Mad Men has received highly positive critical response since its premiere. Viewership for the premiere at 10 p.m. on July 19, 2007, was higher than any other AMC original series to date. A New York Times reviewer called the series groundbreaking for "luxuriating in the not-so-distant past." The San Francisco Chronicle called Mad Men "stylized, visually arresting an adult drama of introspection and the inconvenience of modernity in a man's world".A Chicago Sun-Times reviewer described the series as an "unsentimental portrayal of complicated 'whole people' who act with the more decent 1960 manners America has lost, while also playing grab-ass and crassly defaming subordinates." The reaction at Entertainment Weekly was similar, noting how in the period in which Mad Men takes place, "play is part of work, sexual banter isn't yet harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt, and countercultural confusion."The Los Angeles Times said that the show had found "a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness".[58] The show also received critical praise for its historical accuracy – mainly its depictions of gender and racial bias, sexual dynamics in the workplace, and the high prevalence of smoking and drinking.
However, Mad Men has become the subject of much race and gender based discussion, particularly with the treatment of women characters and characters of color. In Salon, Nelle Engoron explained that while Mad Men seems to illuminate gender issues, its male characters get off "scot-free" for their drinking and adultery, while the female characters are often punished. Amy Benfer, also writing for Salon, used Oprah's fawning segment on the show (which involved Gayle King visiting the Sterling Cooper offices) to explore how nostalgia for 1960s fashion and social norms obscures most discussion of the rampant racism and sexism during the period, asking "But isn’t it a little odd that a show that, among other things, warns about the dangers of seeing the past in too amber a light has spawned an industry devoted to fetishizing nostalgia for that same flawed past?" Anna Kelna writing in Ms. Magazine points out that "Mad Men itself might ascribe to the feminist agenda, but thanks to its pervasive impact on pop culture, the show is crafting a whole new generation of would-be Bettys (Draper’s stylish wife) not Peggys (the show’s ambitious “career girl”).". Also writing for Ms., Aviva Dove-Viebahn argues that "Mad Men straddles the line between a nuanced portrayal of how sexism and patriarchal entitlement shape lives, careers and social interactions in the 1960s (and, by extension, today) and a glorified rendering of the “fast-paced, chauvinistic world of 1960s advertising and all that comes with it. Melissa Witkowski, writing for The Guardian, argued that Peggy's ascendancy was marred because the show "strongly implies that no woman had ever been a copywriter at Sterling Cooper prior to Peggy, but the circumstances of her promotion imply that this was merely because no woman had ever happened to sound talented in front of a man before," pointing out that Peggy's career path bore little resemblance to the stories of successful ad women of the time such as Mary Wells Lawrence and Jean Wade Rindlaub, and argued that the show distorts history by erasing the stories of the successful men and women of color of 1960s era Madison Avenue such as Clarence Holte, George Olden, and Caroline Robinson Jones.Latoya Peterson, writing for Slate's Double X, argues that Mad Men isn't confronting racial issues, but glossing over them. The Root's Michael Ross points out that the continued lack of black admen is rapidly becoming ahistorical.
The Washington Post agreed with most other reviews in regard to Mad Men's visual style, but disliked what was referred to as "lethargic" pacing of the storylines. A review of the first season DVD set in the London Review of Books by Mark Greif was much less laudatory. Greif stated that the series was an "unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better" as the cast was a series of historical stereotypes that failed to do anything except "congratulate the present." In a February 2011 review of the show's first four seasons, critic Daniel Mendelsohn wrote that in comparison with similarly acclaimed shows such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, and Friday Night Lights, Mad Men "shares virtually no significant qualities except its design. The writing is extremely weak, the plotting haphazard and often preposterous, the characterizations shallow and sometimes incoherent; its attitude toward the past is glib and its self-positioning in the present is unattractively smug; the acting is, almost without exception, bland and sometimes amateurish. Worst of all—in a drama with aspirations to treating social and historical “issues”—the show is melodramatic rather than dramatic. By this I mean that it proceeds, for the most part, like a soap opera, serially (and often unbelievably) generating, and then resolving, successive personal crises (adulteries, abortions, premarital pregnancies, interracial affairs, alcoholism and drug addiction, etc.), rather than exploring, by means of believable conflicts between personality and situation, the contemporary social and cultural phenomena it regards with such fascination: sexism, misogyny, social hypocrisy, racism, the counterculture, and so forth. The American Film Institute selected it as one of the 10 best television series of 2007, 2008 and 2009, and it was named the best television show of that year by the Television Critics Association and several national publications, including the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, TIME Magazine, and TV Guide.
