Mad Men

During the Christmas Holiday season, my cousin turned me on to the AMC show "Mad Men."  I remember when it was all the rage.  I tend to be ten steps behind when it comes to television and series and actually prefer to wait until it has run it's course so I can watch it all at once.  Since this show fit that description I was on board to take a look.

I was instantly hooked by the show.  More than the story, it was the stunning beauty of the women they featured as characters.  These women were classy dames from the sixties.  The art director for the show did an impressive job with wardrobe and settings and you were instantly transported back in time to the crazy and wild, civil rights movement, free loving, sixties.  It was a time of transition.

The show has a number of complex story lines.  The main character is a classic man.  He's tall, dark, hansom, and mysterious.  His background is muddied and no one really knows who the man is, not even his wife.  He's a womanizer, a hard drinker, selfish and self serving in most things, and does not show a hint of faith in God whatsoever.  Yet, he's an attractive and appealing character.  Despite all of his flaws I don't think I know any men that wouldn't want to be him, nor women that wouldn't want to be with him.  He is a sympathetic character.

You latch onto him because he's front and center.  He has traits that you desire or can relate to.  There are times when he is caring and goes against the grain for the good.  Those are rare but they are frequent enough to make you think there's a good guy somewhere inside.  The other reason he's so appealing is that not one single character on the show seems to have the gravitational pull that comes with moral based leadership-THERE IS NO CLEAR CUT GOOD GUY.

This seems to be representative of our modern day society.  It is hard to find people that are driven by their strong character, working for the greater good.  It is a dog eat dog world and we have invented tools to aid us in our consumption of one another.  The show is reflective of this.  There are twist and turns made at every scene.  There are moves made to steal a wife, a husband, a job, a company, a life....it's really crazy.

I despise the reality of the show and how society is represented on the screen.  Yet, I'm intrigued by this real life drama playing itself out through the various characters of ill repute.  I find that I'm a bi-polar mess when it comes to the main character, Don Draper.  One minute I love him and he's my hero-the everyman.  The next, I despise him because as one of his foils stated, "you have everything and so much of it and you treat it like nothing."  I hate that!  I know people like that in the real world and it drives me crazy because they can't see struggle, the pain, the bloody fist left from banging on the glass ceiling.

From the internal side of things, I get a kick out of the fact that I like a show called "Mad Men."  I believe it is a play on words (one being the men Madison Ave.).  Yet, I'm a "Mad Man" in most every sense of the word.  Mad at myself, mad at the world, mad at society, and mad in the psychological sense.  I keep watching the show hoping for some kind of resolution to take place, for redemption.  The further I delve into the series the less hope I have of such a resolution coming about.  Much like my life at this point in time...the further I go the less hope I have of resolution on this side of heaven.  I suppose I will continue to be a Mad Man.