haters gonna hate.
okay, so this is why I gave up on "Mad Men" two episodes into the second season:
1) It seems to focus more on "lifestyle study" than it does on plotting. Nothing terribly significant ever happens plot-wise. The characters are all in more or less the same place at the end of season one as they were at the beginning; have they really evolved at all? Don is still mysterious, cranky, and adulterous. Pete Campbell is still frustrated and adulterous. Roger Sterling is still snarky and adulterous. Joan Holloway is still catty and adulterous. The only really significant character development comes when Harry moves from being happily married to being regretfully adulterous.
I'm not saying I want "Boston Public"-style grotesque plot whammies in every episode. It'd just be nice if SOMETHING happened. And character study is only interesting if the characters evolve.
2) Just a liiiiittle too much self-congratulatory backpattery about all the stupid things people did in the 1960s, and aren't we smart for not doing them today. When we had the scene where the smoking pregnant woman yells at her kid with the plastic bag over her head that the clothes from that bag better not be on the floor, in the same episode that the other mother drives her young children around not in a car seat, and oh by the way smoking being unhealthy, what a joke amirite... at a certain point, I get it. They did silly things in the 1960s.
3) I don't really care what happens to any of these people, because they're pretty much all cocks. Hard to get emotionally invested in that.
"The West Wing" is still the only drama I've ever gotten into.
1) It seems to focus more on "lifestyle study" than it does on plotting. Nothing terribly significant ever happens plot-wise. The characters are all in more or less the same place at the end of season one as they were at the beginning; have they really evolved at all? Don is still mysterious, cranky, and adulterous. Pete Campbell is still frustrated and adulterous. Roger Sterling is still snarky and adulterous. Joan Holloway is still catty and adulterous. The only really significant character development comes when Harry moves from being happily married to being regretfully adulterous.
I'm not saying I want "Boston Public"-style grotesque plot whammies in every episode. It'd just be nice if SOMETHING happened. And character study is only interesting if the characters evolve.
2) Just a liiiiittle too much self-congratulatory backpattery about all the stupid things people did in the 1960s, and aren't we smart for not doing them today. When we had the scene where the smoking pregnant woman yells at her kid with the plastic bag over her head that the clothes from that bag better not be on the floor, in the same episode that the other mother drives her young children around not in a car seat, and oh by the way smoking being unhealthy, what a joke amirite... at a certain point, I get it. They did silly things in the 1960s.
3) I don't really care what happens to any of these people, because they're pretty much all cocks. Hard to get emotionally invested in that.
"The West Wing" is still the only drama I've ever gotten into.