Gloomy Mad Men

Two blog posts from outside my usual Mad Men sphere brought me up short when I read them and made me think: do I actually like Mad Men?

It can be hard work and it is dour and oppressive. The sixties weren't that miserable. Self-Styled Siren has a post on the whole dourness of it and suggests watching films from the period instead. Now, I find it hard to like or, indeed, find films from that era so I'm not so sure though I guess North By Northwest could be a good start (ok, not a melodrama). It is, after all, also about an incredibly handsome ad executive... I'm wittering but I do think the Siren sums it up succinctly: "It's like Saint Augustine wrote the scripts."

Lance Mannion goes further and criticises the show's lack of humour. And while I think Pete is hilarious, he does have a point: "It's a comedy with all the jokes removed" and "Mad Men is one of the most relentlessly and deliberately humorless shows in the history of television drama".

(He is incorrect about none of the characters being musically inclined because we know Paul is a singer and that Joan can play the accordion - but she isn't an ad woman (but should be) - however, his blog post predates "My Old Kentucky Home".)

Well, I do like Mad Men, nay love it, but I can't help but thinking it would be even better if there was more scherzando like the scene when Pete and Trudy danced in every episode.