on with the journey and see where it takes me—will the show get better, will Don Draper ever be nice to his own wife, will Betty ever be more than a paper doll with PMS, will Peggy ever get more than 3 minutes of screen time, will Roger and Don rekindle their bromance and so on. I honestly do not enjoy watching Mad Men at all. I roll my eyes and sigh and toss and turn and flail my arms and twist my hair in boredom while I watch, but I still watch. It’s a combination of self-flagellation and my insatiable need to be “informed.” If I have learned one thing from Mad Men, it is that I am my own worst enemy. And that red lipstick can dress up any outfit.

Disclaimer: Obviously, this is my personal opinion of why I am not head over heels in love with this “hit” show, at least not anymore. I felt it necessary to express my opinion here because I do watch the show, but I didn’t want to continue to post that information without explaining my true feelings as that would make me feel like a poser and a poser I do not want to be. Thank you.


*Images: DVD Beaver, Exquisite Function, NY Mag, Shopping Blog*