Carl Icahn Now Wants ALL Of Lionsgate 
FINAL MGM BIDS DUE FRIDAY: So Who's In And … 
Action Comedy TV: Showrunner Matt Nix 
SAG National Board Approves Joint Bargaining … 
BBC Drama Unfreezes Development Money; … 
Lionsgate Board Rejects Icahn's $6/Share 
Is Betting On Box Office Good For Films? 
Marvel Still Looking For Captain America 
'Sopranos' Creator To Film Rock Drama 
LIVE-SNARKING THE 82ND OSCARS... 
'ALICE' IS A MONSTER! $116.3M Blows Past … 
Oscar Not-So-Thriller: Diller Mogul Picnic 
'Precious' Sweeps 25th Indie Spirit Awards 
Howard Stern Won't Be Next 'Idol' Judge 
Justin Theroux Readying 'Zoolander 2' For … 
The twists and turns that creator Matthew Weiner's Season 3 
of Mad Men took behind the scenes biz-wise these many months were probably better than any plotting which starts tonight on AMC. (Heck, Weiner almost got replaced, more ads almost meant less show, the top AMC exec overseeing the series exited abruptly, and -- god forbid! -- mainstream media were incredulous that women make up 7 of the 9-member writing staff.) So it's apt that the Lionsgate series is this time around being promoted with the slogan “The World’s Gone Mad” and an ad depicting Jon Hamm's Don Draper sitting in his office, calmly smoking a Lucky Strike, as floodwater rises to his waist. It's 1963, when Beatlemania breaks out, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr marches on Washington, and President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Will ratings finally reach the high level of hype this season? On a lighter note, the first episode is to be simulcast on the big screen in Times Square along with a costume party where fans can parade their swankiest Sixties attire.
- 'Mad Men' & AMC Settle 2-Minute Dispute
- AMC Squeezing 'Mad Men' In Season 3
- Matthew Weiner Sets The Record Straight
- 'Mad Men' Exec At AMC Abruptly Exits
- SANITY PREVAILS! Matthew Weiner & Lionsgate Agree To More 'Mad Men'
- Lionsgate Execs Look To Replace "Mad Men' Creator Weiner
- 'Mad Men' 2nd Season Finale Tonight
- Summer TV Left Us Maddened And Burned
Loading ...
Very quietly, Lions Gate now has two of the finest shows on TV Mad Men and Nurse Jackie.
Breaking Bad. That show is the best show on TV. If you haven’t watched it..watch it.
I just think it’s funny the random and arbitrary coverage MAD MEN gets on this site. It’s a fantastic show, don’t get me wrong. Probably the best on TV. And yet there are other good shows.
If only Nikki were obsessed with them, too. Balanced coverage my ass.
Nah, I think True Blood is better than Mad Men. It has better writing, more interesting characters and a more riveting storyline. It is the best show on tv right now. Nikki, why don’t you True Blood and how it’s getting record viewers for HBO. It’s HBO’s highest rated show since The Sopranos.
Does Phillip Morris underwrite this show? Just curious. I thought the whole martinis ‘n’ swing b.s. went out in the mid-90s. And 7 of the 9 writers are women? Anything for a buck, eh ladies?
LOL at TVGuy.
If you think True Blood is a show that not only compares favorably to Mad Men, but also surpasses it, you are out of your mind. True Blood is a piece of shit from a once good showrunner based on a series of bad romance novels. And saying it’s better because it has good ratings proves nothing since most bad shows have good ratings. True Blood is everything that is wrong with the current HBO.
True Blood isn’t fit to suck the teat of Mad Men.
Alan Ball is, and has always been, overrated.
They alway have campaigns for fancy stuff on madmen. What about Brillo? Steel wool not cool enough for Jonny Hamm?
Nikki, remember your ‘”Julie and Julia” is getting too much coverage’ post? “Mad Men” is a better target for that. Look at the media’s (and the industry’s) obsession with the show vs. its pathetic ratings. There’s a well-deserved backlash coming – you should get in front of that.
Mad Men is one of the best shows on tv. It feels like forever since there’s been a new episode.
