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May 26, 2010 Web Exclusive By Jim Scott

The first season of Mad Men showed a staff a bit too in love with their own premise—they seemed to scream, “Look! Smoking! Misogyny run rampant! Drinking at work!” As the season progressed, the show grew into something greater on the shoulders of the great Jon Hamm as he took on the increasingly complicated part of Don Draper with care and confidence. The second season smoothed things out while spinning the web of complication further. The third not only maintained the level of the second season, but actually ascended to new heights.

The ‘60s have been going on outside the windows of Mad Men‘s Sterling Cooper ad agency, occasionally wafting in for a moment, but in the third season, the winds of change transform into a hurricane. For Don and his wife Betty, the newfound freedom of the age continues to move them farther apart.

Mad Men pulls a neat trick in season three, putting characters through the wringer without making it seem masochistic (most of Don’s most tragic and difficult to explain moments came long before the present time of the show began, and this makes them impossible not to accept) and allowing them to change in small ways rather than large. This isn’t to say nothing happens in Mad Men—the basic plot of season three involves the increasing problems Sterling Cooper has with the cost-cutting measures of their British owners—lots of things do happen, but unlike most other shows, the cracks and fissures appear long before the walls break down; things that happen in the first season bring about actions in the third. It’s a remarkably patient attitude for a television show to maintain in this day and age, one that has elevated it to one of the best shows of this era. (www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/)

Author rating: 8/10