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Before the drama Mad Men could return for its third season, AMC and creator Matthew Weiner had to resolve a conflict over - fittingly for a series set on Madison Avenue - advertising. The network wanted to add two minutes of ads; Weiner didn't want to cut the show. The eventual compromise - each episode will run an hour and two minutes - preserves the show's generous run time, 48 minutes or so sans commercials, compared with 42-ish for most network dramas. And what does Mad Men need the extra time...
...mean that as an insult. Mad Men (Sundays, 10 p.m. E.T.) is an exquisitely written and acted show. It re-creates its early-'60s settings with painstaking detail and creates its characters' inner lives with piercing insight. But as quotable and sexy as Mad Men is, what distinguishes it from most TV dramas, even the best, is its empty spaces. The silent pause in the front seat of a car as a man drives with his wife; the look a newlywed gives her husband, wondering what she might have gotten herself into. TV has a high metabolism today, jumping...
...Speaking of silence, Mad Men's makers, and some fans, are sensitive about details leaking, including what year the new season is set in. So if you want to be unspoiled, stop here.) Read more about spoiler alerts on TIME's TV blog...
While the first episode focuses on Don's conflicts, the next two show off Mad Men's deep bench of supporting characters: Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), a copywriter trying to find fulfillment in a business still largely about selling male fantasy; comely secretary Joan (Christina Hendricks) - a male fantasy incarnate - talking herself into happiness as the wife of a doctor who date-raped her last season; Roger (John Slattery), engineering a self-reinvention of his own with a second wife barely older than his scotch. The spectacular third episode weaves their stories together in a funny and touching fugue of character...
...Mad Men is about the gulf between image and reality, in advertising, in its characters' lives and in 1963 America. But Weiner steers clear of more obvious period cues, opting for obscure markers like Pepsi's introduction of Patio Diet Cola. The episodes are filled with the ghosts of a dirtier, more raw America, from Don's Depression childhood to a bartender who remembers New Mexico when it was a territory. Even the sets have memory; the prop masters take care to mix in furnishings from the '40s and '50s because no one lives in a home with...