Mad Men Is Not Smart Or Good: First Two Episodes Heavily Analyzed

Mad Men has been hailed as one of the best TV shows to ever exist, supposedly a sophisticated examination of 1960s America through the eyes of New York's advertising workforce. Fans of the show and critics across the board consider it extremely deep, subtle, nuanced, and complex. But after forcing myself through the first two episodes, I'm convinced this show is nothing more than pretentious commentary. And how ironic, of course, that a show about advertising has utilized the vast resources of AMC to convince all the relevant tastemakers that it is indeed the best thing since sliced bread.

Roger Sterling and Don Draper from AMC's Mad Men

Yes, I only watched the first two episodes because I literally cannot bring myself to watch any more. I didn't even want to watch the second episode but I did just to see if the pilot was an anomaly, and unfortunately it wasn't.

Visually, it's not bad, and the acting certainly isn't anything to sneeze at. But I'm not going to force myself to sit through a 7-season show or even the rest of season 1 just to dissect the storytelling craft, no matter how good people claim it gets. One episode alone is unbearable to watch and tells me everything I need to know.

From the two episodes I've seen, this seems to me a show concerned more with seeming smart than actually telling a good story, or any story at all for that matter. It's literally just commentary, then more commentary, then ten more scenes of explicit commentary, and I can only imagine how much worse it gets as the seasons progress.

Episode 1 — Heavily Manufactured "Storytelling"

The pilot episode of Mad Men is so boring that it's unbelievable that anyone would ever watch another except to double check whether it's actually worthy of its prestige. From the first minute, I don't give a damn about any of the characters, and every single scene is so manufactured to make their point, whether it's to tell us something about a character or drill the concept of sexism into our brains.

A Checklist of Scenes

The first scene is, hey look at Don Draper: he's obsessed with advertising. Character introductions are important, but even though I understand the reason for starting off with Don working on an ad campaign in a non-work setting, it feels so manufactured. He asks some worker about his choice of cigarettes and I really couldn't care less.

When you're introducing us to not only the premise of the show but also its principal character, you need to make us care! That's literally the number 1 rule for pilots.

The second scene is hey, look at Don talking about advertising with this girl whose job is semi-adjacent and he says let's get married and she won't because she doesn't wanna make breakfast for him. There's no subtlety here at all, like I'm sorry but the writing isn't clever just because they didn't need to completely spell out that her job is greeting cards and that she's not your typical 60s woman wife-wannabe.

I guess they were afraid they might've been too subtle because they threw in this next scene of these guys making misogynistic comments in front of the new girl and telling the audience, hey everyone's real sexist.

The fourth scene with Pete on the phone with his soon-to-be wife almost had something going for it, as he tries to reassure his fiancée about his bachelor party which, by now, we've been told a million times she definitely has cause for concern. But even this low-bar scene is quickly ruined as we're told flat out by his buddies that he's marrying her for her dad's money.

Just in case you don't quite have a grasp on the misogyny of it all, we then get a scene of Joan giving Peggy a tour of the office and delivering a basic misogyny 101 lesson to the audience where every damn sentence is about you're a woman and therefore you should expect this. I mean good lord, every single scene is just built on "what we need to tell the audience."

Even when they think they're "showing" us, they're not, because the scenes are derived from the commentary. In the following scene, Mr. Sterling asks Don if they have any Jewish employees so they can negotiate with the Jewish company coming in, and it's like hey, look at how advertising companies target demographics. Immediately after this, there's a scene about hey, let's put a sexy girl on this other ad.

We're not following an organic story; we're essentially running through a massive checklist of things we need to know about the characters, advertising, and the 60s.

Manufactured Scenes Make For a Bad Plot

When everything is crafted around the checklist, the plot takes a massive hit. The conversation with Dr. Guttman was somewhat more interesting, I guess, but instead of crafting the scene in a way that shows Don actively undermining her, they have him call her "Miss" and have her correct him that it's "Doctor" in order to basically tell us he's undermining her.

Pile on top some info dumping from Don to her about how she's the one who found their medical testimonies, which ironically reveals the show's own manufacturing because this means Don should know it's Doctor. So either Don did it on purpose (which would be stupid and pointless) or, according to the actor's delivery, he really meant Miss (because the writers told him so).

Also, it later turns out that he's right to reject her research, and even in the moment you can tell that this whole "death wish" thing is a terrible campaign idea. So what was the point of this whole scene? To set up for later when Pete tries pitching this? To show Don throwing a colleague's work in the trash? To give us some further thematic commentary through all the dialogue about the death wish? (etc.)

When your scenes are guided by things you need to tell the audience and not any story purpose, they just feel boring and the plot completely suffers.

The conversation between Peggy and Don during their first meeting starts okay, but then Pete barges in saying hey, change your style so you actually look like a woman and we can look at you. If this was a blatant satire, that'd be one thing, but they're dead serious with this dialogue.

This scene is also indicative of a lot of the very small ways this episode irritates me, with Pete telling us that Don is management (and therefore that he himself is lower on the rung) as if we didn't already know, and Peggy somehow thinking that "where are you from" could possibly be a question of what secretarial school went to and not the actual place she's from. This manufactured crap is so that they can tell us more backstory and commentary and so Pete can ask if she's Amish because of how she's dressed.

