The Legacy of Mad Men

Cultural History, Intermediality and American Television

Karen McNally, Jane Marcellus, Teresa Forde, Kirsty Fairclough, Karen McNally, Jane Marcellus, Teresa Forde, Kirsty Fairclough

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783030310905
• eBook ISBN: 9783030310912
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

For seven seasons, viewers worldwide watched as ad man Don Draper moved from adultery to self-discovery, secretary Peggy Olson became a take-no-prisoners businesswoman, object-of-the-gaze Joan Holloway developed a feminist consciousness, executive Roger Sterling tripped on LSD, and smarmy Pete Campbell became a surprisingly nice guy. Mad Men defined a pivotal moment for television, earning an enduring place in the medium's history.

This edited collection examines the enduringly popular television series as Mad Men still captivates audiences and scholars in its nuanced depiction of a complex decade. This is the first book to offer an analysis of Mad Men in its entirety, exploring the cyclical and episodic structure of the long form series and investigating issues of representation, power and social change. The collection establishes the show's legacy in televisual terms, and brings it up to date through an examination of itscultural importance in the Trump era. Aimed at scholars and interested general readers, the book illustrates the ways in which Mad Men has become a cultural marker for reflecting upon contemporary television and politics.

Part IMad Men’s Status: Television, Reputation, Fandom

© The Author(s) 2019

K. McNally et al. (eds.)The Legacy of Mad Menhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31091-2_2

Begin Abstract

Mad Men’s Legacy in the Quality Television Tradition

Gary R. Edgerton¹

(1)

College of Communication, Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA

Gary R. Edgerton

End Abstract

Right Time, Right Place

Once or twice a decade, a new television program comes along to capture and express the zeitgeist. Mad Men (AMC, 2007–2015) was that show in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It debuted less than six weeks after The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) ended on HBO with its controversial finale , ‘Made in America’, on 10 June 2007. AMC (American Movie Classics from 1984 to 2003) launched Mad Men on 19 July, attracting wide critical acclaim and extraordinary public attention beginning with the first season despite appearing on what was then an also-ran basic cable network.

Mad Men set the creative standard in scripted drama throughout its initial run. It was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as the Best Television Drama of 2007, 2008, and 2009; the British Academy of Film and Television as Best International Show of 2009 and 2010; and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as the Outstanding Drama Series of 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011—the first basic cable series ever to win this award. Overall, Mad Men won five Golden Globes, sixteen Emmys, and fifty other major awards, including honours from all of the major Hollywood guilds plus a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.

In addition, Mad Men became a phenomenon of contemporary culture. Its stylistic imprint was evident in TV commercials and print advertisements, magazine covers and feature articles, designer fashions and consumer products. The series was as au courant as any contemporaneous television program from the late summer of 2007 through 2011, when a seventeen-month hiatus between Seasons 4 and 5 (literally from 17 October 2010 to 25 March 2012) slowed Mad Men’s momentum as a cultural signpost and ‘damaged the show’s prestige’, in the opinion of creator, executive producer, head writer, and showrunner, Matthew Weiner (Rose and O’Connell 49).

Weiner initially broke into television as a staff writer on Party Girl (Fox, 1996), The Naked Truth (ABC, 1995–1996; NBC, 1996–1998), Becker (CBS, 1998–2004), and Andy Richter Controls the Universe (Fox, 2002–2003), before instructing his agent to mail his spec script, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ’ (which became Mad Men’s pilot episode) to David Chase, the creator and executive producer of The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007). Weiner recalls that within ‘a week after [Chase] got it’ in 2003, ‘I was in New York on the show’, where he quickly worked his way up on The Sopranos from staff writer to one of the executive producers (NPR: Fresh Air, 9 August 2007).

Weiner’s first draft of ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ was actually written back in the spring and summer of 1999. During his early years in broadcast TV, Matt Weiner grew progressively bored and frustrated with the strictures there, motivating him to start writing his Mad Men script while watching the first season of The Sopranos. After reading Weiner’s screenplay, Chase instantly recognized his talent and became a mentor to him over the next four years. On The Sopranos, for instance, Weiner learned that a series could have ‘depth and complexity’ and ‘at the same time’ be ‘commercially successful’, while also ‘seeing how the sausage was made’ (NPR: Fresh Air, 9 August 2007).

Although the historical backdrop, genre, and themes of Mad Men are much different than those of The Sopranos, both of these serial narratives develop in a slow and deliberate fashion, resisting closure. They are also populated with emotionally complex characters. One simple albeit powerful lesson that Weiner learned from Chase was that the writers’ room could serve as a stand-in for the audience. Early on in their professional relationship when Weiner would question an ambiguous plot point in a script, Chase would ask ‘do you understand it?’ If Weiner said, ‘yes’, then Chase would assure him, ‘that’s good enough for me’. Weiner later conceded, ‘Mad Men would have been some kind of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if not for The Sopranos ’ (Chellas).

Chase’s more challenging personal vision, as realized through The Sopranos, ushered in a new era of densely plotted, morally complicated television dramas, expanding the range of storytelling and character options now possible on TV. Chase’s original conception of combining an epic novelistic structure, a cinematic vocabulary, and a dystopian worldview to the traditional conventions of prime time resulted in a singular generic and serial hybrid that inspired the newest wave of television dramatists, not only Weiner with Mad Men but Terence Winter with Boardwalk Empire (HBO, 2010–2014). Chase’s professional example served as the template on which the next generation of TV writers and producers modelled their careers as artists working in television .

