Every so often you hear, that some show is “the best on television.”

The two that come to mind are The Sopranos and The Wire. I would say, “Yeah, they probably were.”

Recently, I kept hearing that Mad Men was the best on television. We were excited to watch it and got the first season.

But it just never measured up. Having just finished the final episode of Season One, I’m still not even sure I’ll want to keep going.

My biggest hang-ups:

• I don’t like the “superiority” it tries to engender in the viewer. I feel like I’m supposed to keep laughing or cringing at the unenlightened society of 49 years ago. It works sometimes, but frequently not.
• They’re trying to hard. The Sopranos, at its best, felt effortless. The writing was so good that a viewer could use the symbolism in the show to really connect with Tony Soprano. Here, it seems like the writers want to beat me over the head with it. And, at least once, they seriously betrayed a central character to make their symbolism more evident.
• It often gets into the “suburbs are hell” argument that always bugs me in movies and TV.

That said, there are some good thing going for the show. Great art direction, a good cast with generally good characters. Season One started really well and it end well too. But the middle episodes languished a bit. I also feel like the show, over time, will be showing the collapse of Don Draper and the world he lives in. This is certainly modeled in the opening titles. But I feel like the last image of the series will be Don, alone, standing in front of an office that doesn’t want him with no wife to go home to. We’ll see.

I think I will probably pick up Season Two. Just not sure when.