Cool to be mad

– Danny Buttler
JUST like real life, in TV watcher-world there is the hip scene and there is the rest of you.
I watch Mad Men (Sunday night on SBS), so I’m part of the in- crowd. You don’t, so you’re not.
The world of ’60s advertising company Sterling Cooper is a televisual treasure. It’s so cool, even an Emmy award can’t undermine its status.
The show ticks off quite a few cool boxes. It’s retro down to the smallest detail, the women look glamourous and the men sharp, it refuses to follow the same formula as a normal TV drama and, most importantly, it rates badly.
But unlike Mad Men’s Don Draper and Peggy Olson, I’m willing to own up to my dark past. I haven’t always been part of the in-crowd.
Not so long ago The Sopranos was the most talked about show on TV, but only among those who would stay up late (thanks Channel 9) or buy the DVDs. I did neither.
Fans of the show would get together in the office and laugh at the neurotic antics of the mafia crew.
Tearoom conversations would be steered towards James Gandolfini and his amusingly violent and philandering ways.
I tried to interject with some Underbelly talk, but they knew I was just a try-hard wanna-be.
Twin Peaks was one of my earliest memories of being left out in the cold. As others huddled around the warmth of David Lynch’s bizarre and unfathomable series, I was left in the cultural Siberia of LA Law.
My only satisfaction in never knowing what happened in Twin Peaks is that even those who watched it were left similarly in the dark.
Pay TV opened up a new divide between those in-the-know and those without-a-clue.
Entourage had a few seasons as much-watch hipster TV, but those of us with only free-to-air channels were left on the wrong side of the class divide. The Struggle Street of the small screen.
Sadly for me, the caravan of cool has almost certainly already moved on from Mad Men. There’s another show out there that is spreading via word of mouth like influenza in an air-conditioned office – the problem is that I haven’t seen it or even heard of it.
Mad Men watchers will soon be like those left wearing a hypercolour T-shirt as the ’80s ticked over to the ’90s.
Very yesterday. Very uncool.