The season premiere of Mad Men, which aired this past Sunday on AMC, is set on the day and night of Valentine’s Day, 1962. In a neat bit of historical accuracy, several of the characters wind up watching parts of Jackie Kennedy’s televised tour of the White House, which really did air that night, February 14, 1962. (It got 56 million viewers! Can you imagine anything getting that kind of viewership today?)
Well, AMC is now hosting the entire television special on its website. (More background here.)
Here’s how the New York Times covered it, and here are the TV listings for that day. (Unfortunately, I think you need to be NYT subscribers to see the pre-1980 archives.)
I’m a big Mad Men fan and I saw that AMC had the entire White House tour program on its Web site. A very cool idea. I definitely want to watch it sometime this weekend. I’m a big sixties buff, so I’m eating all of this right up!
To me, what’s so fascinating is that Mad Men is a portrait of America on the edge of change. We know what’s coming but the characters don’t. We don’t know who will adapt and thrive and who will fall off the cliff.
I will admit to watching this episode and being completely bored (it was the first one I had seen).
The season premiere was actually pretty slow. I think it’ll pick up again.
Well, it’s true that Mad Men can be kind of slow-moving for a drama. But what I love is the look of the show, the attention to detail, the way the characters embody the attitudes of the late 1950s-early 1960s. It’s just fascinating to watch. There was a scene last year of two young kids bouncing around in the back seat of a car because, of course, there were no seat belts!