MAD LOVE: Judging from the e-mails I’ve gotten, Mad Men – AMC’s first shot at original dramatic programming, which was renewed for another season despite losing half of its original viewers – is blessed with an earnest and committed fan base. It’s the epitome of a cult hit, and I mean the real type, not merely a vanity project or a well-reviewed but poorly-rated show that, for some reason, is being kept afloat where shows with better numbers have failed.
Gridskipper.com is currently hosting a “Mad Men Guide To New York” complete with a Google map studded with stick pins that try to nail down the locations of the show, set mostly in early-‘60s Manhattan. Put together with help from fans on Metafilter, it shows that people have been paying close attention over the course of 9 episodes, and making educated guesses on the likely coordinates of Sterling Cooper, the show’s flagship ad agency (sited at the real-life address of Young & Rubicam), Menken’s department store (Henri Bendel’s is substituted) and Pete and Trudy’s new apartment (Park and 83rd, which they’re supposed to get for a mere 30 grand. It’d be worth several million today, easy.)
The show has obviously inspired the sincerest form of flattery in the business – imitation – with the announcement of a new show set in the contemporary ad world, starring Tom “Ed” Cavanaugh and Eric “Will And Grace” McCormack. According to a Variety story, Truth In Advertising is set in Chicago, and features the two men as creative and business counterparts at an agency whose talents complement each other.
The genius bit – and the one that likely got the show its green light – is the “commercials within the show” that will provide a platform for radically new product placement opportunities. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there will be sizzling sexual tension among everyone in the agency, except for the token comic-relief guy in media planning,” wrote David Griner on Ad Week magazine’s Ad Freak blog.
“Mad Men sucks, it’s all talk and kisses,” writes one “Bobby” in the blog’s comments. “I never see them brainstorming. I hope TNT’s show is better, although from the description here, it sounds like yet another unrealistic portrayal of advertising life.”
I know what he means – nothing makes me madder than those newsroom shows that portray newspaper life as one late-breaking deadline-buster after another, interspersed with tense editorial meetings where people talk about “truth” and “our responsibility” and torrid assignations in stationary cupboards. Still, it would be a challenge to squeeze laughs or drama out of a floor of people slouched at their desks, listlessly masticating their dinner while browsing online job postings and worrying about how much weight they’ve put on since they took the job. Even worse – I mostly write this column in my underwear while singing along to old Black Flag records, pulling on an old pair of shorts only when the courier rings the doorbell with another padded envelope of screener discs. I challenge Eric McCormack to make that look sexy.
