From the desperate but scintillating, hollow but fantastic start to each episode, AMC’s Mad Men enters a TV series class of its own. The show is so well produced that even the episode intro deserves serious accolades. It’s definitely the best opener to any show on network television to date—so visually dynamic: a muted color pallet, subtle grainy texture, a simple black-suited figure and excellent camera entry and exit points. Even the intro is award winning.
As an admirer of motion graphics and choreography, the sheer graphic simplicity and intrigue of the visuals pull you in. The tall, dark and Don-like figure who enters an architecturally drawn, mod office space which after a second’s pause, begins to fall apart and disappear in dream-like fluidity. Suddenly our well-dressed figure is descending from the Madison Avenue skyline. Buildings turn into a display case of 1960’s ad campaigns; overly excited housewives with underlying sexual suggestion—ruby red lips and finger tips—unrealistically overwhelmed by the arrival of yet another household product.
Our dark, smooth, suit-wearing figure closes the scene with one arm stretched across the back of a couch, cigarette burning, appearing calm and cool. It’s these visuals and the combination of killer beats from DJ/artist RJD2’s “A Beautiful Mine” – a mix of sultry violin, staccato drum beat, symbol and harp instrumentals that begin each psychologically dark and historically insightful episode of my favorite show on television.
