I have a long history with Mad Men. I wrote episode reviews for Vulture and The New Republic. I published longer essays about the series in the print edition of New York Magazine, and stand-alone pieces in other venues. Throughout season seven, I went on radio programs and podcasts to talk about the show. Given all this, when I decided to publish a book about the show, Mad Men Carousel and then, years later, during the 2020 pandemic, started writing about the series yet again my friends would ask, Havent you had enough?

The answer is no. Because Mad Men is built to last.

Every episode is packed with comic and dramatic moments; period-accurate clothes and hairstyles and music; imaginative, hilarious, often deeply moving performances; and screenwriting that depicts the complexities and contradictions of the human personality with more insight and empathy than any American series to date. Its a drama about how individuals are and are not affected by the local, national, and international history thats constantly unfolding around them. Its a psychodrama about how our personalities are shaped by our parents, our lovers, our friends, our bosses, and everyone else we know, as well as by people weve never met but feel as if we know: the politicians, civil-rights leaders, athletes, movie stars, musicians, and other icons who inspire, entertain, confound, and sometimes anger us as we muddle through our daily lives. Its also a series with an unusually strong affinity for mythology, spirituality, religion, psychoanalysis, pop psychology, literature, poetry, cinema, and all the other means by which human experience is transformed into narrative. And at every level the scene, the episode, the season, and in total it is a masterpiece of construction, filled with major and minor bits of foreshadowing and recollection, lines and images seeming to answer each other across time.

And even as it manages to do, and be, all of these things and others, it entertains. Really entertains. Its exciting, sexy, sometimes sad, but above all else, its funny: a show that inflicts so much darkness on its characters is obligated to offer a bit of light as compensation, otherwise we wouldnt go near it.

The fifth anniversary of the series finale this month coincides with a global pandemic, during which many viewers are revisiting the show, or watching it for the first time. For those seeking a critical companion, weve gathered the best of ourMad Mencoverage in one place.The season-one recaps here are republished from Mad Men Carousel. (Editors note: Vulture was slow to catch on to Mad Men and did not recap season one.) Recaps of seasons two through four were written by my former colleague Logan Hill, who preceded me at Vulture on this particular beat. I recapped the series beginning in season five and continued through the finale. Most of them were written in the moment, without the benefit of an advance screener, and often published within hours of an episodes debut. As a result, they can have a spontaneous quality and occasionally offer speculations about future plot developments that were eventually validated or proven wrong (sometimes wildly so).

What emerges, for me anyway, after reading and writing eight years worth of Mad Men recaps, is the astonishing sturdiness of Matthew Weiners series. As many times as Ive watched it as I write this, Ive seen every episode at least five times, sometimes more I always notice new things, be they micro (when these New Yorkers go to California, they always come back a bit sunburned) to the macro (certain behavior patterns in the characters are mirrored by whats happening in the nation over time). While the series deals with history head-on, it mostly avoids the temptation to explain what it all meant, preferring to view the biggest events obliquely, cutting their potency by having characters hear the big news late, or at a moment when their own personal problems seem much larger. This rings true to life. Sometimes, to paraphrase Casablanca, our individual stories amount to hills of beans, and other times they take precedence (unless the news is so shocking and enormous that it brings life to a temporary standstill).

The show likes letting its characters just be. Fascinated as it clearly is by Freud and Jung and the Bible and the tarot deck, it is ultimately anti-theory. Its about human behavior occurring in the moment. It doesnt explain. It observes. Its not about the period; its about the question mark.

The preceding piece was adapted from Matt Zoller Seitzs 2015 criticism anthology Mad Men Carousel.

What Critics Said About Mad Men When It First Premiered

Jon Hamm on the Future of Mad Men

Emily Nussbaum on Pete Campbells Poignant Crumminess

How Joans Rape Changed Everything

Mad Men Replaces Bobby Draper, Again

The Arrangements Is the Quintessential Mad Men Episode

Why Mad Men Is Even More Addicting in Its Third Season

A Season-Three Postmortem With Emily Nussbaum and Logan Hill

Interviews with: Rich Sommer, Vincent Kartheiser, Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks

Why Do the Writers Make Betty Draper Such a Monster?

What Makes Mad Men Great

Interviews: Cara Buono, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Harris, Matthew Weiner

Whats Really Happening When Mad Mens Characters Sing

In Defense of Fat Betty Draper

No One Should Be Shocked by Joans Big Move

How Suicide Has Haunted Mad Men Since Season One

Pete Campbell Is Just a Failed Don Draper

Mad Men Is a Comedy

Jon Hamm Picks His Favorite Season-Five Episode

Interviews: Jessica Par, Jared Harris, John Slattery

Does Don Draper Want to Be Every Woman He Sleeps With?

Mad Men Is the Most Anti-Pregnancy Show Ever

How The Crash Retells My Old Kentucky Home

Tracing the Troubled History of Peggy and Joan

Not Great, Bob!: The Making of Mad Mens Greatest Meme

Everyone Gets Tired of Don, Including Don

Interviews: Elisabeth Moss, Matthew Weiner

Mad Men Doesnt Believe in Love

Every Big Change at Sterling Cooper

Has There Ever Been a More Mad Men Song Than Is That All There Is?

How the Mad Men Pilot Predicted the Final Episodes

The Coke Ad: What You Need to Know to Understand the Finale

Mad Men Understood Human Behavior Better Than Any Other Show

The Vulture TV Podcast: On the End of Mad Men

Margaret Lyonss Episodic Close Reads: The Runaways, The Strategy, Waterloo, New Business, The Forecast, Time & Life, Lost Horizon, The Milk and Honey Route, Person to Person

Interviews: Vincent Kartheiser, Robert Morse, Ben Feldman, John Slattery, Matthew Weiner, Elisabeth Moss, Elizabeth Reaser, Aaron Staton, Stephanie Drake, Alison Brie, Jay R. Ferguson

Link:
'Mad Men': A Complete Guide to Watching the Series - Vulture