Ever since I saw my first episode of the Sopranos I was quickly hooked. I remember recieving the first season as a birthday present from my parents during the first fall of my graduate school career. The show was already in its third season by that time, and I had avoided watching it due to my love of films like Goodfellas and The Godfather. I did not think there was new ground to be explored in a soap opera focused on the mafia. But, I quickly discovered that what the Sopranos could do that a three hour film could not, was provide the viewer with an extended character study of all the principal players in the drama. Over the course of six seasons, the writers were able to explore the conscious and unconsious struggles that Tony and some of his family members were experiencing. It provided for rich television.
When the show ended and one of its writers left to begin Mad Men, I was initially intrigued by the smart ad campaign. The elegance of the initial advertisements that papered the sides of New York buses stood apart from many other products, movies, and shows being promoted in the same place. Without much time to watch television, I did not watch any of the first two seasons (this seems to be a trend in my life) but was encouraged by my brother to watch it after he provided rave reviews.
Two Christmases ago, he purchased for me the first season of the show on BluRay. It would be hard for anyone to deny the quality of the product. The acting, the production quality, the costumes, the scripts, and everything in the show was top notch. But as I worked my way through the first season I often found myself growing queasy while watching each episode. The parallels between The Sopranos and Mad Men were to me incredibly overt. Both shows explored the main characters two families (the one at home and the one at work). Both had protaganists with "mother issues." Both had men who were troubled by their past, but did not quite fit in at their current "outfits". Both were cold and calculated when it came to business choices, and both were willing to take another person out of the picture quickly if it was ultimately going to be good for business. But time and time again, Mad Men left me feeling extremely depressed, while the Sopranos did not.
If anyone has ever taken Social Psychology in college they have learned about the "familiarity breeds liking" effect. In research on interpersonal attractiveness, individuals are often more likely to be attracted to someone that they see more often. Basically research has shown the the whole familiarity breeds contempt is not as true as some would claim. I began to wonder if this was part of the reason I was comfortable watching Tony and the crew, but not Don Draper and his co-workers. I have seen numerous mafia films throughout the course of my life. The archetypes, the narrative arcs, the conflicts are all somewhat familiar to me. In addition, I grew up in New Jersey with an Italian-Irish father, so even listening to the characters on the Sopranos sounded like home to me. But, the world of advertising or what the business-clad white men of Sterling-Cooper spent their days doing on Mad Men was completely foreign to me. This seemed to me to be part of the problem I was having with the show, but it was not the whole story...
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