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 enlarge | Actors: Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, Christina Hendricks
Studio: Lionsgate
Category: DVD
List Price: $49.98
Buy New: $26.79
You Save: $23.19 (46%)
New (55) Used (14) Collectible (4) from $21.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  138 reviews
Sales Rank: 67
Format: Widescreen, Box Set, Color, Dolby
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 4
Running Time: 616
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.6 x 0.9
MPN: LGED22938D
UPC: 031398229384
EAN: 0031398229384
Theatrical Release Date: July 19, 2007
Release Date: July 1, 2008
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Condition: BRAND NEW DVD SET - FACTORY SEALED - IN STOCK - WE SHIP DAILY! #ds(prc=n)
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 One of the finest series on television October 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
MAD MEN is one of those series that is almost impossible to praise too highly. It is also one of those series that puts on display the inherent superiority of television to the movies. That is a sentiment that I find offends many, but one that more and more thinking men and women are coming to embrace as television gradually turns out one amazingly intelligent series after another. Cinema is inherently limited on how much an individual movie can achieve in developing a complex narrative just as it is limited in how deeply it can explore character. The reason is obvious: a lack of time. Delving deeply into the lives of a group of characters is a luxury movies simply can't afford. The clock is ticking.
MAD MEN will, when it is finished, be a narrative of the sixties. Season One begins in 1960k, shortly before the Kennedy-Nixon election. Season Two moves almost two years ahead of that. Subsequent seasons will move the story ahead by a couple of years each time, before coming to an end at the end of the decade. The sixties was clearly the most remarkable decade of the twentieth century. The world of 1970 has more in common with today in many ways than it did to 1960. The changes in our attitudes can scarcely be assessed. At the beginning of the series women all have their place in the office as servants to the men, accept passively their roles as eye candy and objects of sexual innuendo, and aspire to no more than moving up the secretarial rank. A gay man in the office is so completely in the office that he seems oblivious to his homosexuality. But by the end of decade would come the Stonewall riots and the Second Wave of the women's movement would be in full bloom.
One of the dominant themes of the show is the contrast between the world of today and the world of "then." One of the most striking moments in Season One comes when Betty Draper's daughter runs into the living room wearing a body length plastic launderer's bag. Betty sharply upbraids her, hoping that this doesn't mean that her laundry is laying on the floor. To modern sensibility a child wearing a deadly plastic bad is shocking. Or in a late season episode Don Draper allows his completely drunk boss to leave his house with a drink "for the road." He merely smiles when he shouts, "That's my car!" as Roger drunkenly tries to find his own. A pregnant woman at a party can be seen smoking while holding a martini glass. One of my favorite MAD MEN scenes comes in Season Two, when after a picnic with his wife and kids, Don shakes the blanket they have all been sitting on, leaving the paper and trash on the ground. It all highlights some of the progress we have made in disciplining some of our more indefensible behavior.
As others have noted, the show centers on several ad executives at the Sterling-Cooper advertising firm. In particular, the film focuses on Don Draper, a brilliantly creative ad exec who has been just as inventive in recreating himself as he has been in promoting the products of the firm's clients. A serial adulterer, the child of a prostitute who died giving birth to him, and the son of an abusive father, he has had to pull himself from his humble origins to the top of his profession. All this while protecting his own dark secrets. Don Draper is a great character, perhaps the most archetypal character to have arisen since Tony Soprano. And it provided the opportunity for overnight stardom for Jon Hamm, a previously only marginally successful actor who had mainly been distinguished by a string of very small parts on various TV series and small budget movies. But it is impossible to imagine anyone more perfect for this role than Hamm and series creator Matthew Weiner agreed after seeing his audition tapes. When the network insisted that Hamm be passed over for a more established actor, Weiner declared that without Hamm he was not willing to move forward with the series. Weiner won and Hamm went on to win a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination (which he should have won). As portrayed by Hamm, Don Draper is the complete embodiment of Thoreau's individual who lives a life of quiet desperation. Draper is a world of contradictions. At times unscrupulous, he is also capable of great magnanimity and moral rectitude. A womanizer, he yearns for the ideal home.
The cast is stuffed with great characters and wonderful performances. I absolutely detested Vincent Kartheiser as Connor on the series ANGEL, though even then I suspected it was more the way he was written than his performance. Though he isn't asked to perform acts of daring do on MAD MEN, he is exceptional as Peter Campbell. Like Don Draper he alternates from petty, self-serving moments to acts of kindness and loyalty. He is capable of being wonderfully protective of Peggy Olson, a woman with whom he has had a couple of moments of physical intimacy, though he can also behave viciously towards her. John Slattery is outstanding as Roger Sterling, the number two man in the firm and the son of the Sterling-Cooper cofounder. Robert Morse, the great Broadway musical star of the sixties (including HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING), plays Bertram Cooper, the head of the firm. The almost unbearably beautiful January Jones (at one point in the season much is made of her resemblance to Grace Kelly, and she is gorgeous enough to make it not a silly compliment). Not to jump ahead to Season Two, Jones performance over the two seasons as Don Draper's trophy wife Betty is noting short of brilliant. Betty is someone who detests her life as a beautiful manikin, but isn't able to achieve happiness because she doesn't know who she wants to become. She also provides many of Season One's great moments, none better than when she starts killing the carrier pigeons of her next door neighbor with an air rifle (with cigarette dangling from her mouth) after he tells her children that he will kill their dog if they don't keep him out of his yard. The gorgeous Christina Hendricks (who wears some padding to make her figure more Rubenesque and who was wonderful in the recurring role of Saffron on the Sci-fi series FIREFLY) plays Joan Holloway, the office manager.
