This Week in Awesome (8/15/09)

Welcome. Are you ready for some Mad Men? I know I am.

If you're in the Boston area and feel like getting together with other Maddicts (devotees of the show) to watch the season premiere, the Noir bar in the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square is hosting a viewing party starting at 9 PM tomorrow. Period dress is encouraged, but you already knew that. (I'll be watching at home, because it's a school night and I want to be able to just fall into bed as soon as the episode is over.)

If you haven't had a chance to see the first two seasons and you're looking to get up to speed quickly, New York Magazine has an extremely concise (some might call it pithy) synopsis of the first 26 episodes. If that's not quite enough detail, AMC has put together a four-minute video recap of season two. If you'd rather watch the episodes and find out what happens on your own, I suggest avoiding these links. Come to think of it, that's probably true of most of these...

The food section of Wednesday's New York Times had a fun little piece about the role of alcohol and drinking in the show and the producers' quest for accuracy in this, as in everything else about MM.

In a slightly more serious vein, the Times also talked to Matthew Weiner, the show's creator, about the seismic cultural shifts of the 1960s that serve as the show's foundation.

This month's Esquire has an interview and photo shoot with Christina Hendricks, who plays office manager Joan (Holloway) Harris. The word "hotness" seems ridiculously inadequate. This is (some of) what you're missing if you don't watch, because there's plenty of beauty among the whole cast, the gents and the ladies.

And for something a bit different, here's a well-done video essay on the cinematography of Mad Men.

(By the way, the image above is from the December 2007 issue of GQ. Front, left to right: Christina Hendricks, Jon Hamm (Don Draper), January Jones (Betty Draper). Rear, left to right: John Slattery (Roger Sterling), Bryan Batt (Salvatore Romano), Robert Morse (Bert Cooper), Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell), Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson).