Attending the Mad Men "Black and Red Ball"
Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 5:45PM Margaret reporting from Los Angeles. On Wednesday night, television phenomenon Mad Men screened its final premiere, and I had the pleasure of attending to represent The Film Experience. This premiere leads off the second half of Mad Men's seventh and final season. While introducing the episode, AMC President Charlie Collier spoke to the legacy of the show, claiming that:
in the history of television, there will be a permanent line of demarcation: Before Mad Men, and After Mad Men.''
It's a strong claim, but it's true.
Compare the television landscape of today to the television landscape of a decade ago, and the influence of Mad Men's success is evident. Certainly without that show AMC would not have taken off and there would be no Breaking Bad, nor The Walking Dead. The Americans, Downton Abbey, and Netflix's entire original programming arm also owe Mad Men a sizable debt.
The Event
In celebration of their achievement, the cast and crew gathered in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles which housed the Oscars for many year. The Pavilion isn't new to Mad Men either, the foyer having played the lobby of a Rome hotel in season three.
Margaret and Jordan attending for The Film Experience
Nearly the entire cast was present except for Elisabeth Moss (currently on Broadway) and Jessica Pare. When Robert Morse was called on stage he practically held court, and all but did a soft-shoe. Jon Hamm was, understandably, like the class president, high-fiving everyone and adorably rough-housing with little Bobby Draper when he seemed to get restless. And finally, Kiernan Shipka who we watched grow up on the show, is now unnervingly tall and very poised.
The mutual respect and love among the team was evident, and the program reserved special (and richly deserved) praise for the visual artists who gave Mad Men so much of its richness: cinematographer Chris Manley, production designer Dan Bishop, art director Christopher Brown, set decorator Claudette Didul, props master Ellen Freund, and the genius costume designer Janie Bryant whose work on the show is so long overdue for an Emmy. Christina Hendricks clearly adores them giving enormous hugs to everyone.
Coming up on seven full seasons, Mad Men has pulled down four Emmys for Best Drama Series, traced the decade of shifting cultural history between 1960 and 1970, and has inspired more spiraling fan theories than its cast has smoked cigarettes.
So how does it end? The first of the final episodes, true to the series spirit, plays it close to the vest. It riffs on the show's established intertwining themes (sex, business, identity) but it's a little looser, a little more relaxed. (As if they knew that the TFE readership would be on the look out for a "Mad Men at the Movies" reference, they toss off an aces Mildred Pierce joke midway through.) The pace is unhurried, as ever, and where the slow burn will flame out is still anyone's guess. TV has changed so much since Mad Men arrived. How will it change once it's gone?
Mad Men returns to AMC for its final episodes on Sunday April 5th, 10/9c
Reader Comments (16)
Margaret and Jordan are both looking very glamorous!
I will miss the sets, I will miss the clothes, I will miss the movies, I will miss discussing the endless discussion of the closing song while the credits run.
"Certainly without that show AMC would not have taken off and there would be no Breaking Bad, nor The Walking Dead. The Americans, Downton Abbey, and Netflix's entire original programming arm also owe Mad Men a sizable debt."
I think if they just pay their debt to HBO and The Sopranos, they'll be covered. And cover Mad Men's debt as well.
My goodness. Look at that terribly attractive couple. Nathaniel definitely always finds the classiest contributors for Team Ezperience.
Hmm I think it is reaching to say that Breaking Bad, The Americans and those other shows owe their existence to Mad Men of all things. With that said Mad Men has shown amazing quality this far into its run (even if it is not quite the show it used to be IMO). It'll be missed and I'm most greatful to it for giving us Hamm and, especially, Moss. Those really were amazing finds.
Mad Men was, though, the first basic-cable network to play with the big dogs. Shows like The Sopranos were being made in the realm of premium cable only, and AMC was a no-name network improbably trying to break into the territory that HBO and its few peers had basically monopolized. All good TV shows are influenced by many predecessors (I'd agree that those shows owe plenty to The Sopranos, but also to Twin Peaks, and also to The Prisoner), but the explosion of those character dramas in the past decade, especially from upstart networks just getting into the original programming game, can be pretty clearly traced back to Mad Men.
I just re-watched Season 7.1 As I've found before, watching Mad Men again always delivers more. Being able to binge-watch also awakes one to the story arcs that run all season long -- watching Roger go from dissolute hippie-enabling playboy to revived leader and heir to Bert Cooper's company over those past seven episodes was so satisfying.
I love the shout-outs to all the visual artists, and let's add stellar composer David Carbonara to that list! The score for the series is perfect.
Margaret and Jordan looked like a million bucks. Two million even.
