Come on, did everyone really smoke that much? I was born in 1967 and my parents never smoked.
The obsolete stuff just blows me away…smoking while pregnant, brandishing a rifle at the office staff, bidding your drunk boss farewell as he drives away, a psychiatrist spilling his patient’s secrets to her (the patient’s) husband.
I’m enjoying it, but it looks like Elisabeth Moss is a bit chunkier? Did she fatten up for the show? I remember her as the youngest Bartlet daughter on The West Wing, and she was quite svelte then.
I’m unfamiliar with Mad Men, but I can tell you that people really did smoke a lot (I was born in '55). My parents went through 1-2 packs a day each; Mom smoked Tareytons and Dad smoked Camels or Lucky Strikes. He also went through 5-10 Phillies brand cigars daily. You have no idea what the air was like in that little house. When we went to visit our grandparents for vacation, you could add both of them to the smokers. When my aunt and uncle dropped by at the same time, six adults would be puffing away. And no, Mom didn’t stop smoking or drinking when she was pregnant.
I’m also watching the marathon, after missing the first run (I even looked up the last thread on the series, which was quite the challenge, since “mad” and “men” are both 3 letter words).
I know this is absolutely horrible to say, but I envy the smoking liberalism of that time. Yes, smoking is a gross vice. But it’s also cool, and all those people who smoked in the show looked cool by doing it. Deny it all you want, but there’s a reason that smoking persisted for so long, even when people must have realized it wasn’t really good for them.
I just watched season #1 on DVD. The smoking is startling* by today’s standard but I can verify it was exactly like that. I remember my parents having “card club” at our house and the smoke being so thick it was like fog.
Another thing that seems shocking by today’s standards was when the guy slapped another guy’s kid across the face for spilling a drink at a party. And the kid’s father not only didn’t mind but threatened the kid with another slap. Today that would be a lawsuit or a fistfight if you slapped someone else’s kid!
I thought it was an excellent show, will watch season #2 when it hits DVD.
Like the scene with the two women smoking in the nursery while they watched the baby sleep!
Smoking was allowed in hospital rooms/maternity wards when I had my first baby, in 1964. (They made us put the cigarettes out when they brought the babies in for feeding.) Seriously, we never noticed the stink because everything stunk. People smoked in movie theaters, libraries, stores, schools, any public building/government office. The only place you’d see No Smoking signs is where there was flammable material nearby.
Peggy’s under a lot of stress, and her weight is addressed later in the season.
My grandmother entered the workforce around 1960, and she still smokes like those characters. She verifies that the environment was pretty much like it’s depicted – smoky, boozy, and unbelieveably sexist. But she was an 18-year-old divorcee with a baby at home, working towards her accounting degree and needing to support herself, so she toughed it out.
I once worked in an office where everyone but me chainsmoked at work with the office doors closed. We occasionally drank in the office, and nearly every employee had a sordid office romance at some point. I worked there from 1996-1998!
I’m so excited for the show’s return Sunday. We TiVoed the first season last year and watched it all over a weekend, which was both a blast and wickedly depressing at the same time.
I love this show – took a while for me to get past the fact that there’s basically no one likeable in it, but its atmosphere grabbed me, the writing is compelling and the performances are impeccable. Jon Hamm is incredible! Glad he got nominated. That Carousel/nostalgia speech alone was Emmy-worthy.
I’m glad you started this, ivylass. wanted to look for old discussion threads but the darn search engine can’t find the title, considering both words have three letters in 'em.
(Hey here’s some search keywords for anyone else looking in the future: Madmen Draper Campbell Peggy Betty advertising madison )
As far as “did everyone smoke,” the answer is: no, of course not. But I believe around 50% of adults did smoke, and that’s just within the general population; within the Madison Avenue world that Mad Men depicts, there would have been even more of a smoking culture. Fast pace, high-stress, and everything’s about ‘style’ and instant gratification.
Plus I wonder if the ad folks got plenty of freebies by the tobacco companies.
