Mad Men Season 1 Review, or The Best Use of Effective Realism on Television

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Welcome to Madison Avenue, home of the Ad Men, or Mad Men, as they like to call themselves. (See, that's a play on the words "advertising", and "Madison"─Mad. Get it?)

I've heard about this show before, but I never got a chance to watch it, because when this show started, I was extremely biased towards HBO productions and tended to ignore all the other shows on TV.

It was only when I became a copywriter that I decided to check the show out. I needed some inspiration, because I just realized that I suck at writing copy. And inspire me it did. Everyone in a line of work involving creativity will definitely learn a lot here, from the first episode's Lucky Strike campaign (It's Toasted!) up to the season ender's brilliant, sentimentally tear-jerking pitch of the Kodak carousel slide projector.

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"I'm crying because of the sheer brilliance of this scene!"

Mad Men is set in 1960s America, sometime during the Nixon-Kennedy election showdown. And the show does indeed look convincingly like the 60s. The hair, the costumes, the production design, the cinematography, the soundtrack─everything is swingin' sixties, baby. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the best use of effective realism I have ever seen on television.

The entire visual look is so effective, it looks like those 60s Coca-Cola ads brought to life.

How to Be a Retronaut

Like this, basically.

X-Men: First Class. With Two Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Because this movie stars Kevin Bacon, who I haven't seen in a long time, I will be reviewing this with "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon".

But first, a short review. First Class takes us back to the sixties, when Charles Xavier had a full head of hair. As far as prequels go, this was executed quite nicely. This was directed by Matthew Vaughn, the one who helmed the film Kick-Ass. The film has a certain darkness to it, but not as dark as Batman Begins or The Dark Knight. That's a different kind of dark. Let's just say this one doesn't try to be all comic book-campy like the Spiderman flicks. I didn't even notice Stan Lee anywhere in the film. Either he was well-hidden, or he didn't make a cameo at all. Oh, and I also love how the training montage pays homage to Ang Lee's Hulk. A lot of people didn't like that. I did, though. But I am quite ashamed to admit it.

Now, let's go to Kevin Bacon. If you're unfamiliar with "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", it's a game that's really fun to play. Basically, you have to connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor by six degrees. It's kind of difficult to explain, but here's how we play it.

"Can we just get this over with?"