Sam and I have been big fans of Mad Men since we found out about it, a few weeks before the 2nd season started. We watched the first season obsessively on DVD (oh the pain! of waiting for the next disc) and did the same with the 2nd. This year, we've mostly been able to keep up with it as it aired, but we just finished the 3rd season last night. Wowza!
I felt considerable Mad Men fatigue around mid-season this time, because it was just so relentlessly awful, all the time. There was just nothing good happening, and everyone was behaving hideously, or having people behave hideously towards them. I like the show, but I'm not a big fan of a show with literally zero to be happy about, or zero to laugh at. I think the tone of the show took a real dive midseason, and things got bleak. I expected a bleak tone around the assassination of JFK, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the show's writers had balanced that event with the hope of a young married couple (even if it is Roger's unhappy daughter). It was the episodes before that, maybe three or four of them? There was just NOTHING. I seriously wanted to stop watching.
And I probably would have, except that I am a bad girl, and I read all the recaps of the last few episodes as they came out. So I knew the last episode would be awesome, and I was right. It was. It was fun, and there was hope. Regardless of Don's personal situation, which is...not good, the new agency promises fun storylines next year, and very interesting questions about the cast. Will Bryan Batt come back as Sal Romano? What happens to Cosgrove and Kinsey? And! Is Betty less of a presence on the show? She certainly can't be off for good, as the children and Don's private life will still have to be part of the show. I'm interested to see where it goes, and this morning Sam and I were laughing at the idea that now Don and Betty can have an affair with each other! As it is, I don't think she'll be any happier with Henry Francis. It's still a prison she's entering.
I do feel as if the season ended on this enormous up note, with Don looking around at his new fledgling agency and seemingly excited about what's to come. (The Betty scene wasn't hopeful; it was like watching a prisoner walk the plank.) I'm interested to see the time jump into the next season, and I'm REALLY interested to see, if we're going late into the sixties, how the hippie thing plays out. I'm looking forward to next season, and damn it! It's so far away.
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