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‘Mad Men’: The Last Great Drama of TV’s Golden

Age
AMC’s irst drama recast what television could be. It also ushered in a new
chapter for TV.
Variety | Sonia Saraiya

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Photo courtesy of AMC.

Years a ter its premiere, “Mad Men” is still one of the leading lights of prestige
television, a hall-of-fame show that put together an array of once-in-a-lifetime
performances. On a more personal note, it’s also one of my favorite dramas; possibly,
probably, my favorite drama ever. There are a lot of reasons why: Its historicity, its
emphasis on New York City, its exploration of gender, its reckoning with the
underpinnings of advertising. I’ve written about the show in appreciation, and so
have many others.

Looking back on it, what’s surprising is not its quality or the widespread nature of its
phenomenon, but how the firmament of television around it has changed so much.
The series was an inflection point, of sorts, in the contemporary history of the
medium. Everything before it was one thing; everything a ter, another. When “Mad
Men” aired its series finale in 2015, it ended not just its window into the tumultuous
cultural history of America of the ’60s but also a specific moment in television
history.

You might call that moment the Golden Age of Television (though there already was
a Golden Age, in the late ’40s and ’50s, so append “second” or “so-called” as you see
fit; I like Alan Sepinwall’s term, a “big bang” of TV, where innovation and
engagement expanded in seemingly every direction). Regardless of term, what I’m
referring to is that much-discussed period when a combination of factors, many of
them simply technological, led to several brilliant and well-made shows that altered
the way audiences watched and thought about television. These were complicated
and challenging dramas, o ten with material that had never before been depicted on
television, which both moved away from the idea of TV as appealing to everyone and
found success by pushing the envelope.

I’m not going to do a better job of recounting the history of television’s phase shi t
than Sepinwall, who has written a whole book on the topic. But let’s establish a few
basic points. Even if “Oz” (1997) paved the way for David Chase’s show,“The
 p ( 997) p y ,
Sopranos” (1999), it is generally agreed, is the show that kicked off what we know as

the Golden Age. “Breaking Bad” — which started six months a ter “Mad Men” and
ended two years earlier than “Person to Person” — marks the last show in the
medium’s sudden transformation. Because “Mad Men” ended later — and because
“Mad Men” ended, it felt, multiple times, with a protracted two-part goodbye where
every scene felt like closure — it has the privilege and the curse of being the one to
turn off the lights. At the point where “Mad Men’s” finale was slowly unfolding, it
seemed bizarrely out of pace with the TV boom it had helped to spawn. While we
were feverishly livetweeting it, the show seemed to move even more slowly, with a
pooling energy that, looking back, is a close analogue to the bravura nothingness
David Lynch displays in “Twin Peaks: The Return.” (Though the shows otherwise
don’t have a lot in common, showrunner Matthew Weiner certainly has Lynch’s
auteur aversion to spoilers, too.)

“Mad Men” has had a long and lingering a tertaste. Several of its stars have done
little else since the show ended, basking in post-finale glow, and yet the drama is
already celebrating its 10th anniversary. But in its quiet a termath — for while some
shows end with a bang, “Mad Men” ended with cosmic infinity — it took something
with it, and that’s what prompts me to call it the last great drama of that era. When
“Mad Men” debuted it was still astonishing that dramas would make bad men their
lead characters. By the time it ended, critics and audiences were lamenting the glut
of antihero stories. “Breaking Bad” was a brilliant show, of course. “Mad Men,” with
its finale, made shows like “Breaking Bad” seem obsolete — made nearly any show
about an antihero seem obsolete. Don Draper was the last antihero, and unlike
several of his predecessors who either died brutally or le t the careers that rewarded
their twisted souls, he somehow found his way to inner peace in time to (probably)
go back to McCann Erickson and write what creator Matthew Weiner calls “the best
ad ever made.” “Mad Men” was a remarkable show in so many ways — a deeply
stirring show, in so many ways — but perhaps its highest achievement is that
because it so thoroughly interrogated its characters and its premise, it functionally
( )
(and politely) made itself obsolete.

