Sunday, April 20, 2008

Worth the Wait

July 1, 2008: the day Mad Men's first season releases on DVD. How quickly did I preorder after discovering this? Well, how quickly do you think I can click-click-click-click and click?

As I waited impatiently these past months to hear something on the DVD release, I presumed that the reason it was taking so long was so the producers could put together a nice special features pack. I should say so:

“MAD MEN Series Commentary” – audio commentaries on all 13 episodes
“Establishing MAD MEN” – featurette exploring the world of MAD MEN
“Advertising the American Dream” – featurette on the 1960’s creative revolution in media
“Pictures of Elegance” – Photo Gallery with Commentaries from the Costume, Hair and Production Designers
“Scoring MAD MEN” – A One-on-One Discussion with Composer David Carbonara
MAD MEN Music Sampler
Commentary on all thirteen eps? Be still, my heart.

AMC's official description of the show doesn't do it justice, but I get all finger-tied when I try to write about it, so cribbing the official description is the best I can do:
Set in 1960 New York, MAD MEN reveals the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue’s “Golden Age”, where key players make the art of the sell while their private lives get sold. And no one plays the game better than Don Draper (Golden Globe®-winner Jon Hamm), the biggest ad man – and ladies man in the business. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels.
It's so much more than that. Oh, is it so much more!

The show's pedigree: created by Matthew Weiner, one of the producer/writers on The Sopranos (a show I could never get into, but maybe someday I'll try again). In fact, he submitted the pilot for Mad Men as his writing sample when he applied for the Sopranos job. Even though I could never embrace The Sopranos, I could appreciate its complexity and moral ambiguity, and the same features fuel Mad Men.

If you have cable or satellite and haven't seen this show (airing on AMC), why? Why?

4 comments:

Bee said...

Oh, Bitty! How excited was I to read this post!!

I just looked for a Man Men DVD in the States, with no luck. We have only been able to see about half of the episodes here, and have been hopelessly hooked -- with no way to get our fix!

Another reason to look forward to summer! (It's 45 degrees, and raining, again today.)

Bitty said...

I'm glad I could help.

Heck, I'm glad I stumbled across the information! I don't know when the announcement was made, but it absolutely made my day.

Stay warm!

iamcoyote said...

Cool! I missed the start of it, and a friend said it was must-see. Now that Torchwood's done for this season, I've got room for a new one. I'm getting it as soon as I can!

Bitty said...

iamcoyote: your friend is right!

It has just begun to rerun the full cycle on AMC: midnight on Mondays (late "Sunday"). If that works for you, or if you can record, you've only missed the first episode, which aired earlier, um, this morning.