I will say thanks Don for telling Pete to shut up about Peggy and just in general for flat out thinking Don's sleeping with her, but they're only doing this for more commentary and setup. Props, I guess, for at least showing us how he's keeping both Peggy and Pete in line for his own sake? It's too bad I literally don't care about these dynamics at all because the characters are boring and flat and the plot is just kinda window dressing.

After this, we get yet another scene about misogyny where Don tries to shake hands with the man instead of the woman and realizes she's the one in charge of the company. She's like you were expecting me to be a man and it's one of those obvious "gotcha" moments that feel manufactured check some more boxes.

The scene of Peggy getting prescribed contraceptive pills is also just more commentary, like who cares? It only exists to tell us hey, things were different back in the day, and that Peggy's ready for some action, especially if it helps her career. When we trace her scenes through the episode, the flow is practically nonexistent.

If you can't come up with an interesting narrative through which to weave your commentary and you only craft scenes based on what boxes to check, then you might as well write an essay instead.

Don's first meeting with Rachel Menken could've been interesting but it wasn't, and it begs the question, did these writers know anything about advertising? Because that was such a weak conversation. Don didn't even try to explain the situation, and Rachel's like you think people won't come to us because we're another Jewish department store and Don's like I'm not gonna have a woman talk to me like that and leaves. Like okay??

Then Pete goes out and tells him you're great with people and I'll follow you into combat.....what???? This scene just progressed in such a weird ass way, and that's what happens when you're trying so hard to be cleverer than the audience that you can't even sit down and tell a story.

This kind of writing is so damn insufferable to watch. Like can y'all not think of a way to show us the sexism in this world instead of giving us yet another misogyny 101 scene with Peggy meeting some call center girls? They only exist to tell us the last secretary got fired 'cause Don wasn't interested in sleeping with her and to tell Peggy to show her legs for Don. I mean, for crying out loud. How many more times can I yell that I don't give a damn before the show actually gets interesting?

The Obvious Pseudo-Intellectualism

Well, then we finally get the meeting with Lucky Strike, which didn't seem too terrible at first only because this episode has managed to incite just the tiniest bit of curiosity about how they're gonna advertise something dangerous to health that people have been warned about. Of course, that is if we ignore the fact that it's not truly an advertising challenge because people who buy cigarettes aren't suddenly gonna start caring about health risks that have been publicized for years.

Hell, you can warn people about red meat causing heart disease or daily caffeine boosting your cortisol, but that's not gonna stop them from ordering steak at Chipotle and getting their delicious Mocha Cookie Crumble from Starbucks.

(Okay, fine. I'm "people," and in my defense, I stopped getting the steak when they brought out the mouth-watering honey chicken. This is not paid advertising.)

In fact, these ideas actually would've been interesting to explore in the meeting. We buy things that are bad for us because they make us happy. Isn't that supposed to be the theme of this episode? Instead, Don can't speak because he has no ideas and so Pete tries using that research from Dr. Guttman and gets shot down by Lucky Strike.

This whole scene is so manufactured, and for all the wrong reasons, too. Is Pete really that dumb to pitch an idea based on research from Don's trash in front of Don? Is this supposed to show us that he's arrogant enough to think it's gonna work and somehow he's gonna supersede Don? How dumb is he to think Don would be dumb enough to throw out viable research or to not realize Pete obviously went into his office?

Pete's little moment only exists to show us that Pete sucks and Don's apparently smart for knowing the obviously stupid death wish stuff was, in fact, stupid.

One of the clients mentions that at least it looks like all cigarette companies are in the same boat, which gives Don an idea 'cause he's like this is the greatest advertising opportunity since cereal: 6 companies with 6 identical products.

Well, yeah. You only just realized this? That's where the episode should've started. In fact, it actually could have because the guy he was questioning in the first scene had brand loyalty with cigarettes and yet somehow the writers didn't actually do anything with that beyond the checklist goals of that scene.

So Don's idea is to sell Lucky Strike with the slogan "it's toasted" because that's how it's made. From this alone, it's obvious what his thinking is, but the clients somehow don't know so he can have an excuse to directly give the audience this big speech about advertising to show off what a genius he is. Again, this show can't help but constantly explain what's going on, and I'm just so bored of them treating me like I'm stupid.

And they still didn't take the idea as far as it could've gone. Based on the clients explaining how their product was made, I thought Don was gonna suggest an ad that paints this gorgeous picture of a bright sunny farm where you can smoke your toasted home grown tobacco in peace.

The point is suppose to be that you're selling happiness, right? So you replace the idea of dangerous cigarettes with a picture of this super chill, relaxing life. Especially in contrast to the urban setting of the show, this also thematically signals to the audience in a more subtle way that people in this show are gonna do things they shouldn't do in an attempt to achieve happiness.

But this show is so focused on trying to seen as super mature, intelligent, and deep that they forget to actually think deeply about their own themes and topics. If they had, they would've been able to better execute even the very little that they did bring up.

