Best of 2007 Statistics

I am insane. I have no life. I have Microsoft® Excel. I made a spreadsheet.

• 27 publications and columnists name Mad Men their #1 of the year (including such prestigious ones as Time Magazine, New York Magazine, and the New York Times).
• 11 more list Mad Men in their top ten but lower than #1, or wrote year-end summaries that were not numbered lists and named Mad Men.
• 5 sources cite the stars of Mad Men for various accolades, including Salon naming Jon Hamm their sexiest man of the year, and Zap2It citing the women of Mad Men as among the underrated actors of 2007.
• 9 major award nominations (2 Golden Globes, 3 WGAs, 2 SAGs, 1 Satellilte, 1 DGA), plus a Special Achievement Award from Satellite.
• 5 award wins (Golden Globes, DGA, Satellite, and 1 WGA).

updated

 

The hits keep coming

Boston Globe:

The best surprise of the year was “Mad Men,” a 1960 period piece created by “Sopranos” alum Matthew Weiner. Hidden away on AMC, this new drama about a crew of hard-selling Madison Avenue ad men was exquisitely designed, but more importantly, exquisitely told. The stories of these hollow men and frustrated wives and secretaries were fascinating, emblematic, and, finally, moving. As Don Draper, on the run from past shame, Jon Hamm was a brilliant lead. He was ice cold and yet, secretly, burning up. Like FX’s entertaining “The Riches,” about a family of con artists in suburbia, “Mad Men” took on the American Dream in all its fraudulence and materialism.

The North County Times (Sand Diego and Riverside, CA):

Summertime and the television is great: “The Closer,” “Damages,” “Rescue Me, “Mad Men.” Who needs the network or new fall shows when cable aired the best television during the dog days of summer…Shows not to miss in 2007 were on cable: “The Sopranos,” on HBO and… the premiere seasons of “Mad Men” (AMC) and “The Riches” (FX) gave us something to look forward to in the new year.

The Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer surveyed readers for favorite shows of the year; Mad Men tied for fifth.

New York Newsday points out that broadcast networks have the cheese while cable has the class acts, a reversal of traditional views of television:

Even AMC and Sci Fi are doing it. When it came to water-cooler series in 2007, people were talking about “Mad Men” (AMC), “Damages” (FX), “Dexter” (Showtime) and “The Closer” (TNT).

 

Did I mention that Mad Men is the best?

Syndicated columnist Kevin McDonough hit my inbox a couple of different times, since his column appears in numerous papers:

The best new show of the year, AMC’s “Mad Men,” …investigates the mysteries of male society and insecurities. On one level, its setting in the advertising wars of 1960 depicts an era when men were men and women wore girdles. But the stirrings of feminism are never far from the surface. From our 21st-century vantage point, we can see how the show’s Brooks Brothers-wearing executives are as doomed and damned as the dodo, or, for that matter, the Marlboro Man.

…”Mad Men” has not reached an enormous audience. You have to admire a show that risks alienating younger viewers with its mid-century setting and challenging all viewers with its unsparing depiction of human alienation, workplace desperation and marital isolation. Hats off to AMC for renewing a series this smart and unpredictable.

A second Mercury-News columnist loves the Mad Ave boys and places them #3 on a top twenty-five list.

The best new series of the year, “Mad Men’’ was evocative, skillfully-acted and beautifully-written.

Meanwhile, The New York Times declares that “Mad Men is the Best” is one of the “TV Trends of the Year.” Believe me, I know. When I first started blogging about columnists, papers, and magazines calling Mad Men the best on TV, I didn’t realize it would border on a full-time occupation! Holy cow!

 

Best of Salon 2007

In Salon’s year-end wrap-up, they link their favorite stories from 2007. There, among stories on weapons of mass destruction, global warming, and Jerry Falwell, is a story on Mad Men; a three-page study of the American Dream’s dark side as lived by Don Draper.

You know what? I haven’t read it yet. I just found it and I can’t wait, but I wanted to share it with you all first.

 

Best, I tell you, best!

A second Toronto paper adores the Mad Men. After the Globe and Mail’s list comes the Toronto Star, and Mad Men is not just number one, it’s the headline.

