Charlie Steiner
Footballguy
My earliest memory of TV watching is my parents not allowing me to watch Dark Shadows. In fact, most of my favorite shows for most of my life aired before the 1990's, and when Seinfeld went off the air, my list of 'all-time' favorite shows seemed locked into place; then came the pandemic.
Thanks to most of the pay services providing free access to shows I'd never watched, I brought my TV knowledge more into the 21st century. I binged The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Parks and Rec (which started my whiskey journey), and because clips of it started appearing on my youtube feed, Mad Men. I had zero interest in it when it came out, as I thought it was going to be a stylized melodrama that would end when everyone got tired of seeing the old furniture and clothing. By the time I got around to it 5 years after it ended, I had seen enough clips to get the gist (as well as the big reveal about Don Draper) and I finally decided to see what the fuss had been all about. If it hadn't been for the opportunity to binge watch multiple episodes in a matter of days, it probably wouldn't have had the same effect on me, but as it was, my interest in catching the next episode without waiting a week or off-season to catch the next one was met before it got the chance to cool down. The price for this, of course, is that I was five years behind the culture regarding the show, so that while I was watching it with fresh eyes, everyone else had moved on to new shows. Nevertheless, I pressed on in my enthusiastic binge-watching, accompanied by diving into the thread dedicated to the show right here in the FFA.
With each successive watch, my interest intensified because I kept seeing new details in plot or character development or some other minor background detail, like when I noticed during about the 4th or 5th time through that the stripper that appears for all of 30-45 seconds at the end of the pilot episode was copying Marilyn Monroe's look from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a film the Mad Men would know well, so it made 'extra' sense that she wasn't just a stripper but rather one from their zeitgeist. After that, my binge watching turned into a mania of sorts and I started paying more attention to the rich subtext of the show. Before AMC moved the show to their pay side, I believe I watched that series start to finish somewhere between 12-15 times in 2 years, and if it were still free, I probably would still commit 2-3 hours of my after-work time to watching it. It's this mania that drove me to call Mad Men (a show I haven't watched an episode of in 2+ years now) my all-time favorite.
"You're painting a masterpiece. Make sure to hide the brushstrokes." ~Betty Draper
The plot and character dynamics came easiest to me, but what really drew me in was that I noticed how every inch of space or frame of each shot of each scene of each episode seemed to have been meticulously planned and placed with greater care that what I was accustomed to. A running joke about M*A*S*H* was that Korea looked a lot like a Hollywood back lot; well, even though Mad Men was shot in California, the office interiors, combined with exterior shots that didn't look like stock footage from the 60's but rather authentic 60's New York City. This attention to detail extended even into the music selection. Even when it didn't always seem evident, the songs usually connected on multiple levels. An example is a song that's not on my list: one episode starts with main character Don Draper swimming laps at the New York Athletic Club, and as he's changing clothes and heads back to work, the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction plays. It sets us in the era the song came out, and also very much describes Don: he tries and tries and tries but can't get satisfaction.
Yes, that's easy and lots of shows and movies do this, but with Mad Men, a 2-dimensional thinker like me misses this until the 9th or 10th rewatch, or until writing a post about it 2+ years since having seen it. Again, it's stuff like this that drives my mania and willingness to call it my all-time favorite TV show, but back to discussing the music.
Some may think it would have been tough to select songs from the 60's without using ones that have been used to death already, but this show did it flawlessly. It saved the most famous songs for just the right occasion where they complemented and didn't steal attention from the scene in which it was used, with one possible exception, and part of that credit must go the show's unofficial music director, David Carbonara (more on him later). To me, the music at times set the scene or told the story, and also occasionally nearly became a character in and of itself. This list will again be chronological, and the goal of my write-ups will be to give the song its due as well as describe/explain why I chose it.
As always, I welcome any and all feedback and comments. For as much as I have watched this show on my own, I concede my knowledge and understanding is far from complete or deep. Regardless, I hope you will enjoy what I'm going to let loose in this thread.
Thanks to most of the pay services providing free access to shows I'd never watched, I brought my TV knowledge more into the 21st century. I binged The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Parks and Rec (which started my whiskey journey), and because clips of it started appearing on my youtube feed, Mad Men. I had zero interest in it when it came out, as I thought it was going to be a stylized melodrama that would end when everyone got tired of seeing the old furniture and clothing. By the time I got around to it 5 years after it ended, I had seen enough clips to get the gist (as well as the big reveal about Don Draper) and I finally decided to see what the fuss had been all about. If it hadn't been for the opportunity to binge watch multiple episodes in a matter of days, it probably wouldn't have had the same effect on me, but as it was, my interest in catching the next episode without waiting a week or off-season to catch the next one was met before it got the chance to cool down. The price for this, of course, is that I was five years behind the culture regarding the show, so that while I was watching it with fresh eyes, everyone else had moved on to new shows. Nevertheless, I pressed on in my enthusiastic binge-watching, accompanied by diving into the thread dedicated to the show right here in the FFA.
With each successive watch, my interest intensified because I kept seeing new details in plot or character development or some other minor background detail, like when I noticed during about the 4th or 5th time through that the stripper that appears for all of 30-45 seconds at the end of the pilot episode was copying Marilyn Monroe's look from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a film the Mad Men would know well, so it made 'extra' sense that she wasn't just a stripper but rather one from their zeitgeist. After that, my binge watching turned into a mania of sorts and I started paying more attention to the rich subtext of the show. Before AMC moved the show to their pay side, I believe I watched that series start to finish somewhere between 12-15 times in 2 years, and if it were still free, I probably would still commit 2-3 hours of my after-work time to watching it. It's this mania that drove me to call Mad Men (a show I haven't watched an episode of in 2+ years now) my all-time favorite.
"You're painting a masterpiece. Make sure to hide the brushstrokes." ~Betty Draper
The plot and character dynamics came easiest to me, but what really drew me in was that I noticed how every inch of space or frame of each shot of each scene of each episode seemed to have been meticulously planned and placed with greater care that what I was accustomed to. A running joke about M*A*S*H* was that Korea looked a lot like a Hollywood back lot; well, even though Mad Men was shot in California, the office interiors, combined with exterior shots that didn't look like stock footage from the 60's but rather authentic 60's New York City. This attention to detail extended even into the music selection. Even when it didn't always seem evident, the songs usually connected on multiple levels. An example is a song that's not on my list: one episode starts with main character Don Draper swimming laps at the New York Athletic Club, and as he's changing clothes and heads back to work, the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction plays. It sets us in the era the song came out, and also very much describes Don: he tries and tries and tries but can't get satisfaction.
Yes, that's easy and lots of shows and movies do this, but with Mad Men, a 2-dimensional thinker like me misses this until the 9th or 10th rewatch, or until writing a post about it 2+ years since having seen it. Again, it's stuff like this that drives my mania and willingness to call it my all-time favorite TV show, but back to discussing the music.
Some may think it would have been tough to select songs from the 60's without using ones that have been used to death already, but this show did it flawlessly. It saved the most famous songs for just the right occasion where they complemented and didn't steal attention from the scene in which it was used, with one possible exception, and part of that credit must go the show's unofficial music director, David Carbonara (more on him later). To me, the music at times set the scene or told the story, and also occasionally nearly became a character in and of itself. This list will again be chronological, and the goal of my write-ups will be to give the song its due as well as describe/explain why I chose it.
As always, I welcome any and all feedback and comments. For as much as I have watched this show on my own, I concede my knowledge and understanding is far from complete or deep. Regardless, I hope you will enjoy what I'm going to let loose in this thread.
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