I’ll admit I’m not a really fan of TV shows; I just really can’t get into the idea of watching an hour long episode every week that just drags you on until the next episode. For me it’s always been about movies, you sit down for a view and you get the whole story, complete and done, I don’t know I just like that concept. But as a reviewer sometimes you get the chance to view something a little different than your used to, today I got that chance as I sat down to review the Blu-ray release of Mad Men.

I had never heard of the show until the Blu arrived, again that may have been because I don’t really watch TV. The series is an American television drama that was created by Matthew Weiner. The show is normally broadcast in the United States on the AMC network, but I do believe some Canadian broadcasters also show it weekly. It premiered on July 19, 2007 and ended its first season on October 18, 2007. Its second season began on July 27, 2008. The Blu-ray features the first season, which is 13 episodes long, it is expected to be followed up by a Blu release of the second season in the future.

The series is set in New York City, and takes place in the 1960s at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on New York City’s Madison Avenue. The show centers on Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a high-level advertising executive, and the people in his life in and out of the office. It also depicts the changing social mores of 1960s America. To date Mad Men has received considerable critical acclaim, winning a 2007 Peabody Award and two Golden Globes, as well as receiving 16 nominations for the 2008 Primetime Emmy Awards.

After watching the first season I must say the show is fairly entertaining, especially when you compare the lifestyles of people in the 60′s to today. Mad Men depicts a society and culture of the early 1960s, here cigarette smoking, drinking, sexism, and racial bias are more than ok as social norms, obviously a huge change from the morals that are now accepted. Smoking is definitely the one I found most interesting, it was far more common in the 60′s than it is now; in fact it’s featured throughout the series and almost every character can be seen smoking multiple times in the course of one episode. Try to find an office and people like that today, not very likely as smoking is now seen as a dirty habit rather than a sign of power and importance.

The pilot episode in fact features this very debate, here representatives of Lucky Strike cigarettes come to Sterling Cooper looking for a new advertising campaign in the wake of a Reader’s Digest report that smoking will lead to various health issues including lung cancer. The idea is actually quite humorous now in a satire kinda way. Other controversies include a lot of social acceptance for men who are engaged or married, but frequently enter sexual relationships with other women. The series also observes advertising as a corporate outlet for creativity for mainstream, middle-class, young, white men, so if you’re a minority or of any color its quite biased and racist. Overall though it is a decent show, it features strong writing and excellent acting, so if you haven’t seen it yet this Blu is an excellent way to get the whole first season.

Video

Mad Men Season one includes a gorgeous 1080p/AVC-encode that REALLY looks great, especially for a TV show. I have read on other sites that when the show was featured on AMC in HD it looked bad and blocky; none of this is present on the Blu. The whole presentation really complements the era of the 60′s. Colors, contrast, and detail provide an amazing feeling that you’re actually living and viewing a current era, it’s overall kinda surreal. Everything is just sharp and beautifully colored, nothing bleeds, nothing is blurry, it’s just the way it should be on Blu-ray. Throughout the transfer I also did not see any blocks or artifacts, so any issues on the HD broadcast are long gone. I have never seen the DVD edition, but it’s very safe to assume that this Blu transfer would blow it away.

Audio

While the video transfer is A-list, the audio unfortunately is not as strong. The audio issues are probably not due to the Blu-ray itself, but rather just due to the kind of content that is featured. Mad Men is present in my personal fav source of DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 surround, and it is good, it just doesn’t blow you away. The problem is the series, obviously, features a TON of talking so there is really no bass to be found. In fact you can pretty much unplug your subs and not even notice them missing, that kinda bothered me. On the other hand the treble levels are excellent, clear and crisp, so all the dialog is very pronounced and accurate. Another problem I found is that the surround experience is pretty non- existent, just about all sound comes from your fronts and center, and just a tad trickles out the back rears. Overall the loss-less audio is strong, but only where it is allowed to shine, highs, highs and highs, lows just aren’t in the track, nor are rears.

Special Features

The special features on the Blu are flat out crazy, there is just SO much content for a disc, never mind for a TV show. You get 23 audio commentary tracks, two hours of HD video features, a huge photo gallery, there is just everything and anything you could ever want and imagine.

• 23 Audio Commentaries: This is crazy, it’s honestly like 20 hours of cast commentary, and you get something for each of the 13 episodes. If you’re a fan of the show you get everything you could ever want. I obviously didn’t watch the whole thing, as its summer and 20 hours is a little long to be inside when it’s so nice out.
• Establishing Mad Men: This is presented in HD, always nice. It’s basically a behind the scenes look at Mad Men above and beyond the plethora mentioned above.
• Advertising the American Dream: Presented in HD, and one of my favs, it features a look at the changes in advertising from the 60′s to today.
• Scoring Mad Men: Presented in HD, a look at the musical score, kinda interesting just due to the time period of the 60′s.
• Mad Men Music Sampler: Really kinda odd, it’s just 20-30 second cuts of the music tracks, nothing all that great.
• Pictures of Elegance: An HD photo gallery of the shoot, cast and crew, costumes, sets, advertising campaigns, etc.
• Season Two Preview: An announcement of season two.

Final Thoughts

How far we have come…. Well least that’s my opinion. Mad Men features a very interesting look at a decade long gone and with it the accepted morals and ideals. While I’m not a huge fan of TV shows, this one is quite interesting and definitely worth a view. The Blu-ray boasts excellent video, almost the best it could be, audio that is good, but not great. The shining aspect is the stupid amount of extras, it’s just unreal how much they put in there, and fans will love it. If you have never seen the show this is the way to do it, plain and simple.