By now you're well aware of AMC's excellent Mad Men, the Jon Hamm-led drama set in the 1960s advertising world where three martini lunches and sleeping with the girls of the typing class was expected and celebrated. We count ourselves among the show's original fans — not these Johnny-come-latelys with their season one DVDs — and, having professionally stalked at least three of the cast members, are very clearly a little bit obsessed with this show. And now, everybody else will be too, because every damn one of you critics is sharing with America television's best-kept secret, from Entertainment Weekly (plastering it on the cover of their Summer TV Preview) and Vanity Fair (laid out in the June issue as the "high-water mark of male chauvinism") to today's New York Post (Linda Stasi is on the beat!).
But when the crowd forms to lift the champion atop its shoulders, the only thing that's left to happen is The Fall. You know what we mean: the backlash, where something we couldn't imagine not loving in suddenly the punching bag we throw knives at. Don't believe us?
Critics, too, loved Lost; then they spent a year beating the crap out of its writers before finally coming around again. Rinse and repeat for Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy and Prison Break. That this never happened with Battlestar Galactica is only because the Sci-Fi was already a couple seasons in before everyone fell in love with it, and by they producers already announced it had a sell-by date and would wrap after the current fourth season.
Mad Men returns to AMC, where it scored just 900,000 viewers its first time out, on July 27, which means we have until now and then to manufacture the type of hatred that takes down a show like this. As is typical: Once America gets a hold of something it likes, it's only the natural course of action to kick the shit out of it until it's barely conscious or recognizable.
[Photo: VF]
Editorial Director
I think television "backlashes" only happen to shows that deserve them. Typically, a series comes out strong with a debut season then loses its way in the second year. Imo it's more important to have a brillaint second season than first. The first season of a show (for a drama at least) should be an insightful prologue. But many executive producers write the entire book in the first season and leave the succeeding seasons to be nothing more than pale sequels.
"Desperate Housewives" was overrated to begin with. So, its backlash was inevitible.
The writers expected people to care about "Prison Break" after they broke out of prison?
"Grey's Anatomy" became ridiculous with its soapy twist and overwrought monologues.
I feel that as long as the qaulity is there the critics will applaud. "The Sopranos", "The Shield", and "The Wire" are example of cable shows that remained popular with the critics' throughout its run. As long as there is nothing to beat "Mad Men" about then only a few nitpickers will throw punches.
Adam Simon, a British film and television writer and cultural critic, echoes my feelings about Mad Men exactly: it's "beautifully executed, but just too condescending. I really can’t bear that the show is so certain that it, and by extension its viewers, are so morally and culturally superior to the characters we’re watching — in fact, to the whole era it depicts.
“You get to revel in the cool atmosphere while feeling smugly superior to it. Oh-so-sexist, so racist, so anti-Semitic. So desperately in need of the sexual and cultural revolution waiting round the corner. It feels cheap in that sense, allowing us to pat ourselves on our backs for merely living on the other side of the great awakening.” Couldn't have said it better myself.