Mad Men, Pilot.

TV Show Episode: Mad Men, S01E01- Smoke gets in your eyes

Casual racism! Old school Technology! Everyone is sexist and smoking! Mad Men does an excellent job of whacking you in the head with its 1960s setting like a mallet. This pilot episode spends so much time throwing its lofty status as a period piece at you that it suffers for it. That’s not to say it isn't brilliant though. First off, the setting is, technically speaking, excellently realised. The costumes, the sets and the attitudes of the people quickly place us in the era with gusto. But is it too much gusto?

Pilots are a tricky thing. Ignoring pleasing the executives, a pilot needs to establish the setting, the characters, and enough overarching plot to get the viewers interested. And the worst thing is, there is no established ‘best way’ to make a pilot. There are successes and failures from every angle. On one hand, Breaking Bad throws you straight in the deep end with the plot, the characters and the setting, before stepping back and giving itself some room to breathe. On the other hand, whilst Game of Thrones does hit you quickly with its more fantastical aspects, it slowly brings in the characters, and leaves much of the plot until they have been well established, even leaving much of it until the subsequent few episodes.

                Mad Men focuses on the setting almost to a fault, with no real overarching plot being set up, and some characters faring better than others. The character of Don Draper is challenging to describe in this first episode, with the phrases ‘complex protagonist’ and ‘tormented hero’ not accurately describing the shades of grey Draper is painted in. In many ways, this draws you out of the show, as I found myself spending too much time struggling to decide how I felt about Don; normally an antihero fits neatly into the  antihero-shaped box (See: Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, J.D from Scrubs, who I’ve discovered in re-watching is far less sympathetic). That said, John Hamm is wonderful at portrayed this multi-faceted ad-man, with his performance perfectly capturing the feel of shady brilliance that the writers clearly intended. Indeed, the acting from the entire cast is top-notch across the board, with Christina Hendricks and John Slattery already sliding out from the pack as characters to watch.

                Peggy however, is given far less characterisation. Despite some notion towards being the audience surrogate for this pilot, Peggy comes across less as our lens into this world of Madison Avenue, and more of a writing device for sexism to be thrown at by the rest of the cast, again further emphasising the time period. Whilst I’m positive Peggy will get more to do, the episode focusing on Don is at the clear cost of her character. Then again, the show is called ‘Mad Men’; it is hardly surprising that the pilot focuses on the tumbling hero seen in the credit sequence.

                As a whole, whilst Mad Men has some issues as a functional pilot, this is largely from me nitpicking. My confusion with the character of Don is intentional, and the fact that it clashed with my preconceptions of how a main character should be defined is definitely a good thing. If they had steered away from some of the more hackneyed references (the photocopier joke is abysmal) I’m sure I would have been less overwhelmed by everything going on. That said, it’s a great show, and I look forward to seeing where it goes over the next six seasons.