 

San Francisco Chronicle’s Cultural Events of 2007

This one tickles me, because it is a list of top ten “cultural events” of 2007, and Mad Men is not only on it, it is the only television show on it. The rest are movies, theater, museum exhibits, and classy stuff like that.

A startlingly good show, on AMC, of all places, turned its patient, telling scrutiny on the world of New York advertising in 1960. Creator Matthew Weiner (”The Sopranos”), an ideal cast and a team of designers who rendered every suit lapel, martini glass and suburban party scene in rigorous detail searched out the anxieties and pockets of poison lurking beneath the carefully guarded surfaces of the American dream.

 

Continuing the collection

The Riverside, CA Press-Enterprise names Mad Men #1 of the year:

1. “Mad Men” (AMC): The best new cable drama in years was a coolly shot comedy of manners about ad-men in the 1960s, coping with the changing times and their own personal problems. Boasting a star-making performance from Jon Hamm, the series was unique in how its main conflict was between the characters and the turbulent decade we know lies in their futures.

Now that’s an interesting take on it; the conflict between the characters and their future. That may be the first time someone put it quite that way. Nice.

 

The hits keep on coming

Scripps News says Mad Men is this year’s #1:

Move over “Sopranos,” there’s a new master of complex, psychological character drama on the tube. Set at a Madison Avenue ad agency, this period program depicted gender and racial inequality circa 1960 while also developing yearning characters of great depth — even among the more shallow office staffers.

And the Washington Post Express is in on the action:

BEST NEW SHOWS
“Dirty Sexy Money” (ABC) and “Mad Men” (AMC) take the ’80s nighttime soap into swank new territory. “DSM” is saturated in money, and the acting is just as rich, especially Donald Sutherland’s — the ornate pronunciamentos he squeezes through his bone-white clackers are a delight, as are the reactions of his callow brood of grown, spoiled children. As for “Mad Men,” you don’t have to have a taste for the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit era of American business, as I do, to fall for this early-’60s ad agency as its buttoned-up, bourbon-pounding Rabbit Angstroms and beehived, bestockinged wives and secretaries struggle with the dawn of a new era. Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em, people.

Also in the Express, Jon Hamm is on their “Inexplicably Hot” list. Inexplicable?

 

Entertainment Weekly’s Best of 2007

Someday we’ll be happy I collected all these in one place. TV critic Gillian Flynn lists the 10 best shows of 2007; MM is #8, in an exceptionally well-written capsule:

8. MAD MEN (AMC)
Flannel-suited men swirling amber drinks. Emerald liqueur sloshing in the watercooler. Full skirts wobbling like bells. Set in the ad industry circa 1960, Mad Men is packed with suitably seductive images. But those pretty pictures are hollow: That dashing exec is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who reinvented himself past recognition, and that pert blonde is his wife, Betty (January Jones), whose desperate bid to be a happy housewife is undoing her. By season’s end, she’s holding the mittened hand of a little neighbor boy, begging him, ”Tell me I’ll be okay.” Mad Men makes a convincing case for the art of the lie.

On the other hand, EW’s Ken Tucker excluded MM from his list. (On the other hand, he includes Life.)

 

More best of, and thoughts on television in 2007

Orange County, California’s OC Register has selected Mad Men the best show of 2007:

This is what a television series should be: intelligent, visual and patient with its story. The art direction alone made it worthwhile.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer takes a different tack, looking at the big television trends of 2007 and seeing Mad Men (which it also names as the best show of the year) as part of a new phenomenon: The emergence of free cable channels as a source for great television drama.

The summer of cable. The surprising run of new quality series started with USA’s engaging semi-spy show Burn Notice and ended with Showtime’s raunchy, and frequently funny, Californication. In between, TNT introduced Saving Grace, with Holly Hunter; FX had Damages, with Glenn Close; and even Lifetime got into the act, with two solid dramas, State of Mind, with Lili Taylor, and Side Order of Life.

Towering over them all, and over every other new series this year, was AMC’s Mad Men, a pitch-perfect journey back to 1960, where the bad ad boys of Madison Avenue scurry to stay upright in their hard-drinking world and the women struggle to breathe as they prop them up.

Because of the strike, NBC has already announced it’s transferring Monk and Psych over to the big network from cable partner USA. How delicious if a broadcaster could make a deal with AMC daddy Rainbow Media, and Mad Men followed close behind.