How do you get into that gig? Is it people who are like thank god I’m finally free of those car wash commercials?
That’s a really good question. My guess is most of them came up just after the era that the guy who invented laugh tracks came up in (started around Leave It to Beaver). They were probably near those sets and told, make your own thing, be your own person, and be available when I’m not. And that’s how I guess it started, though I never asked, and could be totally wrong.
In the golden era of sitcoms (80s/90s), there were probably two main guys who did them, John Bickelhaupt (18 time Emmy nominee, 3 time winner) and Bob La Masney (30+ Emmy nominee, 13 time winner). John’s last credit was in 2021, while Bob’s still working today. John was probably 10 years older than me and Bob was at least 15 years or 20 years older than me. I was in one session with John when I was an assistant (nice guy, dressed kind of like a beatnik, cool box) and worked with Bob a lot in my early mixing career (really cool box, really cool guy).
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Thanks that was very informative.
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Where’s the option for “all of them”?
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I’ve never seen mad men. It’s so many episodes seems daunting to tackle.
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there are plenty of long running shows that would be a slog to get through. this isn’t one of them. this is like a piece of your favorite cake that you never grow tired of. it’s not homework at all.
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Ya I really do need to see it.
Season finale of Pluribus was fantastic. Slow burn pays off, especially when you dive deep into the philosophy of the show’s plot/conflict and really focus on Carol’s emotional journey.
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Really quite stunning how easy it is to revisit. It’s as binge-worthy as the first two seasons of House of Cards, except with Mad Men, instead of two perfect seasons followed by four increasingly awful seasons, we got seven years of a series so good, it changed how television is made. It may actually be the show I’ve seen the most times?
I think it has a unique appeal to poker players, too, because so much of the show’s dynamic plays with manipulation and psychological warfare.
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I’ve never watched Mad Men all the way through, but I’m curious how it changed how television was made?
Mad Men is considered integral to the explosion of prestige TV shows across networks.
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What are you defining as networks?
PBS? Idk I guess networks is the wrong word.
AMC, Showtime, Cinemax, HBO, NBC, Prime, Hulu, these places all invested heavily in prestige TV shows following the success of Mad Men. Netflix in particular went overboard.
Which inspired HBO to overproduce as well and now realize their shows need to be selective events.
I think Mad Men may have been in an influence in that, but I don’t think it set the bar. The Sopranos and The Wire set the stage for Mad Men (a show I haven’t seen because it started when I didn’t have a way to watch it).
I just looked through Mad Men’s time on air, and it won the Drama Emmy for its first 4 seasons. It might have been the first basic cable Drama win, but I don’t want to look too far back. In three of those seasons, network TV (true definition of that was ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) was still well represented with Lost and House and/or The Good Wife taking spots in its first three seasons. House went off the air in 2011 (also its next to last season was atrocious), and I think Lost did around that time too. I think The Good Wife and Friday Night Lights were the last represented network shows after those shows ended, when cable/streaming took over in 2012 (House of Cards was a big influence on this by the way even though it didn’t win a Drama Emmy due to its massive production value that almost no shows were doing at that time). It would not be until 2017 that a network TV show got a Drama nomination again (This Is Us, the only network TV show with a Drama nomination since 2011 with most seasons being nominated).
Now that I understand your definition, I would say it certainly helped with the rise of prestige television across TV just because people probably tuned into the Emmys and saw it winning over and over (people were probably pissed and execs were saying, ‘why can’t we do that?’). But what I really give it credit for is setting the stage to push out all network TV from Drama categories. There were plenty of noms across basic cable after Mad Men, but other than This Is Us, networks batted .000 when it came to Drama Emmys (still all over comedy Emmys). Hannibal and Person of Interest would have been worthy network contenders during that time but the Academy didn’t have any guts.
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This is a tough poll cause Mad Men might be the top show ever in terms of consistency. You could have a RNG print the numbers in random order and I would think “that’s reasonable.” There are probably 3 distinct vibes between 1-3, 4-5, and 6-7 that one might prefer but even then there’s no clear best.
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I know which block the Academy would choose lol
Certainly Mad Men was not the INTRODUCTION of prestige TV, but the show was the catalyst for a wave of it. Shorter seasons, high level of production. TV was suddenly a place where an actor went to thrive instead of die.
I don’t think Lost and House quite count due to their standard episode orders.
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