Earlier in the episode, they had mentioned how Reader's Digest was telling everyone that cigarettes are bad, but this only serves to be explanation for their problem. They could've gone deeper with it, exploring how magazines like that are also advertising at the end of the day because they're influential. They could dig into the idea of people believing what they read or needing to be told by others what to think.

Instead of trying to keep the whole wife thing a mystery, include Betty in the plot for the episode, like maybe she sees Don smoking and tells him she read that they're bad for you. This directly ties in the commentary with the actual story world by showing us how people in this world are affected by what's going on around them.

Want further commentary? Instead of that weird shit with Rachel, maybe they're meeting with a magazine to run their ads, including ones for cigarettes, and they get into the whole ethics versus money thing. Like can a magazine tell people something's bad for them, but also accept money to run ads for that very thing?

There's literally so many better ways they could've crafted this episode to explore the themes of happiness, consumerism and influence, and gender dynamics, than what they actually did. The best way to do commentary is to show how characters are genuinely impacted and what they experience. If you're gonna do this challenge of the week thing, then really go for it instead of trying to act smarter than the audience.

The Pitfalls of Being Boring

Post-meeting and pre-bachelor party, everyone's thrilled. Don privately tells Pete he knows about the research, and then Peggy puts the moves on Don. But he shuts her down saying he'll fire her and she'll never work again because she let Pete in there to go through his trash. I guess this is the show's way of creating tension and showing character? Yawn. There's more commentary with a weird ass scene at the bachelor party where Pete makes a girl uncomfortable. Like whatever, moving on.

Don meets up with Rachel Menken again and he apologizes for losing his temper, using the Lucky Strike pressure as an excuse, and it just feels like the writers manufactured that earlier meeting to go wrong so they could create conflict and draw out the episode. We didn't even feel any sort of pressure in any other scene, and this second meeting only exists so they can have a private heart-to-heart about the themes of the episode.

This includes Don asking her why she doesn't get married 'cause that would be less of a headache than running this business and of course her answer is that no one would ask her that if she wasn't a woman.....like this commentary is SO heavy handed, my god.

Good shows will explore the themes through the characters journeys and how they navigate the plot, not just make a bunch of random scenes where the characters talk about the themes.

Rachel also says she didn't get married because she's never been in love and Don's like well, love doesn't exist, it's only in slogans. Cue eye roll. It's just this super forced way of telling us Don doesn't believe in love, like look how jaded and unhappy he is before we reveal he has a wife and kid. These characters don't feel real, they feel written and that's one of the things I hate most in a TV show.

His unhappiness stems in part from the fact that his job requires him to understand the facade of society and from the false promises of being a corporate leader with a perfect nuclear family, but can we actually see him doing literally anything that shows this? Can we actually see him navigate a storyline in this episode that explores this aspect?

'Cause this is just me extrapolating based on the premise of the show. It's not anything I've actually seen this episode. Don't just tell us he's unhappy by giving him a mistress, annoying colleagues, and work stress. That's all surface level stuff, especially when dished out in the conversation with Rachel. We can only truly and deeply understand these ideas when we feel them through the characters' journeys.

Unfortunately, this episode is really just a list of scenes. Pete shows up at Peggy's and she lets him sleep with her despite knowing he's getting married. Well, okay then. I mean, when did either of you show interest in the other? He made some misogyny-displaying comments to her earlier, she stocked up on pills so she's good to climb the ladder, they had their little Don's office trash robbery moment off screen, but none of that has anything to do with this. It's literally just a random thing that happens to make the audience feel like "OMG that's crazy!" and I genuinely can't be bothered to care.

Wouldn't it have been better to show Peggy letting Pete into Don's office earlier? That conversation could've been crafted as a tense, dramatic moment that would've developed their character dynamics and showcased who they are, but they instead went for surprising the audience. Don't do that. We should see how Peggy and Pete interact on their own, and that would set up for this later scene of him at her place.

In case that dun dun dun moment wasn't enough of a cliffhanger — surprise! Don is married with children, and I don't give a shit. I actually had to watch this pilot many years ago for a college film class, and this was the only thing I remembered because the writers were hoping this revelation alone would compel people to keep watching.

This Episode Just Doesn't Work

Moral of the story: Don's whole job is to sell happiness ('cause they tell us that in the dialogue) while his actual life is devoid of happiness because surprise, you can't actually sell happiness. It's all a lie, and so is the advertising industry.

This could've been an interesting message and the contrast between what he sells and what his reality is could have been compelling, but they don't actually depict a story that encompasses this theme.

They literally just tell you: here's some scenes of him selling the facade of happiness, and here's some scenes of people not being happy. And the scenes themselves aren't even appropriately conceptualized or crafted because they're letting their commentary dictate what their episode should be about instead of following an organic story.

That's why we don't care that Pete's cheating before he gets married, or that Peggy's willing to do what it takes even if it's unpleasant (which we can only infer because of our current societal understanding that women have it rough).

I've said this a million times, but the characters only exist to be various forms of commentary. Even the plot exists to be commentary rather than interesting character experiences that allow us to explore and understand the themes.

