Mad Men

Ok. So the new season of Mad Men starts this Sunday. I love this show. I don't typically enjoy dramas but I do love this show.

So, here I was yesterday evening, sitting in a sports bar/grill, trying to explain this show over dinner. I found myself trying to describe the plot and enumerate the reasons why I so irrationally love this show.

It IS more than the wardrobe and hairstyle choices, really - men in suits and fedoras, women in shirt-waists and heels, slick and sassy. Meanwhile, back at the bar/grill, all around me were men in Ravens ball caps, untucked golf shirts and cargo shorts, while women were sporting either Ravens jerseys or summer-time casual tee-shirts and flip flops (opening exhibition game Ravens/Redskins - Ravens kicked a@#). Not even a dusky, hazy romance of cigarette smoke to blur the edges of the establishment (and no, I'm not advocating smoking - asthma and smoke, not good - but you have to admit, it does set a certain mood and I do kinda' miss it in some ways). Fedora - ball cap. Heels - flip flops. You do the math on this one.

Anyway, my fondness for this show comes down to this. It is a sassy, historically-based prime-time soap opera. I don't mean soap opera in a bad way. I mean soap opera in the finest Dallas and Falconcrest way but even better because it contains an element of awareness and tribute to historical impact of events during that time (women's roles, men's roles, sexual preference, the Civil Rights movement, Bay of Pigs) and all the wonderfully awful reactions to these kinds of issues. And then, right along side these, there's smoking and drinking and golf and divorce and cheating and...well...drama in all it's HD techni-color glory, and then some.

It's a sophisticated combination of Shakespeare and the WWE. I mean that in the best possible way. You can't get much better than that.