Mad Men The Complete Season 3

Based on the absolutely stellar third season finale alone, this show deserves to be on the list. This season, the show gave fans what they had been waiting for (Joan confronts her husband, Betty learns the truth about Don), while simultaneously providing a jaw-dropping cliff-hanger (what will happen now that Sterling Cooper, as we know it, is no more). All that plus the series creatively address some of the decade’s defining moments by showing how they lead each character to his or her own epiphany. “Mad Men” is pure, perfect, and yes rather smoky, bliss.

About season 1-2
In an early Mad Men episode, Roger Sterling is asked what women want. “Who cares?” he replies. But the Sixties advertising revolution — invoking Freudian-influenced research — did care. And even more so when it came to what men wanted.

On Tuesday, I went to an Accompanied Literary Society screening for Selling the Sixties,, a BBC documentary that, unfortunately, isn’t scheduled to be aired in the U.S. anytime soon. But the account of how research became a tool for advertising to efficiently exploit desire, sexualizing even the most basic transactions, was so strikingly related to the conversations we have here that I begged for a DVD in order to share a relevant clip.
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Mad Men: The Complete Set DVD – Season 1-2. [DVD]

Whereas in the first episode of Mad Men Don throws a dour Freudian psychoanalyst’s report into the garbage, it’s clear from this clip that his real-life contemporaries weren’t quite so dismissive. Early 60s consumers were becoming jaded and unmoved by the simple pitch. Enter Ernest Dichter, the Viennese psychoanalyst who created “motivational research,” tapping into what he saw as the deepest desires of consumers.

He was also a pioneer of the focus group, including the one seen here, where a woman straightfacedly says of a salad dressing, “I think that it has a place in our American way of life.”

What is the best choice for men? you may like this.

Mad Men The Complete Season DVD Boxset
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Great actors, good storylines written for major as well as secondary characters, a fingerlickingly good looking historical setting, this is one of the best shows I caught this year, and in this decade. I note this with Sons of Anarchy and Terminator Chronicles season II as the best show this year ( not counting the awesome John Adams miniseries from HBO because it is a miniseries). I see no difference in quality between season 1 and 2. John Hamm is superb as the lead character, but further kudo’s have to go to the characters of Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell, Salvatore, Peggy and most certainly the incredibly attractive Joan.

5 stars fully deserved, very pleasing to see this show from the former Sopranos writer, another show I enjoyed a great deal. Season 3 on dvd please, and please don’t let it take 9 months again ( and it probably will, undoubtedly due to foreign rights).