The whole point of all the Lucky Strike discussion this episode is so the advertising challenge of the week can mirror Don's own struggles in life. We're supposed to think this is some super complex advertising challenge that this seasoned marketing genius solves, and we're supposed to be amazed by how this reflects on his actual life. But when you're so busy patting yourself on the back for your pretentious not-as-subtle-as-you-think writing, you forget to be real.

This show doesn't feel real. These characters don't feel real. They feel like mouthpieces for the writers to tell us what they want us to know, both in terms of the themes and in terms of what's going on.

If they wanted to blend Don's job aspect with his life aspect, maybe they should've taken notes from early Dexter. A serial killer we're supposed to empathize with? Doesn't get any more fictional than that. And yet through each weekly kill or obstacle at work, we learn about Dexter's personal struggles to be human and whether he can truly find peace and happiness.

Even though we're not off murdering bad guys, we can all relate to his difficulty fitting in. That, to me, is what feels real — not coming up with lame advertising challenges so you can tell us the themes without actually telling a story. The Lucky Strike challenge is such a poorly executed non challenge (as we discussed above), it's obvious they made it up to be (you guessed it) commentary. Surface level commentary.

And when you lead your stories with commentary, you end up with characters that we don't care about. That's the sort of writing I saw in The Boys as well. You can't make people care about your characters by making bad stuff happen to them, whether that's superhero assault or misogyny or plain old sadness. You have to go deeper than that. Start by crafting real people that have a story that needs to be told.

The first episode of any show is supposed to make you care about the characters and what they're going through, and Mad Men absolutely did not accomplish this.

Episode 2 — It's All Just Commentary

Between the first two episodes, it's hard to tell which is worse. Once again, every scene exists solely to tell us obvious points about gender dynamics and consumerism without bothering to create compelling characters or situations that might make us actually care about these themes.

Telling Us The Commentary

We start with Roger Sterling and his wife yapping about nannies during dinner with Don and Betty. It's an extremely boring conversation that, yet again, only exists to be commentary. Mrs. Sterling talks about how this 16-year-old nanny in their building is the last to go, i.e. the only unmarried girl remaining, so they can essentially just tell us how women are perceived in the 60s.

This "last to go" phrasing wouldn't even be an issue if it were in a different context. Like I could imagine Rose Weissman from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel gossiping about unmarried women in a conversation about marriage, saying "so-and-so is the last to go." With her delivery and probably some added comment about looks, the line alone would provide organic commentary because it would be part of a well-crafted world.

But in this context it's literally telling us the commentary. Especially when you then add on Roger saying how he can't wait till the nanny is another man's problem. I mean good god, we get it — women are men's property.

Then we have this horrible scene of the wives going to the bathroom, where Betty can't hold onto her lipstick because of these ridiculous hand tremors and needs Roger's wife to touch up her lipstick, who does so and even tells her "don't smile, it makes it harder."

Insert sigh.

This commentary is so damn heavy-handed and in-your-face it's painful. It's basically a metaphor for Betty wishing she could be content with the whole perfect wife perfect marriage thing like Roger's wife, and the makeup is a metaphor for the facade they put on. (I'm summarizing.) None of this is natural.

Roger's wife tells Betty it must not be hard to hold onto a man like Don, and Betty explains that she's got kids and is going through hard times personally, which tells us the story of this whole episode 'cause apparently any woman should be thrilled to have Don and Betty still isn't happy. Why even bother with the episode when you're just gonna tell me the entirety of it in the first few minutes?

Then they get escorted out by two black bathroom attendants who comment about how if the wives' purses get smaller they won't get as much money. Like really? You're being this lazy with your thematic development to the point where you just have two random people say what the message is but you're trying to disguise it by not having them say it flat out.

Seriously, every single scene in this show is trying so damn hard and simultaneously not at all. There's no story — just some characters speaking in commentary. The show thinks it's being so deep, but there's actually zero depth when you try to make one line of dialogue do the work your plot and characters should be doing. For these attendants to be no more than window dressing says more about the performative nature of the show than anything else.

In fact, the writers could've crafted a scene that actually treats all the characters like real people having a real interaction that shows what the commentary is (without a corny line of dialogue) by demonstrating how society influences people and how people then go out and affect others in society.

These Are Not Real People

On the way home from dinner, the conversation between Betty and Don is SO BORING. It's just about how Betty thinks Roger seems to like Don and wants to get to know him, and how Don doesn't like to reveal stuff about himself. Surprise, surprise — more forced commentary about the facade of happiness when it comes to the lives they lead.

Then after, there's another small conversation in bed where you're supposed to infer that Betty's not completely happy. Too bad I barely know anything about her to care.

The characters literally aren't doing anything, man, like if they're so unhappy, show us that through the plot. Instead, we just get some conversations where the actors are doing the legwork of showing how they're not happy, and every single scene after just keeps repeating this same thing over and over again.

I have no problem with theme-based episodes if they're organic. In fact, even shows that aren't explicitly covering certain themes each episode can still have theme-based episode writing where their different storylines all explore various aspects of the same idea. This kind of writing can be really great if the story is woven through authentic characters that encounter various experiences that convey those themes.