In that way, Chase’s unexpected level of creative and popular success with The Sopranos elevated the status of showrunners in general, transforming the cable-and-satellite sector into a more creatively freewheeling environment with its own rules. Chase’s experience of only realizing his vision once he left the legacy broadcasters behind became the prototype for all of the new serialists then working in the post-Sopranos television industry (Weinman 49–50). Mad Men, in particular, benefited from and continued the momentum begun by The Sopranos, shifting the centre of gravity for breakout programming in the US television industry away from the broadcast to the cable-and-satellite sector.

AMC executives consequently adopted what they referred to as ‘the HBO formula ’ of developing their own edgy, sophisticated, passion project by a proven writer-producer who just happened to have a pedigree that included The Sopranos (Alston). What resulted was the gradual emergence of Mad Men as AMC’s first original hit series, generating unprecedented word of mouth and rebranding the channel as a hipper, more discriminating, alternative cable-and-satellite network. In turn, Mad Men broke the glass ceiling for basic cable in much the same way as The Sopranos had done so for pay TV some eight-and-a-half years earlier. Also audiences early on embraced Mad Men as a prestige program because The Sopranos had effectively changed viewer expectations of what was possible on television .

Mad Men also benefited greatly from the emergence of multi-platform reception. Even though Mad Men’s impact on AMC was immediate and transformative, the show was at first ‘more a cultural than commercial hit’ (Keveney). Its first-season audience averaged 900,000 in 2007, but that doubled to 1.8 million in 2009 and eventually topped out at 2.5 million in 2013. Moreover, the show’s total viewership always relied heavily on multiple platforms, translating into an estimated 30 million unduplicated viewers per episode in North America alone when considering the myriad of digital devices and screen sizes on which people watched television programming then as well as today (Chozick; 92Y). By the time Mad Men’s finale, ‘Person to Person’, debuted on 17 May 2015, the series was being syndicated in over 50 countries and was available 24/7 through online streaming worldwide .

The Emergence of Quality Television

Not only are The Sopranos and Mad Men biologically linked, both of these award-winning and influential programs were created within a much longer industrial, artistic, and cultural tradition that originally was christened ‘quality television’ almost a half-century ago. This generalized label gained currency circa 1984 with the publication of a scholarly anthology entitled, MTM: Quality Television, which analysed the history and development of MTM Enterprises, the independent TV production company founded in 1969 by then husband-and-wife team Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore, along with the unrelated formation of a non-profit consumer activist group, ‘Viewers for Quality Television’, which successfully rescued Cagney & Lacey (CBS, 1982–1988) from three short-term cancellations because of low Nielsen ratings early in its run (Feuer, Kerr, and Vahimagi; Swanson).

Few critical concepts have proven as controversial and problematic as ‘quality television’ when referring to the growth and maturation of TV programming since the 1970s and 1980s. It has been roundly criticized for the imprecise way that it encourages arbitrary, subjective, and sometimes elitist value judgements. It has also met with confusion and criticism for being applied to a host of television-related agenda items from describing industry and audience practices to defining aesthetic and generic tendencies. In the latter case, Robert Thompson promoted its usage by identifying a dozen characteristics of ‘quality TV’ as he surveyed contemporaneous innovations in prime-time drama from the debut of Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981–1987) to the demise of Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–1991) in Television’s Second Golden Age (1996, 13–16).¹

In April 2004, Janet McCabe and Kim Akass organized an international conference at Trinity College, Dublin, resulting in a state-of-the-art anthology, Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (2007), that took a deep dive into the applicability and efficacy of ‘quality television’ from a variety of analytical perspectives. Sudeep Dasgupta’s more recent 2012 critique, ‘Policing the People: Television Studies and the Problem of “Quality”’, is a useful updating and delineation of the pros and cons of this durable albeit imperfect concept. All metaphors have their strengths and weaknesses and ‘quality television’ focused needed attention on the profound transformation occurring in TV as an industry and an art form beginning nearly fifty years ago and gaining added momentum ever since.²

While still editor of the New York Times Book Review in 1995, Charles McGrath wrote about this emerging phenomenon in an extended commentary on what he identified as ‘a brand-new genre’ that he called the ‘prime-time novel’ (53). McGrath pinpointed it surfacing with Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll’s Hill Street Blues and Joshua Brand and John Falsey’s St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982–1988). Both series were produced by MTM Enterprises, which was originally created to produce the critically acclaimed and popular sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–1977). Grant Tinker left the company after he and Mary Tyler Moore divorced in 1981 to become the chairman and CEO of NBC, where he was widely regarded as the most innovative and enlightened television executive of his era.

All told, the typical US household was able to access five channels on average in 1960; seven channels in 1970; and ten channels in 1980 when the first examples of McGrath’s ‘prime-time novel’ started to appear. During TVI (1948–1975), the television industry in America developed according to a mass market model, emphasizing broadcasting and dominated by CBS, NBC, and ABC whose sole goal was to reach as large a viewership as possible. By 1974–1975 at the end of TVI, the popularity of CBS, NBC, and ABC would never be greater—that season the three-network oligopoly reached its peak by averaging a 93.6% share of the prime-time viewing audience (Sloane). Each network was highly profitable, competing solely against each other in what was essentially a closed $2.5 billion TV advertising market (Les Brown 1975). Within ten short years, though, all would be different.

The strategy CBS, NBC, and ABC gravitated towards...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Introduction: Where the Truth Still Lies
• Part I. Mad Men’s Status: Television, Reputation, Fandom
• Part II. Gender and Race: The Complex Management of Power
• Part III. Mad Men’s Intermediality: Film, Music, Poetics
• Part IV. Endings and Legacies: The Final Season
• Back Matter