Tonight is the season finale for AMC’s superb drama, “Mad Men”. I find the show totally engrossing with its articulate and dramatic writing, involving characters and period costumes and sets.

Looking back over the show’s 1st season, I find myself laughing at the most subtle types of scenes. There was one in the Draper household where the little girl was playing with her mother’s plastic dry cleaning bag overhead. The potential suffocation of this held no fear for the mother who advised her daughter to not mess up the closet.

The smoking, drinking, carousing, sexism…all for fun. Some critics have said the show goes too far in its misogyny but I think its dead-on. My mother worked for WBBM-TV in Chicago in the late 1950s. She remembers blowing up balloons to mark the arrival of a big-busted celebrity. When she was pregnant, she had to hide her stomach because they terminated women at 6 months.

The dark side of Don Draper, so smoothly and suavely portrayed by Jon Hamm, masks an inner torment that never breaks his control or masculine power. The snarky Pete Campbell, played by Vincent Kartheiser, shows desperation in his thirst for respect and power when he is so obviously hated by everyone who knows him. The one person with virtue in the office, Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss) is the Suzy Sunshine girl who behaves herself, works hard, and endures the mistreatment of men, but may finally rise above the other office girls with her writing ability.

The costumes and hair-styles which are so “period” are also very flattering. Recent (2007) photos of Jon Hamm and January Jones show them to be less attractive with the messy looks of today.

A lot more than one President died on November 22, 1963. Mad Men shows that we weren’t a perfect nation, just a much more cinematic one.