On June 20, 2007, the consumer-rights activist group Commercial Alert filed a complaint with the United States Distilled Spirits Council alleging that Mad Men sponsor Jack Daniel's whiskey was violating liquor advertising standards since the show features "depictions of overt sexual activity" as well as irresponsible intoxication. Jack Daniel's was mentioned by name in the fifth episode.
Among people who worked in advertising during the 1960s, opinions on the realism of Mad Men differ to some extent. Jerry Della Femina, who worked as a copywriter in that era and later founded his own agency, said that the show "accurately reflects what went on. The smoking, the prejudice and the bigotry." Robert Levinson, one of Weiner's advertising consultants, who worked at BBDO from 1960 to 1980, concurred with Della Femina: "What [Matthew Weiner captured was so real. The drinking was commonplace, the smoking was constant, the relationships between the executives and the secretaries was exactly right." Conversely, Allen Rosenshine, a copywriter who went on to lead BBDO, called the show "a total fabrication," saying, "if anybody talked to women the way these goons do, they’d have been out on their ass."
Mad Men includes references to real life products, events and places. The filming of an Utz potato chips advertisement formed part of the back story of the Drapers' marital strife. Pete Campbell's father was killed on American Airlines Flight 1 in 1962, on the same day that astronaut John Glenn was given a ticker tape parade on Broadway, events that actually occurred as mentioned. Characters eat in well-known New York restaurants, including the Pen & Pencil and the Palm. Several characters also attended a closed circuit telecast of the Liston vs. Muhammad Ali ("Cassius Clay") boxing match on the day it occurred in real life, May 25, 1965.
Accolades
Awards and nominations received by Mad Men
Parodies
Jon Hamm was the host of Saturday Night Live on October 26, 2008, during the show's 34th season. Mad Men was parodied on two skits from that episode. In one, "A-Holes: Pitch Meeting", Hamm is joined by two other Mad Men cast members in cameo appearances, Elisabeth Moss (who was called the morning of the show and asked to play Peggy, since Amy Poehler, who was going to do it, went into labor)[79] and John Slattery. In another skit, "Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women," Hamm pokes fun at how easily his character seduces women.
The Simpsons' episode "Treehouse of Horror XIX", which first aired in the United States on November 2, 2008, included a segment called "How to Get Ahead in Dead-Vertising" The segment, an adaptation of the Mad Men animated title sequence, was the "inspiration" of executive producer Al Jean; it featured a "rotund, lunchbox-carrying figure, undoubtedly Homer Simpson, entering a living room and then float[ing] past windows bearing Springfield-centric displays that include a Duff Beer ad," with the Mad Men theme music on the soundtrack.
The children's television show Sesame Street ran a child-friendly parody of Mad Men on November 11, 2009 (episode 4188). Muppet versions of Don Draper and two other advertising professionals are shown going on an "emotional rollercoaster," becoming "mad," "sad" and "happy," as they sort through pictures of an ad campaign featuring a cartoon bear. When Miranda Barry of the Sesame Workshop was asked how such a parody is possible "given the drinking, smoking, and womanizing that's a big part of the AMC show", she compared it to their parody of Desperate Housewives: "You may have seen our parody called 'Desperate Houseplants.' It was about a houseplant not getting its needs met by the gardener. So it always works on two levels."
In late 2010, the TV show Arthur had a parody of Mad Men in the episode "Nicked by a name" using a character named Tom Taper instead of Don Draper.
On 30 Rock, Liz Lemon's mother mentions working for Sterling Cooper after graduating secretarial school. In the episode "The Ones", Kenneth Parcell has an allergic reaction to strawberries and says "My real name... is Dick Whitman."
In the March 2010 episode "Physical Education" of the TV series Community the character Abed, a television and movie connoisseur, does an impression of Don Draper, after his peers encourage him to change his personality. He practices a conversation with Annie (incidentally played by Alison Brie, who plays Trudy Campbell on Mad Men). He offers her cigarettes, while putting on a deep voice and a flirtatious charm. As Annie leans in to kiss Abed, he quickly turns away and says, "Don Draper from Mad Men". While many of his friends are impressed, Shirley shouts, "Don't be him! He cheats on his wife!"
Another parody is in the television show House M.D, When the doctor Gregory House insults a high ranking man who works at a well respected advertisement agency, when he goes for a Career day at a school by calling him Don when his name was Dave.
Another parody entitled, "Malt Men" features actors Ryan Ridley and Eric Price as characters who advertise malt liquor beverages. The five-minute parody appears on Channel 101, a monthly short-film festival in Los Angeles.