True Blood is entertaining, but ultimately a silly show with plotholes and inconsistencies galore. I enjoy watching it and it’s fun, but doesn’t MOVE me to think about it long afterwards the way any given Mad Men episode will do. For me at least, Mad Men is on par with The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire in terms of creating fascinating characters, amazing scripts and a welcome determination to thwart audience expectations at every turn.
True Blood has way too much bought & paid for hype (ask the journalists over at ASSME.org about that), Mad Men’s hype is way more broad based. Mad Men’s fans are generally moneyed (so many $75,000+ viewer households, the most of any show on the air), powerful (many famous peoople dig it, also it’s a critical darling), & influential (advertisers obsessively follow it) but they’re real fans. And no they don’t hang at Comic-Con.
Even though I’m hardly moneyed, powerful or influential, I’m psyched about Season 3. Looking forward to the most interesting show on TV getting into its groove yet again.
Can’t wait for the press release…5,000 people tuned in for the triumphant return of the Emmy Award winning series MAD MEN!
Anna Paquin beat out Mariska Hargitay, Sally Field and January Jones for her role as Sookie at the Golden Globes. TB was even nominated for Best Drama I disagree entirely about True Blood. I agree that the 1st 4 episodes of the 1st season. But, it’s become HBO’s best program since the Sopranos. It even beats Big Love in the writing department.
1st 4 episodes were horrible. Anyway, a lot of the tv critics seem to like True Blood now.
Mad Men should be on HBO. If it was it would be destroying everything and True Blood would be about as interesting as your typical installment of Gossip Girl.
On a final note, True Blood has organic hype in addition to the paid for advertising. If people didn’t like the show, they would ignore the paid for advertising. I mean True Blood was one of the most talked about panels at Comic-Con.
The show got 900K the first 13 run season, around 1.5 million the second 13 run season. That’s niche, less than “Gossip Girl” and basically a prestige product for people to try and win Emmys or polish their reputations. The show probably barely breaks even — AMC makes money off cable fees not ad rates, with those numbers it would take Bill Gates cloned a million times and all watching the show to make money.
The show is the worst sort of derivative junk and female Hollywood writers ideas of men: hunky and abusive bad boys that beautiful victim women fall for despite themselves. It’s a more polished “Tru Blood” but as soapily bad in the female Michael Bay way as that show. To do “dark and edgy” takes almost no talent.
The best shows on TV were: “Life,” “Monk,” and “Burn Notice” because they were much harder to do (light and positive), were about something, and had more realistic and complex characters, not bad boy hunks and beautiful, tragic female victims.
The art direction and acting on Mad Men are stunning though. Never have we seen such craftsmanship in service to such pedestrian attempts at “hip/edgy” content.
“Californication”
Zero Emmy nominations.
Zero.
What a world.
season premiere tonight owned (as usual)
haters gonna hate…no one gives a shit about your retarded vampire soap opera, mad men is programming for adults not whining twentysomethings who still don’t understand why the world is unfair
did someone just act like anna paquin’s golden globe win was about anything other that the foreign press giving it to the youngest girl in the room. i mean this is an award jennifer garner and keri russell both won. NOT an accomplishment.
Who cares? Nobody watches this show. Why so much press about it from this site?
Now you’re attacking Jennifer Garner and Keri Russell? Also, True Blood won the TV Critics Association’s Outstanding New Program of the Year, the No. 1 Ladies Agency, The Mentalist and Fringe. I rest my case?
Mad Man is like Breaking Bad: a good, but not great show that a relatively tiny number of people love and they are utterly baffled that the great mass of people don’t feel the same way. Ten years from now Mad Man will be Northern Exposure: a critic’s darling that will be forgotten and pushed aside by the critic’s darling of the moment.
Correction: It beat out the No. 1 Ladies Agency, The Mentalist and Fringe for Outstanding New Program of the Year at the TCA. I apologize for the double post. I only did make the correction.
“Californication”
Zero Emmy nominations.
Zero.
What a world.
Comment by anonymous — August 16, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
—————————————————
Mad Men is so far beyond the middle aged male ego masterbation fantasy rubbish that is Californication that it actually annoys me you made the above post at all.
This show is amazing! So Poetic!
Whisky is right:
“Never have we seen such craftsmanship in service to such pedestrian attempts at “hip/edgy” content.”
