Thursday, August 20, 2009

Mad love for Mad Men




Does anyone else find the show Mad Men simply intoxicating?

I don't mean because everyone on the show is a true WASP and boozer, I just mean because the show sucks you into the time period. The show I can closely link it to is The West Wing, because of their similarities in style. It is a WORLD you have often thought about and wondered over. You see the look and the colors and the people, but you can't really play out the conversations you see on-screen in your head until it's actually done.

For me, I have two different worlds of the 1960s to think about and compare with. My Dad's family was living a very blessed and luxurious life, thanks to my great-great grandfather J.A.J. I, and were busy growing with the construction boom from the post-war era. My Mother's family was a large family (5 kids; 4 girls (my mother the oldest) and one boy) in a relatively quiet and beautiful rural area outside of Covington, VA - a railroad town slowing down with the trend of airplane travel - but not quite extinct yet.

My Dad's family was definitely the Mad Men kind of family. Picture-perfect. Mom. Dad. Son. Daughter. Disciplinary debates on treating the children properly. Vacations in lovely places. Golf Club membership. The Way To Live Right. Booze. Cigarettes and Cigars. Perfect house on a perfect street. To make it even more picturesque, imagine Coral Gables (Miami), Florida, during this time period. Very Cuban-inspired but not salsa-style like it is now. Not as saucy, but enticing, kind of like the Season 2 eps in Los Angeles and Palm Springs....

Did anyone watch the season premiere?

I loved it. Some parts of it I thought were twisted and unnecessary (the whole cutting off d^%$ bit), but it still rolled into a great storyline about a man having to give up his own vices to step it up for being a family man again... and the other stuff, too, but lets not kid ourselves, the Drapers are the main members of the cast, like it or not.

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