Earlier today on another blog far, far away
Blue Girl suggested that the last episode of Man Men (the best in my opinion) reminded her of far away New York and made her wish she was here. I didn't see it - even the famed "New Amsterdam" episode (the only other one I actively enjoyed, outside of this blogging crowd) didn't quite get there in terms of its Gothamicity. The whole thing seems confined to studio sets, and a bit too clean for an active represenation.
Then too, the accents don't work because they're basically not there. Not is the stance, the attitude, the posture. Any episode of, say, Sesame Street seems much more New Yawkish than Mad Men. Bugs Bunny too. And then there are all the TV shows gone before that were set in New York and its environs:
The Odd Couple, the Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family (and
Maude and
The Jeffersons),
Car 54, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, I Love Lucy and the
Honeymooners. Some filmed in studios here, most filmed in studios there - meaning California. And yet evocative.
Mad Men is too laconic for New York, too Steve McQueen and not enough Archie Bunker - who, after all, sat first in his chair in Queens just a decade later. Ironic, of course, that the rabid anti-Semitism portrayed in 1960 New York shuts its place-in-time cultural consciousness off from the dominant Jewish-inflected humor of the city. It's a loss.
Does Mad Men get New York? What do you think? And how does New York influence the pace and development of the show - if at all? Back shortly. Oh and by the by, we've received a nod of official recognition from the people at AMC.
General Petraeus tells me it's time to blog Mad Men...so here we go.
Donald Draper, such a star. But we haven't seen the work, have we? Major leagues - seems a stretch for the unhappy Drapester.
Note: if we're not at Sterling Cooper, this show drags and drags and ok we're there.
They're trying with the New York thing - "Fiorello!" and the Algonquin.
Job recruitment, former models, salary discussions. The stuff of drama.
Best performance in the series to date: Jackie Kennedy's campaign pitch in Spanish. No contest.
Anti-smoking ads running on Mad Men breaks - well, that pretty much says it.
And we end the evening in David Lynchland - where'd he come from? Sorry folks - a very slow episode.