Mad Men is a case of the emperor’s clothes – he’s got none in this case. One of these days, everyone will wake up think, “what did i ever see in this show?” – but they won’t think that until they find the courage to unplug from the mind meld.
Who cares if the people from the 60’s smoked a lot and, gasp, thought it was harmless when their kids had plastic bags over their heads. A cheap trick that rewards the idiocracy with a smug “Aren’t we clever, today.”
Wake up.
Friday Night Lights (season one especially) is the only drama on tv that’s worth watching.
And True Blood? Okay, I get it…the vampires are like gay people. Oooh, that makes it so *meaningful*
“It’s like, uh, a metaphor.”
How fucking profound. But who cares?
The premiere last night was fantastic. Best show on TV, and it’s not even close.
Mad Men, I just don’t get it. I really don’t. I tried. Nice production values, good writing, great looking cast, ver good performances but it’s hollow, and I just don’t care about any of them. Alas, I tried, honestly, I tried…
Life was a fabulous show. If it had played on a cable station instead of network TV, we’d be talking about it in a different light.
Sorry, but True Blood is the best show on tv right now. You can disagree if you like, but I’m entitled to my opinion. You guys and girls have obviously not watched season 2 of True Blood, which is a dramatic improvement over season 1. It’s downright riveting this season. True Blood deserves every accolade it’s getting from the TV Critics, who just voted True Blood over The Mentalist, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and Fringe for the TV Critics Association’s Outstanding New Program of the Year. If True Blood is so bad then why did it beat those 3 tv programs?
Am I allowed to like both True Blood and Mad Men? Just checking. I think they are both great, entertaining shows in completely different ways. Mad Men is like an arthouse film, whereas True Blood is a fun little popcorn flick. Hope I’m not being too reasonable here.
Tried watching True Blood; it sucked on many levels.
Actually, TV Guy is both right and wrong. Wrong in the sense that True Blood is better than Mad Men. Right in the sense that True Blood is the best show on tv other than Mad Men. I actually think their co-equals. Especially last nights episodes of Mad Men and True Blood. I disagree with TVGuy. i think they’re co-equals in quality.
Bill: Television was a different climate in the early 90s and had a lot less to choose from. Not that I’ve seen Northern Exposure but critics probably swooned over it because the competition didn’t exist. I think it’s pretty naive to think that Mad Men won’t be remembered in twenty years but I guess only time will tell when it comes to that.
Rico: It seems like a lot of people, you included, are just upset because Mad Men is a critical hit that is finally getting exposure and you don’t want to like something the plebeians might also enjoy. If you think Friday Night Lights is the only good show on television you’re pretty blind to what’s out there.
TVGuy: Because all of those shows are shit. If that’s the best you have to choose from then I’d probably choose True Blood too but it’s not exactly hard when your closet competition is a generic detective show. I also enjoyed how you backpedaled and admitted the first season was not very good but somehow excuse yourself because the second season is a dramatic improvement.
“Californication”
Zero Emmy nominations.
Zero.
What a world.
Comment by anonymous — August 16, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
—————————————————
Mad Men is so far beyond the middle aged male ego masterbation fantasy rubbish that is Californication that it actually annoys me you made the above post at all.
—————————-
It annoys me when people misspell “masturbation.”
Did not like the season opener of Mad Men at all. Some of the worst dialogue ever. Hated it. Cant imagine people tuning back in
I have never watched Mad Men, but Christina Hendricks haunts my every moment. She’s why there’s three “Va’s” in “Va va va voom.”
What Captain Axis said.
TVGuy was right in pointing that out. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency the Mentalist and Fringe are great shows. It did take awhile for Fringe to come around, but it did come around.
I backpedaled because I truly feel that True Blood season 2 is miles ahead of season 1. Why? It’s less campy.
Hello was referring to me, MadMen.
Oh, sorry TVGuy.
Possibly the only BEST drama on TV at the moment!
Gave “True Blood” a couple of chances, it just struck me as silly and way over-the-top. “Mad Men” has definitely the current pound-for-pound champ on television now that Sopranos and The Wire are done.
Best quality TV show in terms of acting, directing, and production values, since the ’60’s. Brings to mind the great storytelling and symbolism present in Hitchcock’s work.