But Mad Men's characters are just mouthpieces for the writers. Last episode was about how the facade of happiness and true happiness don't actually go hand in hand. This episode is about how women are told they're supposed to be happy with patriarchal life but they're not actually happy.

On the surface, these seem like excellent aspects of the overall thematic premise to explore. But unfortunately, the writers aren't able to come up with any compelling ongoing narrative to do so and resort to making their scenes scream the theme at us.

There's a brief scene of Peggy being excited about her paycheck, and Joan tells her she's so excited no one would know she's at the bottom of the totem pole, and then of course they see an older woman just crying. Why? Because I guess there's no other way to contrast Peggy's youthful excitement to the disappointment of an older generation.

Then we get another boring scene of these ad guys with this episode's advertising challenge, men's body spray. They pin down this one guy and someone has a line about pretend like it's prom night and you can be the girl.

Do you hear me rolling me eyes?

Again, commentary. This time about how it's normalized to treat girls like that, throwing them down and forcing them. These characters are literally not real people man, like why are you randomly doing all this? Well, because the script told them to.

As if that's not enough, we get a conversation between Don, Roger, and Mr. Cooper about how they need to be the ad agency behind Richard Nixon, or "Dick Nixon" as they call him to show you how "period" this show is, even though people of their status and job would not be calling him that, historically speaking.

Cooper makes a super obvious comment about how the last eight years have been good to them because they've been good to XYZ big companies — so again, it's commentary that pretty much just tells us hey, ad companies love consumerism and there's a strong relationship between advertising and government.

And then a shot of Cooper walking away with no shoes, just socks. Please free me.

Again, Commentary

Every goddamn scene of this show is so insanely boring. Mr. Kinsey the copywriter talks to Peggy over her sad lunch, and Joan takes her to go see the men who offer to buy them lunch as they talk about how Pete Campbell is on his honeymoon at Niagara Falls aka "the wettest place on earth" and hasn't left the room. So damn boring.

The lunch itself is more commentary about how men treat women and are constantly sexualizing them or looking for sex and how men use their money to get girls. It really bewilders me why they think just telling us the message qualifies as storytelling.

The copywriter gives Peggy something for Don to look at and tells her she can look too while chastising the other men as the "Hitler youth." At least they're trying somewhat with this guy, but it's so bare minimum and surface level as they essentially set him up to be not like other guys so they can flip it later. (As if we care.)

But before we get to all that, there's a scene with Betty and her fellow mom friend just gossiping. Apparently there's some divorcée moving in nearby and they're like ooh that's so terrible, worrying about money at this age.

Oh my god, WE GET IT — women are tied to men. The commentary doesn't come organically through the plot at all. In Maisel, when Midge got left by Joel, we FELT the pain and drama of a woman having been left by her husband from a personal level to a family level to a SOCIETAL level.

But here, to end the scene, the kids show up and Betty is like her clothes better not be on the floor 'cause that's all she really has to worry about, and the friend is like the divorcée might drive down the price of homes in the area. Again, just commentary with NO STORY, like omg who gives a shit? How many times can I say, "again, commentary?"

It's so heavy-handed too, with Betty having this hand tremor problem show up first with the lipstick and then again as she passes the divorcée's house. I cannot believe people think this show is so deep and nuanced I mean, are you kidding?? A fake hand tremor??

They're trying to show how she's suppressing her true desires to the point where it comes out physically, but that's so weak and stupid compared to if they had actually given her a scene where she needs to suppress her truth because of the demands of her life, like maybe through a choice she has to make.

This scene basically just tells us she's getting more uncomfortable with her 60s housewife status and is lowkey drawn to the divorce concept. Like wow, I'm so glad I got to watch this instead of getting a well-developed episode arc that actually shows us Betty's unhappiness through actual circumstances and not just a hand tremor. And because of this she crashes the car, but it's not really serious, and we cut to Don and his mistress. Um...okay? Like what the hell was that?

So Don asks the mistress where did she got her TV and apparently someone gave it to her and he makes a fuss about it so she throws it out the window. *Sigh* This show is trying so hard to be deep. Then Don comes home and Betty explains her hand thing happened again and the doctors told her to see a psychiatrist, i.e. the hand tremors are a plot device because there's nothing else going on in this stupid fucking episode.

Of course, Don doesn't trust these doctors or believe in stuff like mental health and psychiatry, and it's so obvious that she doesn't want to stay in this marriage and he's not the husband she wants. The writing is so in-your-face like she even says there's not as much of a stigma today. Am I supposed to give a shit that she might need a psychiatrist, or is this just a boring plot device to show that Don is hanging onto the older ways while Betty is itching to reach for the new world?

He's like I thought psychiatry was for unhappy people, but then I look at you and this house and the kids and I'm like, are you unhappy? And she's like of course I'm happy. Obviously she's not, and she just goes along with him like whatever you think is best.

It feels like this whole scene is artificially constructed to show that Don thinks a woman like Betty should be happy because she has the husband and marriage and kids and house, and that despite that Betty is still not happy because times are changing. Not to mention the whole plot is also artificially constructed to tell us this.

