Eric Shaw Quinn

Okay, I’ll say it.  Mad Men is the dullest television show in the history of the medium and I have NEVER MISSED an episode.

Really.  The dullest.  Never missed it.

Here’s what happened this week:  (Spoiler 8/15/10)

Peter accidentally found out his wife was expecting from his father-in-law.  Don’s secretary quit.  Peggy went to a wild party that was raided (though neither we nor she saw the wild or the raid).  Peter asked his father-in-law about a larger share of the family’s advertising business.  Peggy was sad that things didn’t work out with Peter.  The focus of the episode’s big excitement was a focus group about cold cream.

People had feelings and lunch and lots of drinks all while smoking, but really, that’s it.

Just for contrast on my other Sunday show, True Blood:  (Spoiler 8/15/10)

Eric was raided, imprisoned, tortured and interrogated by the Vampire Police.  Sookie and Bill discussed their relationship while they cleaned up the dead bodies of the werewolves in her house they killed during their attack the night before.  Later, Bill was transported through his dream to another world where he discovered Sookie’s true nature.  The King of Mississippi discovered the remains of his dead lover, staked last week by Eric in answer to a thousand year blood feud.  Sam encourages Tara to seek help.  Jason was attacked by Crystal’s fiancé when he found her at Jason’s.  Crystal lied and told the fiancé that Jason had kidnapped and raped her, but then clubbed the man unconscious while he was strangling Jason.  Jason and Crystal left her fiancé tied to a tree with drugs in his pocket and reported him to the police.  Eric Betrayed the King of Mississippi and the Queen of Louisiana to the Vampire authorities revealing that the king had killed a vampire government official and was planning to take over the world.  Sam has a moment with his younger brother about partying too loud.  Tara joined a raped survivors group and met the new waitress from Merlotte’s there.  After some deliberation the Vampire Authorities  authorized Eric to finish the job and take out the King and, one presumes, the Queen.  Sam nearly beat a redneck drug lord – Crystal’s father — to death who refused to leave his bar and who had repeatedly threatened and disrespected him.  Sam’s brother steals Arlene’s tips.  Distraught, Arlene confesses to the new waitress that the baby she’s carrying is not her fiancé’s but her dead, serial killer, former husband and that she doesn’t want it.  Crystal broke it off with Jason, again, when he tried to prevent her from going to the hospital with her father.  Tara is attacked by the Vampire who kidnapped and raped her.  Jason, saves Tara and kills the Vampire.  Bill’s Vampire ward met the new girlfriend of the mortal who she broke up with.  The King of Mississippi killed a hot TV anchorman live on the air and declared his intentions.  And don’t get me started on the new romance with Lafayette and the nurse who cares for his mother at the mental hospital.  His long awaited mother and son reconciliation happened when she realized that the two had spent the night together during her escape from the mental ward, really sort of touching.

And I probably forgot stuff.

These two shows are the same length give or take a minute.  One is commercial and the other is not.  One has a supernatural element to it, but honestly, little of what happened this week was all that supernatural.  The body count on True Blood is higher, but Advertising while deadly dull, is rarely lethal.

So what is it that keeps me watching this show?

It is stylishly done, well acted and beautiful to look at.  Still, in its four year history, the most exciting thing that’s happened is that someone’s foot got run over by a lawn mower.  Off the hook, right?

I’ve worked in advertising and, while it was not like being a double-naught spy, it was more interesting than this.

Is this an addiction to the past? Or just a rejection of the present.  My other Sunday show is a fantasy.

America has invented a version of the past they we like and we are devoted to it.  Never mind that the gay liberation of the 70’s killed most of us, the majority of what people think happened in the 60’s was kind of seedy, violent and actually happened in the 70’s and the 50’s were mostly about repression, bigotry, social inequity and paranoia.  But that’s not how we remember it.  Movie makers and politicians constantly evoke the halcyon days of our none existent past.

When that doesn’t work, bring in the Vampires, Wizards and Giant 3D cartoons.

I know times are tough, but they were not when Mad Men first came on the air.  Has this always been the case? In the 50’s did they want it to be the 20’s? I don’t really see any evidence of that.  The past, as depicted in that period seems to have been brutish, short and dark.  We seem no longer able to stand our reality.  I don’t even think it’s just post 9/11.

We are fueled by a loss of national self-esteem.  We have fashioned a culture of covetous and envy and find ourselves constantly wanting.  We strive relentlessly for the perfect figure, job, mate, kitchen, gizmo, only to discover that someone else’s is bigger, better, newer, hotter.

We live in the land of never good enough, manufactured by the Mad Men depicted in that show I can’t stop watching.

Maybe it’s like a car wreck, I just can’t look away.