All articles from Mad Men blog »

Don Draper's Influence and the Show's Success Sans Nudity Impress the Papers This Week

don-ep4-325.jpg

Don Draper edging out the President in an AskMen.com poll and analyses of Episode 8, "Souvenir" were among this week's talking points in the papers. 

• News that Don Draper topped this year's AskMen.com poll of the most influential men hit a number of outlets including NY Daily News, The Washington Times, Reuters, St. Louis Dispatch, Canada's The Globe and Mail and BuzzSugar.com. Television outlets were equally enamored: Access Hollywood had series creator Matthew Weiner's comment, "It's interesting how drinking, smoking and carousing wins the race today, no offense to President Obama and Mr. Bolt."

• ABC News took a look at the show, noting that not only does it get details from the 1960s right, its appeal extends across age groups.

• The usual suspects broke down Episode 8's Roman holiday including The New York Times, EW.com, The Onion's AV Club, the Chicago Tribune and TV Guide. Buzzsugar counted down their five maddest moments, which included Trudy's "willful wifely ignorance."

• Remarking on the dissatisfaction of some characters, the San Francisco Chronicle observes, "the happiest person on the show (at least right this very minute) has got to be Duck."

• The Star-Ledger notes how the show succeeds without nudity: "Don and Betty's drunken foreplay in their hotel room backed me up on that. It was a reminder of how powerful and erotic a scene can be even when the participants are (semi) clothed and the camera discreetly pans away."

• New York magazine invokes "Weiner's Law": "For every seemingly positive action made by a character (i.e., Don's showcase two episodes back), there will be a disproportionately horrible reaction (i.e., Don clobbered, robbed, and haunted last week)."

Posted by Lily Oei
October 9, 2009 12:30pm

Filed under: Press & Related Links

Comments

default userpic
By mmbrook on October 9, 2009 5:55 PM

You should check out some of Bitch Magazine's commentary. It's been very interesting -- they are clearly fans and have some thought-provoking things to say, both about the show and about the media response (including the ridiculous AskMen.com poll and Pete Campbell's criminal behavior in the last episode). I'll even provide you with handy links:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/don-draper-the-most-influential-fake-man-of-2009
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/pete-campbell-is-a-rapist

user-pic
By thenewgirl on October 10, 2009 9:50 AM

As always, I love the links and postings. It saves me the trouble of scouring the internet to read all the interesting comments about the show.

I hope people will keep in mind that #1 it is a period television show and not a how to guide for people's conduct in the world today, and #2 that it is very faithful to the culture of the time period. I grew up in the 60's, and I know that not only did men do these things and get away with them, it was expected that they do so.

Finally, I am extremely grateful that Mad Men is not on Premium cable because it does not need the nudity or swearing to get the story across. As Joan would say,"It's distracting!" I can't think of anything I've seen lately that was anywhere near as hot as the Rome bar and subsequent hotel scene between long married and perhaps "just pretending" Don and Betty Draper. The heat is on-on basic cable!

user-pic
By Loves Mad Men on October 12, 2009 8:14 PM

I like that the show doesn't have graphic sex scenes. I'm sick of them in every movie. It also doesn't have loud, headache producing music. I like that too.

default userpic
By FATboy on October 15, 2009 10:47 AM

I was inspired by a recent episode. At the bottom of my article at http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=SAML-NotJustforWebServices
I state that” Lastly, a word to the recalcitrant adopter, change is neither benign nor nefarious, it just is”, which is a paraphrase of DD’s statement.

Thanks Frank