“Mad Men” ends tonight and so will the closest I will ever experience a fetish in my lifetime. I’m willing to succumb to the most self-indulgent continuing confection ever captured on film. I ask for no mercy relieving me from “Mad Mens” creator, master storyteller, satirist, and magician.
How did the world of “Mad Men” collide with present times? For starters, it changed the landscape of the internet.
It kick started the birth of the fan-obsessed blogs examining every trivial historic reference.The Weiner cruel teases, clues, and conspiracy theories. I always loved the bloggers who would notice that the neckties worn in the show were not historically accurate for that time period. They weren’t nearly as thin as you can see in a Brooks Brothers ad from 1962.
A giant esoteric hole will be left where the loyal fan base once existed. Gone will be the thousands of iTunes podcasts. The thousands of Google searches for the “roly poly tumbler” or the “fat Betty.”
No one should be sadder than AMC. This once pathetic excuse for a cable station took the bait, Weiner’s six-year-old script, where HBO and Showtime stupidly did not. $2 million per show was a big risk when “original content” was a dirty word.
That was back in 2007. It didn’t take the world long to figure out and fall in love with “Mad Men” – it won the Emmy in 2008. If it had run on network TV it would have been cancelled three shows into the season. “Mad Men” never garnered the audience of “Walking Dead” or “House of Cards.” But that remains its singular appeal. It is in the pantheon of a mass-merchandised vehicle, but at the same time maintains an air of elitism.
It also did something else.
It gave birth to the binge-watcher. It captured the zeitgeist of a new phenomenon, ignited by the plethora of new technology more than willing to “feed the beast.”
