Mad Men, Season 2, reviewed.

Tag : Blood Pressure Meter

Those images are awfully seductive: Who doesn't love advertising?Those images are disgustingly seductive: Who doesn't moan about theevils of advertising? Mad Men benefits from the public's complicated relationship with the salespitch.

Further, it cannot hurt the show's fortunes that its romanceof the ad business focuses on male-dominated groups sharing aparticular outlook: They are craftsmen working collaboratively;they devote their creative energies to emotional manipulation; theyessentially get paid to lie.

In other words, the show has a veryspecial resonance in Hollywood. Nor does it hurt the insiderprestige of Mad Men that it's something of an auteur project, thoroughly controlled bycreator Matthew Weiner.
 
As the second season picks up, the questions that might worry theshow's fans all concern a different sort of control: Will Mad Men 's patient pace further decelerate, as it sometimes risks, to thepoint of self-important stateliness? Will its tone degenerate, asit sometimes threatens to, from mannered to affected?

In the matterof intentional anachronisms, where's the line between "ah, clever"and "oh, please"? On the basis of this season's first two episodes,the last question's the easiest to answer: There are far betterways to use Joan Holloway.