It's not a bad idea to contrast his expectation of Betty with his expectation of the mistress in the previous scene, but the actual scenes themselves are so goddamn boring because we literally do not care about these people or what happens with them. How many more scenes are we gonna have in this one episode of Betty and Don just talking about whether she's happy to show she's not actually happy because her words don't match the actress's facial expression?

What Do Women Want (To Not Be Bored)

Talking to her about it isn't enough because now we got Don talking to his team about it through the advertising metaphor of the week. The guys pitch their rocket-adjacent ad for the body spray to Don, and he doesn't like it because people think the future is depressing and if they see an astronaut they're gonna think about how he's exploring space for other planets 'cause this one's gonna end. I mean good lord.

The premise of using these advertising challenges to explore themes isn't a bad idea but they do it in such a boring and try-hard manner, sometimes overstuff with irrelevant bonus commentary. Don asks them what do women want and the guys crack jokes and he's like seriously, what would make a woman buy this men's deodorant because they're not selling to the men, they're selling to their girlfriends and mothers.

Again, the guys are like I've stopped trying to figure out what women want, and of course this whole scene is supposed to be about how men in the '60s are reliant on women too and trying to figure out on a consumer level and on a personal level what this new generation of women wants.

If you want to show us the growing power of women and the shifting gender dynamics, can't you at least not be so boring and obvious? They take complex themes that could be explored through characters' stories and instead stuff them into a bunch of basic ass scenes that only exist to be surface level commentary.

Don goes on yapping about maybe women want a cowboy, what do women want, what if they want something else, and again he is so obviously talking about Betty. The camera pauses for so long as if to convey that this should be some extremely deep commentary that we need to sit and think about and feel, but it's so emotionally flat.

This whole scene is just crafted in such a flat manner because the writers think the audience is too stupid to understand the societal commentary without spelling it out. I don't have a problem seeing them try to figure out how to sell something, but it should be compelling to watch with strong scene structure, not just a list of points to hit.

To continue the theme with another storyline, we're back with Mr. Kinsey taking Peggy to lunch and he gives her a boring as fuck rundown of the whole company, and again it's commentary and I don't give a shit. Everything about this feels so inorganically constructed just to give us the commentary.

He's basically taking her under his wing explaining there's women copywriters and you can always tell it's a woman who wrote it, but sometimes she's the right man for the job. All so we can get some quick commentary about gender. She's like you must be creatively satisfied but he's not because more commentary about what society says happiness should look like for men and women.

But who cares? Why do I not feel anything at all? I have no personal investment in Peggy's journey, because there is no journey. She's the new girl at a job who wants to succeed and that's pretty much it, like she literally has no personality, and even her copywriting companion only exists for the message of the episode. Commentary doesn't matter if the characters are as flat and bland as cardboard.

Speaking of, we cut to Roger Sterling telling Don that Cooper is gonna pick Peter Campbell for the Nixon team, and Don's like two weeks in Niagara Falls does wonders for your career and Roger's like he's so uncreative for going to Niagara Falls. I mean, oh my god, we get it — he's not good enough for the job.

Instead of telling a story that makes us care what's going on, they spent time coming up with this little Niagara Falls bit, and I know they thought they were so clever to not only incorporate Pete's honeymoon destination into commentary, but then to spell it out for us, too. And I know Don and Peter aren't besties after the last episode but do I really give a shit that they're gonna have to work together? Not at all. It feels like nothing in this show matters or carries any weight at all.

Once again, Don's like what do women want and Roger's like who cares and Don's asking about didn't your daughter see a psychiatrist like you mentioned the other night and Roger says he's mistaken and yaps about how he's comfortable with his mind and he's not a woman so he's not gonna see a random stranger to talk about women problems, and this is to flat out tell us hey, Roger is like the total king of patriarchy.

But hold on a sec.

So I had to go back and check if Roger actually mentioned that thing about his daughter in their dinner scene, but that convo was just about nannies. If you were gonna go to the trouble of doing this whole callback bit with Niagara Falls, why didn't you do this with something that actually mattered? It would've actually been relevant for that dinner scene to have shown them discussing that matter.

Also, if Roger's now telling him he's mistaken, then why would he have mentioned it in the first place? Unless the whole "you're mistaken" thing is just to show us Roger's attitude towards psychiatry. You see the problems you run into when your whole show is just manufactured commentary?

As if we didn't already know Don and Roger's takes on everything, we then have Don wondering how could women not be happy in a world like this and Roger basically says that psychiatry is just a passing fad girls want because other girls have it and women want everything. Gender commentary? Check. Roger's a raging misogynist? Check.

I hate how this show is literally just a bunch of scenes of people saying not only the commentary, but the characterization as well. If you're not creative enough to weave your themes and characterization through the plot and character journeys, then you're a bad writer. And after each boring scene, they stay on the actor for a really long time as if they've just said something super deep that you need to think about.

Everything Is So Forced and Unnatural

So Don gives his wife a watch to make her happy because consumerism is the answer to happiness and she's worried about Sally (their daughter) having a bruise from the car crash because she's a girl and scarring would be worse for her compared to their son. It's this ridiculous commentary yet again with Betty being like I could've killed the kids, or worse, Sally could've gone on living with this horrible scar. Once again, seriously, we get it — looks are everything for women. You can literally feel how forced this is.