The comedy website Funny Or Die has a small series of skits entitled MA Men which transplants the show into present-day South Boston and invariably involves creating ad campaigns for various Boston businesses in which certain members of Boston's professional sports rivals are sodomized. Comedian Rob Delaney plays Draper, Joey McIntyre plays Roger, Nate Corddry plays Campbell, Jessica Chafin plays Joan, Jamie Denbo plays Peggy, Nat Faxon plays Salvatore, and Michaela Watkins plays Trudy.
Marketing
In promotion for the series, AMC aired multiple commercials and a behind the scenes documentary on the making of Mad Men before its premiere. The commercials mostly show the one (usually brief) sex scene from each episode of the season. The commercials, as well as the documentary, featured the song "You Know I'm No Good" by Amy Winehouse.The documentary, in addition to trailers and sneak peeks of upcoming episodes, were released on the official AMC website. Mad Men was also made available at the iTunes Store on July 20, 2007, along with the "making of" documentary.
Inspired by the iconic Zippo brand, the DVD box set of the first season of Mad Men was designed like a flip-open Zippo lighter. Zippo subsequently developed two designs of lighters with "Mad Men" logos to be sold at the company headquarters and online. The DVD box set, as well as a Blu-ray disc set, was released July 1, 2008; it features a total of 23 audio commentaries on the season's 13 episodes from various members of the cast and crew.
For the second season, AMC undertook the largest marketing campaign it had ever launched, intending to reflect the "cinematic quality" of the series. The Grand Central Station subway shuttle to Times Square was decorated with life-size posters of Jon Hamm as Don Draper, and quotes from the first season. Inside Grand Central, groups of people dressed in period clothing would hand out "Sterling Cooper" business cards to promote the July 27 season premiere. Window displays were arranged at 14 Bloomingdale's stores for exhibition throughout July, and a 45' by 100' wallscape was posted at the corner of Hollywood and Highland in downtown Hollywood. Television commercials on various cable and local networks, full-page print ads, and a 30-second trailer in Landmark Theaters throughout July were also run in promotion of the series. Television promotions for the second season featured the song "The Truth" by Handsome Boy Modelling School.
In the spring of 2010, Mattel released a series of limited-edition collectible Barbie and Ken dolls based on the characters Don and Betty Draper, Joan Holloway, and Roger Sterling.
For the third season, the clothing store Banana Republic partnered with Mad Men to create window displays at its U.S. stores, showing clothing inspired by the fashion of the show. The store also ran a "casting call" competition, in which participants were asked to mail photos of themselves in period fashion for a chance at a walk-on part in the show; two winners were announced in October 2010.
Another clothing promotion from the series' third season includes a "Mad-Men Edition" suit offered by American clothing retailer Brooks Brothers. The suit is designed by the show's costume designer, Janie Bryant, and is based on an actual style sold by Brooks Brothers in the early 1960s.
The fourth season saw the announcement of a collaboration between Janie Bryant and Californian-based company, Nailtini, to produce a limited-edition line of Mad Men nail polish. The four shades are entitled Bourbon Satin, French 75, Deauville and Stinger and are reported to have been inspired by the fabrics used to make cocktail dresses in the Sixties. The Mad Men nail polish line went on sale in the US in late 2010.
Online promotion
Promotion for Seasons 4 and 5 saw Mad Men and AMC partnering with Banana Republic for the Mad Men Casting Call, in which users submit photos of themselves in Mad Men style and one winner receives the opportunity for a walk-on role in an upcoming season. Promotion for Seasons 3 and 4 included “Mad Men Yourself”, an interactive game in which the user can choose clothing and accessories for an avatar similar to the appearance of Mad Men characters, drawn in the sixties-inspired style of illustrator Dyna Moe. “Mad Men Cocktail Culture” was also featured, an iPhone app that challenges users to create the perfect drink as featured in Mad Men episodes. Another interactive game launched prior to Season 3, the “Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Job Interview”, allowed users to answer questions based on various scenarios and then offered them a position in the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce office. Season 3 also included “Which Mad Man Are You?”, an interactive game in which users could find out which Mad Men character they were most like based on their answers to questions about various work and life situations. Users can take trivia quizzes based on the years in which the Mad Men episodes take place and find recipes for '60s-era drinks on the Mad Men Cocktail Guide. AMC's Mad Men website also features exclusive sneak peek and behind the scenes videos, episodic and behind-the-scenes photo galleries, episode and character guides, a blog, and a community forum.
