| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
The acting (from a mostly unknown cast), cinematography (you can just stare at this series) and especially Weiner's writing carry the series to exceptional heights. |
| 100 |
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
Wit and glamour sell this top-quality product. |
| 100 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
Mad Men is a joy to watch - the clothes, the clocks, the furniture, it's like a mid-century night's dream. But this is no mere period piece. It's a smart, complex drama that attempts to get through the facades that have always hidden the truth. |
| 100 |
New York Post Adam Buckman
If you check out Mad Men tonight, I guarantee you'll be back next week. |
| 90 |
TV Guide Matt Roush
This sleek, sexy, smartly cynical drama about selling everything from cigarettes to Nixon also nails the era's attitudes of casual prejudice and sexual manipulation. |
| 90 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
A really extraordinary new drama. |
| 90 |
San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
The series is a funny, knowing, sometimes dark, sometimes romantic take on the time just before the power of advertising was fully realized. |
| 90 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
"I'm living like there is no tomorrow because there isn't one."
Not a pretty sentiment, to be sure, but it makes for an intriguing character in what's likely to be the best new summer series of 2007. |
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
Mad Men has found a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness and filled it with interesting people, all of them armed with great powers of seduction. |
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
It's hard for an artistic entity to balance that kind of American duality. Mad Men does so in a subtler and more natural way than "Natural Born Killers" did satirically. |
| 83 |
Christian Science Monitor Gloria Goodale
It's very filmic both in execution and ambition as it explores life before Betty Friedan and the Surgeon General's warnings on cigarette packs. |
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker
What gives Mad Men its zing is that play is part of work, sexual banter isn't yet harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt, and countercultural confusion. |
| 80 |
LA Weekly Robert Abele
Mad Men may thrive on a certain heartless suspense, but it’s definitely got a brain, one that’s interested in how our lives are a battle between the narrative we imagine for ourselves and the path we happen to be on. |
| 80 |
The New Yorker Nancy Franklin
Mad Men is smart and tremendously attractive, and it stirs you more than it probably should. |
| 80 |
Arizona Republic Randy Cordova
The premiere is so well constructed in every department, it would be near-impossible to skip the next episode. If the show can keep up this level of quality, it could wind up being one of the greats. |
| 80 |
Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
As a witty social history viewed through the tempestuous prism of office and sexual politics, Mad Men is big fun ... classy entertainment with a brain. |
| 80 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
It is something rare and wonderful, a remarkable, original vision. |
| 80 |
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
Mad Men is both a drama and a comedy and all the better for it, a series that breaks new ground by luxuriating in the not-so-distant past. |
| 80 |
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
Mad Men is first and foremost an intelligently made character drama. |
| 80 |
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Mad Men is a captivating experience. |
| 80 |
Salon Heather Havrilesky
Mad Men is smart, funny, eye-opening, and probably 10 times better than anything you'll see this fall, so don't miss it. |
| 75 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
This show, and the world it reconstructs, gets much better, and more comfortable, as it goes along. |
| 70 |
Slate Troy Patterson
Some us also go in for TV shows that have the potential to ripen into astringent Billy Wilder-style examinations of what lust can do to the white-collar soul. |
| 70 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
The show does such an amazing job of evoking a world not that long-gone, and in a way that makes it equal parts alluring and appalling. |
| 70 |
Variety Brian Lowry
As a serialized drama, the program's situations aren't especially stirring, even with its solid, perfectly outfitted cast. The sheer atmosphere, however, proves intoxicating. |
| 70 |
Wall Street Journal Dorothy Rabinowitz
Mad Men is infinitely more concerned with entertainment, an effort at which it succeeds, thanks mostly to its first-rate cast, disarming humor and period detail. |
| 50 |
Newsday Diane Werts
To steal from the old beer slogan, (this show) looks great, (but it's) less filling (than it intends). |
| 40 |
Hollywood Reporter Randee Dawn
There's much to admire about Mad Men, and much worth tuning in for. But so far, it's all soft sell. |
| 40 |
New York Magazine John Leonard
This series feel like a fifties leftover, chock-full of unimportant secrets. |
| 40 |
The New Republic Sacha Zimmerman
The mood is serious, not campy, and there aren't laugh-out-loud moments, just a lot of groaners--at which point, the show simply becomes a reflection of its characters: depressing. |
| 40 |
Washington Post Tom Shales
The costumes and sets are just ducky and highly evocative, but the people in and around them spoil the show, gum up the works and shatter veracity. |