After Don Draper, however, my favorite character on the show is Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss). The series actually begins with Peggy's first day as a Sterling-Cooper employee. Starting off as Don Draper's secretary, she soon shows that she has skills as a writer, and soon becomes valued as a copy writer with a sensitivity for products that appeal to women. I've told friends that I believe that by the end of the series Peggy will actually be the head of Sterling-Cooper. I think the centrality of Peggy to the show was shown partly by the show commencing with her first day there and with her unprecedented penetration of the all male hierarchy of the corporation. Viewers may notice that she gains weight over the course of the year, especially during the last half. In fact Elizabeth Moss gained no weight. All changes were the result of very sophisticated make up art and padded clothing.
MAD MEN is one of the most beautifully designed shows you'll ever hope to see. It may be surpassed by BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and PUSHING DAISIES in art design, but no show on television rivals it in clothing. The look of the show is impeccable. If you don't remember the sixties, you can relive them by watching this show.
This is a show that anyone serious about quality TV has to know well. I've watched Season One twice and plan on rewatching Season One and Two as soon as the latter has finished. MAD MEN is also an example of a new trend in television, a series that tells more or less a unified story over the course of its life. LOST and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA both are doing this as well. All are must-see shows.
Mad about Mad Men. April 26, 2008
37 out of 51 found this review helpful
Sopranos' writer, Matthew Weiner's Mad Men is arguably the best reason to own a television these days. Set in 1960s New York City, the show involves a group of Madison Avenue ad executives and their naughty secretaries working, smoking, drinking, and socializing together at the Sterling Cooper advertising agency. The retro show provides a window into an American culture of Nixon-era social taboo-isms: alcoholism, sexism, racism, and consumerism, which is mainly what makes Mad Men so fascinating. It's easy to see why the show won two Golden Globe awards in 2007 for Best Television Series - Drama, and Best Actor in a Television Series - Drama.
Mad Men's characters are a truly well-drawn bunch. For instance, the protagonist, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), is not only the creative director and junior partner of Sterling Cooper, he is also the illegitimate son of a prostitute, now living an assumed identity to hide his inner "whore child" from his wife and competitive Madison Avenue colleagues. Don is unhappy with his life. He drinks Jack Daniels, chain smokes Lucky Strikes, cheats on his trophy wife Betty (January Jones), and constantly dreams of escaping his life. Betty, a former model, represents the classic '50s homemaker, but suffers from profound loneliness, sexual frustration, and dissatisfaction with her "perfect" life. (Household appliances literally give her orgasms, and in one of my favorite scenes, Betty makes her point with a shotgun.) With aspirations of becoming the agency's first woman copywriter, Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss) is a new secretary at Sterling Cooper, who is unexpectedly confronted with an unwanted pregnancy. Italian bachelor, Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt), is Sterling Cooper's macho art director, a homosexual afraid to come out of the closet, and equally afraid to act on his sexual impulses.
Imagine the "Mad-ness" of a bunch of complicated, alcoholic ("liquid lunch, anyone?"), Nixon-era, GQ ad men in starched white shirts, spending their workdays in a fog of cigarette smoke, and you'll have the basic premise of this highly-acclaimed, must-see show, which is now long overdue on DVD.
G. Merritt
MAD MEN.... "Best Show Ever" November 29, 2007
12 out of 16 found this review helpful
MAD MEN is awesome and one of the few series TV shows that I think I would watch at least several times on DVD (my wife and I still have all of the ER releases sitting unopened.... outside of a few special occasion nights when you get a bunch of friends together to watch a season of a series as a party event, who has time to watch all of these things?). Anyway, back to the point... MAD MEN would certainly be one series I WOULD WATCH again on DVD and I was so hoping they were going to release it for this Holiday season... it would have been perfect viewing for those cold winter nights between Christmas and spring. I would guess the release of the DVD of the first season will be just ahead of the second season debut on TV next summer (if the writers strike has not gotten in the way of filming!). Probably a marketing decision but I think it would have been better to release season one of this gem of a series for this Holiday so that there would have been opportunities over the "off time" to introduce it to friends and family who have not had a opportunity, as the rest of us have had, to return to 1960 New York City and peek into the lives of these extraordinary characters. To paraphrase the comic book guy on THE SIMPSONS... "Best Show Ever"
Mad Men 4 Xmas, AMC please! November 25, 2007
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
It would be really really swell if I could add the Mad Men DVD to my gift list and be able to give it to my loved ones! AMC is missing out on a lucrative opportunity by not releasing it in time for the Holidays and that makes me sad.
What intelligent writing can be... August 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Finally! Mad Men proves that television doesn't have to be hackneyed storylines and writing. At first glance, this series serves as an interesting portrayal of a period that is beginning to fade from cultural memory. However, it will only take an episode or two to begin to appreciate the poignant themes and writing. Each character is complex - there are parts of each that you love and hate - sometimes at the same time. It's amusing to see the situations and themes that we hope don't exist today, but many ideas and circumstances that are universal to most people, regardless the time.
It's such a pleasure to finally find a series that justifies taking time out my schedule to sit back and take in. The acting is top notch and the costuming and sets are superb. I think a blog I recently read captured it best - "I spend more time thinking about what I saw, then actual time watching the show." Now, that's saying something!
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