The first episode of Maisel shows us the similar expectation of women through much better scenes. Rose tells Midge she's concerned about baby Esther's forehead being too big, Midge gets up at night to take off her makeup and gets up early to put it back on before her husband wakes, Imogene helps Midge measure her body as part of Midge's daily routine, and these are just a few examples. The theme of women's expectations is BUILT INTO THE WORLD OF THE SHOW and so they don't have to manufacture these scenes. They feel like the characters' natural lives, interactions, and routines.

We get even more goddamn commentary about women and happiness as Don goes to see his mistress (incidentally also named Midge). He explains how he brought Betty to see the doctor in the city, and she's like don't bring her up because I feel cruel. Well, duh. And Don's like I can't decide if you have everything or nothing. I mean, what the hell kind of plot is this? It's literally so boring and completely ineffective, you might as well have Don just present a Venn Diagram of Midge and Betty.

Meanwhile Peggy goes to see Kinsey about Don not coming in and he closes the door and starts kissing her. She refuses so he assumes Don already bagged her, saying "I don't even like to sit in Don's chair," which is such forced fucking dialogue by the way. She says they misunderstood each other but he insists there must be someone else, which is technically true because of Pete, so she confirms.

Once again, hammering home the commentary that men see women as the property of other men. They could've crafted a scene that shows us this. In fact I can't remember where I saw this, but I think there was a show or movie where some dude was hitting on a woman and stopped when her boyfriend or husband showed up. Or maybe it was real life. Regardless, no corny dialogue. Just action. Why can't Mad Men ever be natural?

Peggy's frustrated and asks Joan when men take you out to lunch why they think you're the dessert. Surprise, there's a disconnect between what women want and what men think they want (and conversely what men want and women think they want). You pretty much told us that already in every single scene so far.

The show hasn't even tried to build up Peggy's hopes and dreams for her career. Not really any excitement about Kinsey taking her under his wing or letting her look at documents. She has no internal world, no personal life, nothing going on underneath the piece of paper they write her lines on. Every scene with her is just crafted around the commentary because this show isn't really about characters and journeys.

Plus, the hopes and dreams thing is something I'm extrapolating as what her story should've been about this episode so there's more of a crushing blow when Kinsey goes a different way than she expected. Unfortunately, apart from misogyny being a real world issue, there's literally zero reason to care.

Joan tells her she's the new girl and she's not much (as in she's not pretty) so she should just enjoy the attention. Again, more heavy-handed commentary, and then we get a mini montage of tons of men staring at Peggy as they walk by 'cause get it? She's an object for men to look at. Then she pulls out Pete's postcard that she's hiding in her desk, and then in the bathroom she sees the crying woman 'cause she gets it now.

I mean what the hell is this story?

Imagine if they had actually built on her getting that paycheck early on and explored what that meant for her goals rather than just using it as a super contrived way of telling us the themes. 'Cause lets face it, I won't care about the themes if I don't care about the characters. Characters are everything in TV.

Why should I care about Peggy when all I know about her is that she's the new girl and she's drier than paint? The show has a responsibility to really build her out like a real person so we feel compelled to follow her for her, not for the things that happen to her.

Same thing with Betty and her psychiatrist. She gives this super boring monologue and it's supposed to be super meaningful because of how it's shot, and it's just not. Like, who cares? Meanwhile Don's with the mistress and she's like you need a shower 'cause you stink and he's like what do women want YET AGAIN.

When she replies we don't want to be asked something like that, he gets an ad idea for the deodorant which is "what do women want? Any excuse to get closer." Um....are we supposed to think he's some genius? Surely there was a better scene out there that could've gotten him to this result 'cause is this seriously how he figures out the big bad advertising challenge of the weak? It's so forced, unnatural, and weak.

Then Don and Betty are having a nice dinner in the city 'cause I guess Betty's appointment took all day, and he notices she doesn't have the watch on her wrist, which we saw her take off earlier. Again, just because you have some looks here and there with some matching camera shots to show us him noticing the missing watch without any dialogue about it, that doesn't mean the story is actually good.

Who Cares?

The episode ends with Don calling the psychiatrist who says I had an interesting hour with your wife and you're doing the right thing, and we end with a shot of their hallway as if we're supposed to go dun dun dun what a cliffhanger. I personally have no desire to know what the "right thing" refers to. This scene only exists to be a cliffhanger and to show us that Don as the husband has access to what should be Betty's private matters.

Another wasted hour of my life.

We don't even know enough about Betty to care that she's unhappy in this marriage, like who is this woman? It literally doesn't matter, so all these corny, try-hard ways of showing us that she's unhappy in this marriage — we don't care. We haven't seen that she's unhappy. You can show us through her acting that she's unhappy, but we haven't seen through her circumstances that she's unhappy in this marriage, and so I don't give a shit. We're literally just seeing this through her hand tremors.....like, come on.

The fact that you had to invent something as stupid as hand tremors to show that her psychology is telling her that she doesn't want to be in this marriage with Don, instead of giving us a circumstance through which you can actually show us that she's unhappy?

