Review: Mad Men 1.1

Mad Men

In the US: AMC, Thursdays, 10pm/9c

In the UK: Not yet acquired

I imagine that during Klan rallies, there are moments when the bigotry has to stop. You just can’t spend your whole time proclaiming that Catholics are evil, that black people need burning religious icons on their front lawns, that Jews run the world, etc: after a few rallies, even the dumbest member will have worked it out and started to get bored. So things will move on and they’ll start discussing when the next bake off is happening, who hasn’t paid his membership dues, etc.

It turns out though that the advertising men of Madison Avenue during the late 1950s/early 60s – the self-proclaimed “Mad Men” – spent 24/7 dedicating themselves to destroying anything that wasn’t white, anglo-saxon and protestant.

“Peggy, get your sweet ass in here now!”

“Yes, Mr Albino!”

“What’s on my schedule for today?”

“This morning, you’re oppressing all women everywhere before heading off to put down the Jew man in the afternoon.”

“What? No time for lunch?”

“No, Sir.”

“God damnit! Peggy, once you’ve finished picking up my dry cleaning and baking me a cake, I want you to get me five packs of Marlboro extra-tarry. I’m running low and I’m going to need them.”

That’s the other odd thing about Mad Men. As well as wall-to-wall sexual harassment and bigotry, everyone smokes, every second of the day. Even when they’re asleep, their hand contains a smoking cigarette, just in case they wake up and need to have a drag on a fag.*

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