Mad Men

Mad Men just won its third straight Emmy for Best Drama Series, but this was also its third year in a row where none of the actors won.  every year more of the actors from the show are nominated, yet they never win. why is that? this year they had Jon Hamm, John Slattery, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, and Robert Morse up for individual acting awards, but they all went home empty-handed. trust me, i think this show deserves to win the Best Drama award every year but none of it would work if they didn't have good acting. Jon Hamm in particular was born for the role of Don Draper and has dominated every episode since the first season. he should have definitely won by now.

MM continues to be on a role midway through its fourth season, as the show progresses into 1965 and starts to get into the period most people tend to think of as "the 60's." it was wondered how the show was going to handle the transition into this much parodied (and much filmed) era, because it's so drastically different from the late 50s, early 60s time period that it encapsulates so perfectly right now. that remains to be seen for me. how realistic would it be to turn one of these established characters into a hippie or an activist for example? and i've waited years now for them to introduce a minority character for even a guest starring role, in order to note the civil rights progression, which by now is in full effect. so far, nothing. actually, i've suspected that the lack of attention paid to those major changes is due to a lack of any black writers behind the scenes. they have plenty of female writers though, which is why gender issues has always been a huge theme of the show and has been done so well. i wonder if they're just afraid of somehow "doing it wrong" in the area of civil rights, so they stay away from it completely. occasionally i have wondered if the show should have just been set in the late 50s to begin with, that way it could end its run in the same era, but i have to think the reason they've skipped so much time in the first place was because they wanted to show the characters go through that major social change. so we'll see how they handle it (and i've been SEVERELY disappointed in the lack of Beatles references, come on people!)