I know I've repeated this a ton, but I'm just baffled by the plot choices, like she's driving by the house of a divorcée and her hands start tremoring and so she crashes and therefore this shows us she's unhappy? That's literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And people think this show is smart? Baffling.

This time I am literally never watching the show again — I just can't. It's so boring, the writing is so pretentious, and the characters literally don't matter.

Conclusion: Nothing Happens and Nothing Matters

Is it any surprise that the most popular and critically acclaimed shows of the past few decades is about jaded middle aged white guys with families? As a writer at The Guardian realized during his stint covering the whole show episode to episode, "Mad Men wasn’t the great existential drama of our age, exploring the nature of identity and our Freudian urges. It was just a meandering soap."

The show is so full of itself and thinks it's so smart, and so do its fans, despite the fact that they forgot to actually craft a story. Why is this show so highly acclaimed? Are people so desperate to feel smart? I feel like this show rewards people who just want to feel intelligent without doing any real work to improve their understanding of the world. And if you criticize it, they say you must not get it, but how can we not get it when the show is literally telling us its commentary with every line of dialogue?

Even for the stuff you have to "infer" there's no fun because the show is so boring and the themes aren't integrated in a very effective manner. I love examining shows and movies I love for details in character and thematic development, but only when these things are really well woven together as part of the overall story.

Plus, the stuff I like to look into, most fans of Mad Men would overlook as not smart enough because these viewers are too pseudo-intellectual to ever find meaning in something that didn't seem "mature" or "adult" or "dark and grim."

I was surprised to see fans of this show hating on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel but maybe I shouldn't have been. Despite a similar period setting, these two shows are a world of difference. While the plot of Maisel may have started to meander a bit in season 3, its thematic development and social exploration of the time period and gender and patriarchy through intersectional lens remained strong. That's because the commentary is actually built into the world and explored through character experiences.

However, in Mad Men, the commentary is stated through very manufactured scenes with some more commentary sprinkled on top to make people feel like it's deeper than it actually is. If you watch Maisel and think it's somehow worse than Mad Men because you think the former has no depth, then you're just exposing yourself as someone who needs to be spoon fed the commentary.

The entire pilot episode of Maisel asks us "what if the perfect nuclear family set-up under the patriarchy actually fell apart?" But when you watch the episode, you're initially invested in the characters and their lives. Through that, you can then begin to understand the underlying themes and social questions.

As you watch the way Midge has to deal with the social and personal repercussions of separating from her husband and pursuing a career considered nontraditional in general and rarer yet for women, you understand how deeply rooted the patriarchy is without anyone having to constantly beat you over the head with it.

Plus, characters of color and queer characters and the political backdrop of the show aren't just there for decoration. Because TV shows are about exploring a particular world through its characters, a good show will be able to naturally explore anyone and anything that is part of that world if they've made it feel real.

Late 1950s/early 1960s New York (and America at large) was already a real place with real problems, so Maisel was able to build out characters and storylines that could navigate these worlds, and in doing so, confront these various problems.

Thematic depth comes naturally when your characters' experiences reflect on broader ideas. To use an example most likely everyone knows, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series tell us that everyone needs to play their part in order for good to triumph. And how do they tell us this? By showing us the complexities of everyone struggling to do their part and needing others to do theirs. I mean, duh, right?

True depth and nuance is achieved when the thematic basis is set up through the world itself, and then you explore that by crafting a story that follows your characters through a compelling plot that showcases the theme. Only then you can sprinkle in the nuance with the details of each scene. You don't start by writing out a list of scenes and what these scenes need to show the audience. That's why the thematic depth of Mad Men is quite literally paper-thin.

It's not just about thematic development, either. How can they hope to achieve any depth through character journeys when the characters don't feel like real people? It shouldn't take more than one episode to make a character feel like a real person that exists outside of the TV screen, and yet none of the characters in this show feel like anything more than just actors reciting dialogue from a piece of paper.

People act like the characters are so complex when their definition of complexity is just brooding. Every single character and scene is crafted for the sake of just telling us the themes. There's no depth, and certainly no subtext, and even when they try to be subtextual, it's so obvious what they're talking about that it's honestly insulting.

Sure, the audience should be able to understand that if a character says X, what they really mean is Y based on the story development prior, but that should come organically. Like if a character is yelling at someone and we can tell it's really because they're frustrated with something else, depending on the execution, this could feel organic. But the scenes in Mad Men feel so manufactured.

I also hate that people keep insisting the show is supposed to be "slow" because it's a character study. Stop calling shows a "character study." Every show needs characters and explores characters through some sort of plot. That's the definition of TV.

Maybe some shows are more about the plot, like murder mysteries. But the vast majority of TV is about characters. It's not good writing if you can't craft a compelling plot with compelling characters that navigate a world integrated with these themes.

Fans of the show claim that if you don't get the appeal, it's because you must only like watching Marvel or dumb action movies with car chases. But there actually is a high level of objectivity when it comes to art, and in the case of Mad Men, it's not a matter of opinion or preference to believe that it's shallow, boring, and poorly executed writing.

It's literally a fact, and that's because the writers focused more on creating a facade of elite intellectualism that the network advertised through the nose, than on crafting a world and characters that actually matter.