"Is [Mad Men] the artistic triumph that people claim it is? I'm still not convinced. Stripped of its iconic 60s couture and interiors, it seems like a fairly typical primetime drama."

Perhaps branding is now understood by its practitioners as absolutely detachable from the thing branded; I'm happily not in a position to comment. But as a critique of television fiction, Parrette's implication that there is an unremarkable 'real' Mad Men, lurking beneath clever branding, seems to me frankly wrong-headed. One might simply ignore this critique, were it not for the fact that it perpetuates a raft of ill-considered assumptions which are, alas, all too easy to run across in all kinds of television criticism, from the informal to the very formal.

There is something very slippery and dangerous about the idea that outward appearances are not intrinsic to a dramatic fiction. To say that Mad Men is remarkable because of its exquisite visual style should not actually be to demean it, as Parrette intends, for this visual style is NOT merely the window dressing, the 'glamor' (in the old sense of a deceiving spell). Style is intrinsic to what Mad Men is — as it ALWAYS is in television, however apparently unremarkable that styling might superficially seem. Perversely, given his supposed area of competence, Parrette devalues visual imagery by implying that there is an 'interior,' or something 'beneath' the surface which can be laid bare by someone cunning enough to bypass the glamor. This is a metaphor (and a prejudice) as old as European dramatic criticism: Aristotle in his Poetics favored the 'inward' over the 'spectacular,' and his shadow apparently looms large over us. Parrette seems to want us to acknowledge that what we see is not really what we get with Mad Men, to jolt us out of the glamor's enthrallment. But with screen media, what you see is in a very real sense not just what you get, but ALL you get.

I'm probably preaching to the converted in saying all this, but the point seemed worth making, because Mad Men raises interesting issues about how as a society we seem to view "authenticity" — and it's always, apparently, something "stripped."

That being said, MW has indicated that the show is as much about our contemporary era as it is about 1963. This has been a pretty surreal, extreme year for America in general. Can't say it's been a particularly good one, either. Maybe MW is merely reflecting the tumult and insanity that America has had to endure in 2009.

I suppose there's also an argument that it was inevitable MM was going to go down this road, anyway. Dramas can't survive on the same formulas (*cough* Lost, *cough*, Desperate Housewives, *cough*) for years on end without some creative or narrative evolution anymore.

C Carroll Adams, there's really no need to be snotty.

Is it Sen. McCain, or Grandpa Gene? Hope he didn't feel her up by accident! http://twitpic.com/jq8qw

I love it when Mad Men references show up in unlikely places. ESPN, for example. On Pardon The Interruption Michael Wilbon regularly calls MM the best show on T.V. and has converted partner Tony Kornheiser to the same point of view. On Around The Horn, host Tony Reali could hardly contain himself on the Monday after “Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency,” expressing utter disdain for one panelist who admitted he didn’t watch the show.