Mad Men (AMC)

Mad Men has been one of the most brilliant yet most frustrating television series in recent memory. The show is littered with amazing acting talent, impeccable set design, masterful camera work and sparkling dialogue. And yet, it often finds itself stuck in neutral, sometimes for nearly an entire season. How many times have we watched a Mad Men episode and thought — ‘What was the point of that?’ Dead-end storylines. Major characters relegated to set dressing for a bulk of a season. Repetitive storylines. Don Draper staring into the middle distance far too often. It’s utterly infuriating to watch this series sometimes.

Yet, we keep coming back for more.

Why? Because we know that at the end of the day the writers will somehow, someway tie everything in a nice bow, and we’ll sit there, sunken down in our chairs and say, ‘Damn, that was good.’

The first half of Season 7 which aired in 2014 left us pissed. It was everything that was wrong with Mad Men. The series just wandered about, not really accomplishing anything till a very rushed season finale. We were mired down in Don and Megan’s bicoastal relationship, Roger’s newly hippified daughter, and some slicing their nipple off.

Luckily, the ‘End of an Era’ half season which began in April, is doing everything right. We’re getting series best performances from Christina Hendricks, Vincent Kartheiser and January Jones. We’re enthralled by gut punching storylines, and unexpected happy endings. But most importantly, we’re hooked for the finale. There is literally no definitive theory on how this series will end — for those of us who’ve invested so much in this series for the better part of the past decade, we need to know how it all shakes out.

Unlike most dramas on TV right now there is no ‘big bad’ here, there is no sweeping action sequence, no acts of justice or vengeance or violence that’ll justifiably end this series. This show is a character study. It’s a show about life. The end to this show is life continuing (for most). It’s what makes Mad Men so unique on the TV landscape, and why I was obsessed with the series in the month of April. –Bill Bodkin, Editor-in-Chief

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