Mad men, bad show?

There's no denying that "Mad Men," the AMC show that won an Emmy for best series last month, is stylishly shot -- or that it's been a critics' darling. Mark Greif, however, co-editor of the literary journal N + 1, isn't buying the hype, or the series' writers' superiority toward the "backward" social attitudes of its protagonists, so ostentatiously on display each week. "Mad Men," he writes, in the latest London Review of Books,

is an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better. We watch and know better about male chauvinism, homophobia, anti-semitism, workplace harassment, housewives' depression, nutrition and smoking. We wait for the show's advertising men or their secretaries and wives to make another gaffe for us to snigger over. 'Have we ever hired any Jews?' -- 'Not on my watch.' 'Try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology; it looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.' It's only a short further wait until a pregnant mother inhales a tumbler of whisky and lights up a Chesterfield; or a heart attack victim complains that he can't understand what happened: 'All these years I thought it would be the ulcer. Did everything they told me. Drank the cream, ate the butter. And I get hit by a coronary.' We're meant to save a little snort, too, for the ad agency's closeted gay art director as he dismisses psychological research: 'We're supposed to believe that people are living one way, and secretly thinking the exact opposite? … Ridiculous!' -- a line delivered with a limp-wristed wave.

Greif concludes this riff with: "Mad Men is currently said to be the best and 'smartest' show on American TV. We're doomed."