The new TV season

No. Mad Men’s dialog is just plain stilted. In four minutes of their “best” clips, they couldn’t show a single believeable line? Sorry, I grew up on shows like All in the Family, Gunsmoke, Barney Miller and others. Now, those had writers who could do convincing dialog. If you had never seen any of those programs, and watched best of clips from those shows, you can bet you would at least be able to sit though four minutes without cringing in derision.

Maybe I should watch a newer show end to end. But they’re all like soap operas now. You have to watch a whole damn season for anything to happen. Maybe the old programs deserved criticism for neatly solving problems in an hour or less. But there’s something to be said for a succinct storyline.