Mad Men

I'm usually more of a book than a screen person, but I fell in love with the AMC series Mad Men. Now the 2nd season has ended...and a bit of melancholy sets in. What will I do without my weekly Sunday night fix – of the enigmatic Don Draper and the rest of those vivid characters at Sterling Cooper?

What is it about this show? The slower pace, the gorgeous male lead, the exquisite production values, the news reels from the 60s, the inside jokes, the focus on the creative process in an increasingly commercial world, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction...it is all so immensely satisfying. I'll have to fill my time before the next season studying all of the extras available at the website: the fashion files, commentaries, interviews, and such. Maybe I'll learn how to make a few cocktails, too. (I'm still in the dark about those gimlets.)

It was fun to see Jon Hamm on Saturday Night Live this week too, or (in fact) to see the sketches at the SNL website. (Click here to see the parody of a Mad Men pitch). Writing that, I am just now "getting" an inside joke from earlier in the series, when Betty says to Don (in her pitch to him about her desire to go back to modelling): "There will still be ham." And of course Don tells Bobby, his son, that his own (abusive, long dead) father liked to eat "ham" ...and a kind of candy that smelled like violets.

Food co-ops took a hit this week on SNL, though, in the "Ralph Nadar" appearance on Weekend Update. Ouch! So much for contradicting outdated perceptions of food co-ops in the national media.