Product placement
Mad Men integrates product placement into its narratives. For instance, in a second season episode, the beer manufacturer Heineken is seen as a client seeking to bring its beer to the attention of American consumers. This placement was paid for by Heineken as an additional part of their advertising on the show. Cadillac has a similar deal with Mad Men. Other examples remain less obvious, such as ads worked on by the firm, or companies sought as clients such as Utz potato chips, Maidenform, Gillette, American Airlines, Clearasil and others.
The closing episode of season two was broadcast (for its premiere) in the United States with only one brief commercial interruption: a short ad for Heineken beer.
During the fourth season, Unilever created a series of six retro commercials to be aired during the show in the United States. The ads are set at the fictional Smith Winter Mitchell advertising agency and take place during the same time period as Mad Men. The products used in the ads are Dove, Breyers, Hellman's, Klondike, Suave, and Vaseline.
Influence
Mad Men has been credited with setting off a wave of renewed interest in the fashion and culture of the early 1960s. According to The Guardian in 2008, the show was responsible for a revival in men's suits, especially suits resembling those of that time period, with higher waistbands and shorter jackets; as well as "everything from tortoise shell glasses to fedoras".
New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley wrote that the success of Mad Men had turned "the booze-guzzling, chain-smoking, babe-chasing 1960s" into "Broadway’s decade du jour", citing three 1960s-set musicals that had appeared on Broadway in 2010 and 2011: revivals of Promises, Promises and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and a new musical, Catch Me If You Can. Brantley also wrote, "I’m presuming that Mad Men is the reason this Promises, Promises is set not in the late ’60s, as the original was, but in 1962."
Two network television series that are scheduled to premiere in 2011, Pan Am and The Playboy Club, both set in 1963, have frequently been referred to as imitations of Mad Men. A previous cable series, the short-lived 2009 TNT series Trust Me, was set at a modern-day advertising agency; television critic Tom Shales called it a cross between Mad Men and another show, Nip/Tuck.
Don Draper's rendition of the Frank O'Hara poem 'Mayakovsky' from Meditations in an Emergency, at the end of episode one of season two, led to the poet's work entering the top 50 sales on Amazon.com.
The appearance of actress Christina Hendricks as secretary Joan is said to have sparked a renewed interest in a voluptuous look for women, and to be partly responsible for, among other things, a 10% increase in breast implant surgery in Britain in 2010.
According to the website BabyCenter, the show led to the name "Betty" soaring in popularity for baby girls in the United States in 2010.
International broadcast
Country Network
Argentina HBO Latin America
Australia Movie Extra, Seven Network
Belarus Channel One
Belgium Acht
Bolivia HBO Latin America
Brazil HBO Latin America / SBT
Bulgaria Nova Television
Canada AMC
Chile HBO Latin America
Colombia HBO Latin America
Costa Rica HBO Latin America
Cyprus LTV
Czech Republic TV Nova
Prima Cool
Denmark TV3 Puls
Dominican Republic HBO Latin America
Ecuador HBO Latin America
El Salvador HBO Latin America
Estonia Kanal 11
Finland Nelonen
France M6
Canal+
Germany FOX Channel, ZDFneo
Greece Star Channel
Guatemala HBO Latin America
Honduras HBO Latin America
Hong Kong STAR World
Hungary TV2
Iceland Stöð 2
India Zee Café
Indonesia STAR World
Ireland RTE 2
Israel Channel 10
Italy Rai 2
Japan WOWOW
Kazakhstan Channel One
Kenya Kenya Television Network
Latvia TV3
Lithuania Lietuvos Rytas TV
Macedonia ALFA
Malaysia STAR World
Mexico HBO Latin America, Once TV
Netherlands NED 2
New Zealand TV One
Nicaragua HBO Latin America
Norway TVNorge
Pakistan STAR World
Panama HBO Latin America
Paraguay HBO Latin America
Peru HBO Latin America
Philippines Jack TV
Studio 23
Poland TVN (Poland)
Portugal RTP2
Puerto Rico AMC
Romania TVR1, Prima TV
Russia Channel One
Singapore STAR World
Slovenia RTV SLO
South Africa M-net
Spain Fox, Canal+
Sweden Kanal 5
Switzerland SF 1
TSR1
Taiwan STAR World
Thailand STAR World
Turkey CNBC-e
Ukraine Mega
United Arab Emirates MBC4
OSN First
United Kingdom BBC Four (2008–2011)
Sky Atlantic (2011–)
United States AMC
Uruguay HBO Latin America
Venezuela HBO Latin America
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