TV is Superior to Movies - Mad Men

TV is superior to movies example of the month... Mad Men.

When I first broke into television oh those many years ago, there was a pretty strict philosophy that television shows were to be 'episodic' as opposed to 'serial'. This meant that each episode of a television show was to be somewhat standalone and if you started watching somewhere in the middle then you wouldn't miss all that much. This is one of the reasons that genre's like police shows and hospital shows always showed up because you could have a different case every week and maintain rules of the show without having an ongoing story.

Think about it... comedies like FRIENDS or CHEERS are all basically standalone. Cop shows like HAWAII FIVE-O and LAW AND ORDER are standalone. The reason was simple: you could build an audience and syndicate a show without a new viewer having to have much pre-knowledge of a show. In my opinion, most all television was still a second class artistic venue. Movies were superior. It was not until episodic television really took hold that TV started to fulfill its artistic promise. This month...

Program: Mad Men
Episodes: 3 seasons, 39 episodes
Status: Season 4 begins in 2010

This is the kind of show that would have very little hope of being any kind of movie. Capturing the tone and feel of USA in the early 60's, it plays on a world that few of us have any idea about. The cool thing about it is how by looking at America through the prism of the 1960's, you learn more about today. Multi-layered, character driven, funny, and fascinating. Like reading a book...

One of Jeff's favorite scenes: the Draper family out for a picnic. Time to go so Betty shakes the blanket off, throwing all of the food wrappers and garbage on the ground - Don crunches up beer can and tosses it in the grass. As the family leaves the park, they pull back to show litter everywhere! For those younger tykes out there, I remember a time when you just tossed trash out the window of the car... that's just what everybody did!