Don Draper, Mad Men.

I really enjoy watching Mad Men.



First of all, I love the setting - Manhattan in the early 1960s. Everything was so glamorous, yet so depressing at the same time. The unstable political situation at home and abroad mixed with the booming US economy creates a tension and contrast... which is very well expressed in the show through the backdrops and characters.





A lot of drinking, a lot of smoking, a lot of fine dining, a lot of lustful relationships, it's so fun to watch, but I also feel sad for these people who are numbing themselves from the reality... There's always a dark overtone surrounding the show... Love it.






Secondly, there's the protagonist Don Draper, Creative Director at Sterling Cooper, a fictional ad agency.

He's who I wanna be ten or twenty yrs from now. Draper's smart, successful, confident, charming, mysterious, has beautiful women all around him... who doesn't wanna be him? But he seems to be always in a troubled, depressed state of mind... like an injured soul waiting to be healed. And, tobacco, alcohol, and sex are his medicine.



There's this self-destructive quality to him... infidelity, chain-smoking in every scene, a dark past in his childhood... He's such an interesting character to watch, almost REAL. A sense of loneliness and emptiness always looms around him at the end of each episode, despite all his achievements... which is how I'm always feeling these days so I really like Don Draper (or Jon Hamm's portrayal of Draper)...

I also love all the ads and slogans they come up with in the series. As a marketing major, I love learning more about the history of advertising in this format. The slogans, the artwork, the client meetings, the sales pitches... they are so retro and fun to watch... and I learn from it too.