I have a picture of my parents at a nightclub from about five years prior to the Mad Men era. They look young, fabulous and easily glamorous in that blithe, mid-1950s way. Everyone at their table has a cigarette, and 90% of the folks surrounding do too. Sometimes I wonder, rather morbidly, how many of the happy people in that picture continued to smoke and died of lung cancer or other smoking-related illnesses.
Anyway, it’s a great show and though its first season takes place six years before I was born, I find its depiction of '60s suburbia very believable, albeit heightened reality.
Even if I didn’t enjoy the story, writing and characters (which I do), I would probably still watch for the art direction. The sets and costumes are impeccable, as are the hairstyles. You can tell that all of the women are wearing period-accurate undergarments. I want that big abstract painting that’s hanging on the wall in Don’s office. Even the artwork that Salvatore does for client presentations are perfect.
I like the inclusion of Robert Morse’ character, not just for the in-joke reference of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” but because too many nostalgia pieces limit themselves as little picture-postcard islands in time. In fact, in the late 50’s, early 60’s, there were more than a few old jazzbeaus their ethos from the 1920’s, an age which itself had been influenced by the presence of old hard-heads from the robber-baron era.
Another example of this is Don’s flashbacks to his Great Depression childhood, which is indispensable when trying to understand the conformity and materialism of the 1950’s.
(re: the smoking. 48 years from now, there may a thread that asks "did they really eat mountains of crap food back then?)
I love the contrast between the men like Roger who are WWII vets, Don who’s a Korea vet, and the younger guys who haven’t been to war at all. That created a kind of social…hierarchy isn’t the right word, but there is definitely a differentiation in the way they view themselves and each other. And a possible WWI vet/Lost Generation type really adds the cherry on top of all of it. He’s lived long enough through such turbulent times that he’s probably MORE prepared for the '60s than the rest of them.
Another flashback to my childhood was when Betty is driving the big old station wagon and the kids are standing on the seats and climbing from back to front.
I just stumbled across it and started DVR’ing - I have a few more episodes to watch from what I taped.
Question:
from the episode where Don’s brother Adam shows up and Don first denies the relationship, then shows up and pays Adam hush money to go away. Are Don’s real origins and what led to his abandoning his family revealed by the end of the first season or is that left hanging?..
And the need to have a “family” name at the company just for the panache. Pete, being a pig notwithstanding, does seem to be fairly competent, but then Sterling wouldn’t let Don fire him because he didn’t want Pete’s Mummy complaining up at the Hamptons that the mean old ad agency fired her baby.
I’m thinking this is more '60s era Manhattan, not '60 era Smalltown, right? I don’t think there’s a faithful husband in the bunch.
The reason they smoke so much in Mad Men, probably more than the average, is that they are the ad agency that has the Lucky Strike account. Thus, they probably get freebies, and they are supposed to use the product. Peggy says at one point that smoking is “practically required” to work in the office, just like they all have to wear Dr. Scholl’s shoe inserts. Roger Sterling has to light one up when meeting with the Lucky Strike guy despite it being a really bad idea for him healthwise because it’s expected that they will all smoke.
The sexism is pretty horrifying. The infidelity-- is it just as bad now and people are more discrete, or what? The racism and anti-Semitism is also quite shocking. Segregation in full swing, with Dr. King about to change the world. Have we changed that much or are people in “polite society” just more careful about what they say?
I agree that there are no really likable characters in the show. Don is fascinating and at times sympathetic, but what really turns me off to him is how cold he is to his family. Yes, his backstory somewhat explains it, but it’s hard for me to feel bad for him because he CHOSE to start that family and then emotionally abandons them over and over. His wife seems to have the potential to be a decent person but is so infantilized by Don and society that she can’t even articulate her discontent, much less fix it.
I do not get the character of Peggy. What the hell does she see in Pete Campbell, who is the prototypical douchebag tool? Anyone have any insight?
ETA: My husband and I enjoy looking at all the period furniture and housewares and saying, “We had that exact same ____________ growing up!”