- Network: AMC
- Series Premiere Date: Jul 19, 2007
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Critic Reviews
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The show still tends to go suddenly flat--it's hard to tell whether the party is supposed to be dead or it's just incompetently staged--but Hamm is always superb as Don. [2 Apr 2012, p.37]
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That's Mad Men in a woozy nutshell: intoxicating, sophisticated, demanding, uncompromising and always seductively satisfying. Even after a stupefying 17-month absence that somehow hasn't dampened our ardor for this one-of-a-kind series.
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After a dark and often depressing season four, it's refreshing to start things off on a more jovial, lighter note. That's not to say the premiere is devoid of angst, disappointment and drama. It's just buoyed by an unusually high amount of humor.
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This is such a gorgeous show to watch (at least for anyone fond of mid-'60s clothes and design) that it's easy to forget how beautifully these actors play their roles and how true-to-life they and the writers make these characters seem.
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It's the possibility of unlimited complications looming that make it so insanely riveting.
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Mad Men is back and back in all the right ways--the humor, the writing, the period details, and best of all, the flawless attention to these characters and their cluttered interior worlds.
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The premiere suggests that the only other show that belongs with it in the discussion for the best drama on television is the same one we were talking about last season. At the top level, there is "Breaking Bad," and there is also--finally, thankfully, exceptionally--Mad Men, and then there is everything else.
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The top-notch acting is still intact, as is the attention to aesthetic detail.
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If Sunday night's two-hour return episode of Mad Men ended after the first four minutes, it would still put the show in contention to win its fifth straight Emmy as the best drama on television.
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Based on the premiere, the season may wind up being the show's best so far, but even if it doesn't, Mad Men beats almost everything else on TV.
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Mad Men offers a two-hour season premiere that commences with a muted tone and then explodes in different directions. [23 Mar 2012, p.62]
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All in all, this season premiere allows fans to marinate in the world of the characters for two hours.
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Mad Men stays relevant and exciting by moving forward.
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The womanizing, booze-guzzling, chain-smoking ad exec (played brilliantly by Jon Hamm) at the heart of AMC's Emmy Award-winning drama Mad Men has found a curvy sliver of joy in his life.
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As a fan from the start, I didn't love it, but liked it well enough.
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It works because it's less about who we were then--it's a fantasy of who we were then, really--than about who we are now.
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Doors are opening. Mind the gap.
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It is the small things that can elevate Mad Men above the level of ambitious soap opera.
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The episode, written by series creator Matthew Weiner, is a model of efficiency and nuance.
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Suffice it to say creator Matthew Weiner unspools enough story to keep fans hooked, immediately satisfying some curiosities and creating others.
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This new season starts off strong.
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Weiner still manages to steer clear of the trite "greed is bad" moralizing that sunk films like Oliver Stone's disastrous Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, as Mad Men still allows the characters' temptations to be authentically seductive.
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At this point, the context may be more interesting than the characters.
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Each time-lapse introduces more wrinkles in the show's world, but the premiere offers a sketchy road map of what's to come, and won't expand Men's footprint beyond its solid arthouse niche.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 296 out of 315
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Mixed: 3 out of 315
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Negative: 16 out of 315
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Mar 26, 2012
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Mar 26, 2012
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Apr 9, 2012