MAD MEN!! BATMAN!! SILVERMAN!! U.N.C.L.E.!! FIREFLY!! BUFFY!! SIMPSONS!! IMPOSSIBLE!! HercVault!!

I am – Hercules!!

“Mad Men” was last year’s best new drama, a 13-episode AMC hourlong from writer-producer Matthew Weiner (“The Sopranos”) about ad men in 1960 Manhattan trying to market Richard Nixon and Lucky Strikes. The series stars Jon Hamm (“Providence”), Elisabeth Moss (“The West Wing”), Vincent Kartheiser (“Angel”), Christina Hendricks (“Firefly”), January Jones (“We Are Marshall”) and John Slattery (“Ed”). The pilot was written way back in 2000 and -- years before AMC would grant it seriesdom -- would land Weiner his “Sopranos” gig. Though there’s a lot of episode-to-episode continuity, each installment boasts at least one fully formed story. Agency novice Pete Campbell fumes over a co-worker's literary victory. Model wife Betty Draper turns to violence in a dispute with a suburban neighbor. Don Draper pulls open a desk drawer after getting off the phone with a lost-lost brother. Betty gifts a lock of hair. The Hobo Code is explained. Pete resorts to blackmail. It's all very compelling. I love the hot divorcee neighbor (and wish we saw more of her). I love Sterling-Cooper boss Roger Sterling. I love Roger’s battle-weary queen-bee and semisecret girlfriend Joan Holloway. I love fast-climbing secretary pooler Peggy Olson. I love Don and I love Don’s women: wife Betty, artist Midge, retail exec Rachel. USA Today gave it four stars (out of four) and said:

… the best new show of the summer — a series that turns mid-century cool into 21st-century hot. … This is a place TV hasn't visited before, where you want to linger, and people you haven't seen on TV before whom you want to know better. And it's another basic-cable breakthrough in a summer in which the broadcast networks have gone stone-cold.

TV Guide gave it a “9” (out of 10) and said:

… this week, the show we can’t stop talking and thinking about, and wishing we had more episodes to watch, is AMC’s Mad Men … You really don’t want to miss it. …

Entertainment Weekly gave it a “B-plus” and said:

… less about the job than the style involved in doing the job. In this pre-PC period …

The Wall Street Journal said:

… one of the best-written, all-around sparkling works to come along in many a summer season. … That humor appears as a kind of undercurrent in all the jabbing reminders we get about all that has changed since 1960. The series takes place in an era, as the script maintains in one of the early episodes, when it was possible to smack the face of the little boy next door, as one dreadful adult male does, to teach the child a lesson about behavior. (The boy had knocked over a glass while running around the house during a birthday party.) And it was possible to do this, we're shown, without objection from the child's father, standing by. …

The Los Angeles Times said:

The pilot of AMC's new original series "Mad Men" is not so much a pilot as an hourlong seduction. … great writing and acting create a heady mix of glamour, irreverence and responsibility, a word rarely associated with a sexy drama. Creator Matthew Weiner wrote "Mad Men" several years ago; it was the script that landed him the job writing for "The Sopranos," and it's easy to see why. Not since Cary Grant's Mr. Blandings have we seen an ad guy to swoon over. …

The Chicago Tribune said:

The swell new series "Mad Men" looks like a million bucks. … first and foremost an intelligently made character drama. One of the interesting things about this show is how quickly the expertly done period re-creation falls away, once we get to know the yearning, confused, confident people who inhabit the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. They're not period pieces - they're just like us. …

The Washington Post said:

… Good guys and bad are largely indistinguishable; the bad have their good sides and the good their bad. That does not, however, result in complex characters in "Sopranos" style. Instead you find yourself in the company of people not one of whom is worth giving a hoot about. They scheme and connive and lie and cheat, but lethargically. The least an audience can ask for is rats who enjoy their rattiness, who go about it with gusto. …

The San Francisco Chronicle said:

… surprisingly great … captures that utterly fascinating transformation as he explores 1960 in New York and America at large, and marks "Mad Men" as essential viewing. …

The Houston Chronicle said:

… Dripping in period detail, AMC's first original series intoxicates in style and substance. … Mad Men is mesmerizing, and its pedigree is as authentic as the period it re-creates. …

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said:

… while watching "Mad Men," a person gets the sensation that she's looking at a classic in the making, the same revelation that washed over us when those ducks disappeared from Tony Soprano's pool, crushing his spirit and us by proxy. That was a feat of stupendous writing, and the same level of creativity works its seductive charms here. …

The Boston Herald said:

… offers a perplexing challenge. While handsomely staged and beautifully scored, the series rolls in an outrageously sexist, racist world. Is this a place viewers want to visit for the next 12 weeks? Do so at your own risk. You could wake up with stinky clothes and a nagging cough.…

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said:

… a fascinating examination of the culture at that time, particularly as it relates to women and minorities. … "You're born alone and you die alone, and this world drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts," cynical Don tells Rachel over drinks. "I'm living like there is no tomorrow because there isn't one." Not a pretty sentiment, to be sure, but it makes for an intriguing character in what's likely to be the best new summer series of 2007.

The Hollywood Reporter said:

… if the pieces are in place for "Mad Men" to break big, why does its center feel so hollow? Watching characters indulge with relish in what today are vices has a transgressive quality, yet it's all done with an insider's wink to the audience. A fawning tone would grow just as tiresome, but who can identify with characters from whom even the writers seem to shrink? … There's much to admire about "Mad Men," and much worth tuning in for. But so far, it's all soft sell. At one point, Draper advises a cigarette exec (John Cullum) that they'll promote his product's "toasted" quality," thus ushering in the era of pitching lifestyle over product, the birth of selling nothing. Unfortunately, at this stage, "Mad Men" is giving its audience pretty much the same thing.

Variety said:

… the pleasures of "Mad Men" refreshingly arise almost wholly from small, impeccably detailed touches. Set in 1960, this breezy serial about Madison Avenue ad men (hence the title) circa 1960 revels in dated images of white-collar workers boozing in the boss' office, harassing female employees, smoking incessantly and openly pondering if there's a Jew anywhere in the building. … Despite its understated approach, however, "Mad Men" actually strikes a profound chord, inasmuch part of today's so-called culture war involves sifting through the tumult of the 1960s, heralded by progressives for the freedoms won but now being decried by conservatives for the standards that were eroded. …

The first season is issued today in both DVD and Blu-ray editions.
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