Linkslutting Mad Men: Ooh La La.

AS THE TELEVISION Critics Association winds its way through the usual dog and pony show down in L.A., I haven't been keeping track with my usual aplomb. But as I wear out my Season One MAD MEN set (on Blu Ray, beeyotches!) I, like most of the critics, need a focus for my fawning. So just in case you missed the messiah-like attention Matthew Weiner and the Madmenites got last week, here's a roundup of some of my favorite articles.

Matthew Gilbert, in the Boston Globe, selfishly hopes the cult of Mad Men stays small:

Like many of us, I'm of two minds about the culture I love. It's a curious place to be, when your emotions are split in half, when you feel generous and selfish at the same time, giving yet greedy. You want more people to come to the party and enjoy what you like - especially offbeat creations such as "Mad Men," HBO's "Flight of the Conchords," the twisted humor of Sarah Silverman, the vintage-soul sound of Amy Winehouse - but not too many people. In that cheerful room where we exhort friends to watch a cool TV series, or listen to a perfect CD, or read a novel that will change their lives, there is a back door through which we sometimes want to abscond with the goods, alone.

Part of this possessive streak is a protective instinct. These days, in particular, it's hard to wish more popularity on anything that wasn't as solidly built for mass consumption as a Batman movie or "American Idol." At the slightest hint of a hit, the networks lean too hard, the celebrity mags pounce, spoilers leak, sequels are devised, audience expectations rise, disappointment sets in. And most importantly, the creators can lose their way. Popularity spoiled ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," just as it ruined NBC's "Heroes," which got too many eyes too quickly. Much as I encourage viewers to watch CBS's ensemble sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," I know it would probably lose some snappy in-joking, get too stuffed with guest appearances like those of Britney Spears this spring, and gain too much sweeps-event melodrama if it became a "Friends"-size hit. Now, the show is small enough to stay good, big enough to stay on the air.

A smarter and more succinct summation of the problems with the machine-like precision of our culture (a culture, ironically, that Mad Men shows the first zygote flickering beginnings of) I have not read.

But the New York Times Fashion & Style section points out that it might already be too late.

Tv Guide's the Scoop says Matthew Weiner either has a five-year plan for the show, or, um, he doesn't.

"In the life of the series, if it continues, I would like to cover this period of people's lives - and that's a five year plan and not a ten-year plan," he said. An AMC person was also quoted as saying: "What he meant was that he wants to leap forward between seasons, not just pick up where the last season leaves off. So he wants to cover a period of ten years in these character's lives, in five seasons." So we'll get five years of the show, which will end in 2011. But wait. No sooner had these quotes circulated, they changed tack. AMC then came out yesterday and said that Weiner never meant to reveal a specific timeline for the show. He was just, y'know, saying that he was planning to have timeline jumps between the series. OK. So not covering your tracks at all there AMC.

The Huffington Post said the critics at the Mad Men presser were all, like, shy and stuff, and totally had damp chairs and couldn't stop fidgeting, like, omigod, these guys are so MUCH dreamier than The Sopranos EVER WERE!!!!!!!!

Psychologically and emotionally the pull on the press was even stronger. Critics are heavily invested in this show; with most of them in agreement that it is currently the best series on television. But there is a huge difference in the relationship between TCA members and the cast of Mad Men and the dynamic they had with Sopranos creator David Chase and his actors. Whereas Chase gave brief, generally empty answers to questions from reporters, the very well liked Weiner is endlessly quotable and totally open to journalists. It is almost as if they are his surrogate therapists. Weiner knows how to give reporters several paragraphs of good copy without compromising his show or revealing any spoilers. The same is true of the Mad Men cast. They actually respond when asked questions and their answers are often quite informative, and sometimes disarming.

When asked to talk about a tragic event that one character suffers in the second episode of Season 2, Weiner politely replied, "I don't really like to talk about story lines." Then he added something far more tantalizing than a direct answer. "The second episode to me is, for all the characters, about how you should react to anything [versus] what you were told you should do," he said. "To me, we're always torn between the way we are supposed to be feeling and what we actually feel."

Then he really opened up. "I can say, being a father four times, that when you take that first baby home from the hospital – at least for me, maybe I'm a monster, I don't know – the experience of looking at a newborn for a dad can often be very strange. It's not like you're breast-feeding. You should feel something and yet you don't always [do so]. It takes time. At least it did for me. That is sort of what the tension is for me in [the second episode]."

Asked what he would say to viewers who will watch the premiere and not learn what happened to Peggy and the baby after last season's shocking finale, Weiner teased, "I'd say trust me. I will give you information as you need it in the most entertaining fashion."

Oh my stars. Yes Matthew, I will follow you anywhere. Here, take my car.

And of course, who better to interview Weiner than one of my favorite TV Partisans, Maureen "The Watcher" Ryan from the Chicago Tribune?

MR: I know you don’t want to talk specifically about what happens this season, but the fact that it’s set in 1962 – what does that mean to the show? A year and a half has passed, right?

MW: We’re further along in people’s lives. I’m telling the story of this period, and the question is, has the ’60s started to happen yet? And I actually thought it did last season, even though it was [the end] of the ’50s. I wanted to see these people a couple of years older, I wanted to move their lives along a little bit, so it wouldn’t have this kind of soap opera mood, this [feeling of] “and then and then and then.”

There’s a chunk of time missing and you’re going to have to catch up and see what’s going on. When you see what’s different, you’ll know what’s happened, which I think is kind of entertaining. And talk about a mystery -- I think from the first frame, you’re going to be trying to figure out what happened.

I think that you will get a sense that we are back with these people, that things have changed, that life is moving on and it is a whole new story. And the thing I’m kind of pleased about, and I kind of never wanted to say this in a weird way, but when you watch this season and you look back at the season before, you will see that there is already the sense that there is an innocence disappearing.

There are many reasons to [move the story ahead by 18 months], but the most important thing to me was, I didn’t want to go to the episode after the finale. I was not interested in that. I liked leaving it the way it was. I knew what happened the episode after [the finale], and I thought, then I have to do the episode after that. And all the sudden you’re watching something change in a very slow [way]. And at that point, why didn’t I do 22 [episodes]?

This way, you go to Valentine’s Day, 1962, and you get to see where everybody is – Don, Betty, Pete, Joan, Roger, Peggy, some new people. That will be its own story. There are things in there, even with the last season in your mind, you’ll be looking at. But I think you can not have seen this show ever and start with this season and see a fairly interesting situation and wonder how it’s going to work out.

I totally love and get what he's doing here, and it's exactly what I would do between seasons of any show I created. Oh, and it's all thanks to How 24 Changed Everything.

But back to Mad Men... what about the way-cool Ad Age tribute to the show, celebrating the release of the Season One DVD set?

And if you still haven't had enough, the fansite Basket of Kisses should be your next stop.

And finally, just to prove that the locus of way cool has shifted to AMC -- not only are they starting up S.2 of Breaking Bad, they're developing another period piece -- based on one of my favorite books.

All I know is that I finish shooting my second episode by July 24 -- just three short days away from the Season 2 Mad Men premiere. Suddenly that doesn't seem all that far away...