Sad I couldn't make it to LA but happy to read about this experience. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high for Janie Bryant but damn who in the world is more overdue for anything?
Margaret -- yup. AMC was a whole new ball game for basic cable. and there's so much of that now. it's remarkable actually that HBO & showtime have been able to maintain so well despite an absolute explosion of material -- of better quality than before -- from so many rivals.
So awesome that you got to attend! I'm so looking forward to this final season, and will be sad to see the show go. I think it's unrivaled, especially as period pieces go.
However, I think most would say "Before The Sopranos, after the Sopranos," because The massive success of The Sopranos led to characters like Don Draper and Walter White, but also to a wider appreciation of other HBO shows like Oz that premiered before The Sopranos. The Sopranos put HBO on the map, which is to say it put quality TV as we've come to know it (cinematic production values, complex characters, challenging themes, etc.) on the map.
Sure, HBO was in the realm of premium cable, but The Sopranos captured the zeitgeist and more people subscribed to HBO as a result. It's fair to say that those who tuned into Mad Men when it premiered had already seen The Sopranos.
Nevertheless, the absence of Mad Men will leave a huge void. Unlike The Sopranos, it was a period piece, and that kind of expansive storytelling was new to TV at the time. There will be great shows to come in the future, but I wonder which will be the next one that presents us with something we truly haven't seen in the medium before.
Idk, hasn't FX always been releasing cable like programs. The Shield, Nip Tuck, Rescue Me were all released before Mad Men. Damages was released in the same month and Breaking bad very shortly after (6 months?). Mad Men was part of the (amazing) resurgence of cable tv but not the cause. In fact I'd argue that Breaking Bad, which was a much bigger hit water cooler type show, has had more influence. Although it was directly responsible all those period shows that started surfacing post mad men.
During the first season I resisted "Mad Men", then I binge watched season 1 and half of season 2 and really fell in love with it. I will miss the total seduction of the clothes, sets, actors, and good writing that Mad Men brought to viewers.
The clothes - Janie Bryant is a genius, and Tom & Lorenzo's recaps helped fans enjoy the show even more. Due credit to the set decorators who were so good that I recognized certain lamps and other paraphernalia from my childhood.
But the show was always at it's best with scenes at the office, where Don Draper, Peggy Olsen and the rest of that estimable cast. It's impossible to summarize all of the great moments that "Mad Men" gave us. Most of all I will miss that office. I hope that's where the show ends.
I definitely see where you're coming from, Margaret, but I don't think you can credit Mad Men for that solely. Breaking Bad debuted less than six months later of course, but F/X laid the ground work for basic cable (The Shield, Nip/Tuck, and Rescue Me). Indeed, Breaking Bad was earmarked for F/X first. And of course Matthew Wiener himself came from The Sopranos.
Anyway, I promised myself I'd stay out of all Mad Men discussions this year, so that's all.
Breaking Bad is a good show, but it has become incredibly overrated and I doubt it will stand the test of time. For one thing, it took a long time for the show to present one well-developed female character - and when it did, the character was only developed in response to criticism that it was misogynist. Skyler was presented as a harpy wife for the first several seasons of the show. (Even after the show was presented with this criticism, the other female characters on the show were reduced to a caricatures and often played for laughs.) It also doesn't hold up as well on rewatch, as it relied a lot on soap opera type cliffhangers that lose their power on repeat views.
Mad Men, on the other hand, features some of the best female characters ever created for tv, and doesn't go in for that cliffhanger garbage. I also do not agree that it's a shadow of the show it once was - having rewatched the show over the course of this year, I actually think it's better than ever, although the media coverage would have you believe otherwise.
You're so right about the visual side of the show - the costumes, the sets (I just realized how much I'm going to miss both Don and Megan's NY condo AND their/Megan's LA home!), etc. And just the quality of the writing, even the humor (often going unrecognized but the show could be very funny), the actors (at least the core cast - sometimes their peripheral casting choices were underwhelming - Zosia Mamet, I'm looking in your direction), the darkness. Ugh, maybe I have to start rewatching it but I have so many other shows I want to watch, too!
Suzanne - Don't know why you are dissing on Breaking Bad. This thread was more of a discussion on influence/causation and not quality (no ones really written a critique of Mad Men like you just did of Breaking Bad- and niether are the perfect shows that their hardcore fans make them out to be). But to address your point - BB was really about Walt and Jessee. I wouldn't say it had a female character "issue" instead all characters outside of those two weren't super well drawn/compelling in the earlier seasons. One strength of Mad Men has always been its large ensemble of great characters (m & f), while BB has other strengths and MM has other weaknesses I won't go into. As a whole i prefer BB but both are very good shows and quite different.