But where other lights of the TV revolution tapped into and reworked existing TV
stories — the mob movie (“The Sopranos), the cop show (“The Wire”), the Western
(“Deadwood”), the high school soap (“Buffy”) — “Mad Men” kind of created its own
subgenre, an aesthetic procedural. It’s a period antihero/workplace drama about the
cultural history of an increasingly pervasive and singularly American cra t —
branding — and whether Weiner knew it or not, “Mad Men” came to the viewer just
as branding was moving away from being simply the purview of companies to a
practice that every individual had to partake in. Social media, the gig economy, the
eroding middle class, and the cameraphone all made the ability to sell yourself, or an
idea of yourself, absolutely essential. We are all Dick Whitman, grooming our
Facebook profiles to make us look more like our idealized Don Draper.

As a result — because the show was about product, and perhaps because Weiner has
so much respect for the medium of advertising, even while exposing its artifice —
“Mad Men” became a cultural phenomenon in fashion, advertising, and design that
is simply unparalleled to this day. “Game of Thrones” might match “Mad Men’s”
utter ubiquity, but it cannot claim the lock on the highbrow that the AMC show had
and maintained. The Guardian posited that “Mad Men’s” influence on men’s fashion
in particular “could not be overstated.” In addition to a multiyear tie-in with lower-
brow Banana Republic, the show’s footprint on haute couture was so broad that in
2015 the New York Times ran a smart column pleading with fashion designers to
move away from ‘60s inspired fashion, citing the show’s complex struggle with the
era as a key reason. Even bartenders reported a “Mad Men effect” that is still present
today — how else to explain the preponderance of Old Fashioneds at seemingly
every hipster bar? “Mad Men” took us all back in time for a little while, whether we
wanted to embrace the midcentury modern or not.

AMC’s success with “Mad Men” also fundamentally changed the industry behind the
scenes. Before “Mad Men” debuted, HBO was the top dog of premium cable, with
the occasional foray by FX and Showtime rattling its throne But by the time “Mad
the occasional foray by FX and Showtime rattling its throne. But by the time Mad
Men” ended, networks as diverse as Lifetime and TV Land were producing critically
acclaimed dramas. If “Mad Men” had ended up at HBO, as it well could have —
Weiner was a writer on “The Sopranos” because the “Mad Men” pilot script
impressed Chase — the last 10 years of television might look very different. A ter all,
while the HBO shows were available on what was then the DVD-based Netflix, they
didn’t follow as Netflix expanded to streaming. (The two companies became
increasingly wary of each other, as HBO put out its own streaming service HBO Go
and stopped directly selling DVDs to Netflix.) But AMC”s shows did: “Mad Men,”
“Breaking Bad,” and eventually “The Walking Dead” amassed audiences through
binge-watching that then tuned in for the next seasons live. Emboldened by its
power, Netflix started producing their own programming. And meanwhile, AMC’s
success encouraged other cable networks to start producing more originals, coming
out of the woodwork of your cable bundle with new procedurals and buddy
comedies. “Mad Men’s” success was the first ringing bell of Peak TV, and it’s felt like
a free-for-all ever since.
And maybe most importantly, from the vantage of a critic: “Mad Men’s” rise and
success was so unlikely, swi t, and monumental that television ever since has all
seemed laden with expectation. Part of the reason the big bang of TV was so
explosive is because many of us had limited expectations for what a show could
accomplish. But a ter beginning to expect it from HBO — and being blown away by
what a show staffed by and starring relative newcomers could do, on a network no
one had heard of — it’s seemed that TV has lost any semblance of obscure, plucky,
random success (give or take a Netflix debut that performs better than the studio
thought it would). Now seemingly every show hopes to be a “Mad Men”-like
phenomenon; now seemingly every drama with some vision enters into the world
with the bold strokes of assured success. Before these explosive successes on AMC,
networks trying their hand at fielding an original were tooling around with an
unproven idea. Now the seemingly open playing field of non-broadcast has been
flooded with nearly 500 shows, all eager to convince us that they too have the
potential for the cultural resonance of “Mad Men.” It’s not exactly bad, but it is
overwhelming. Before “Mad Men,” the show didn’t seem possible (HBO didn’t jump
on it, for some reason or another). A ter “Mad Men,” it seems that everything is
possible.

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This post originally appeared on Variety and was published July 18, 2017. This article is republished here with permission.

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