https://popculturereferences.com/don-draper-had-to-be-brilliant-for-mad-mens-pilot-to-work-he-was-brilliant/ Brian Cronin takes a look at interesting pieces of pop culture history from the worlds of TV, film, music and more. Sun, 07 Jan 2024 08:08:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 https://popculturereferences.com/don-draper-had-to-be-brilliant-for-mad-mens-pilot-to-work-he-was-brilliant/#comment-16743 Sun, 07 Jan 2024 08:08:54 +0000 https://popculturereferences.com/?p=6604#comment-16743 Sure, that was an advantage for Weiner, that people don’t know famous ads like they know famous comedy sketches.

]]> https://popculturereferences.com/don-draper-had-to-be-brilliant-for-mad-mens-pilot-to-work-he-was-brilliant/#comment-16741 Sun, 07 Jan 2024 05:33:28 +0000 https://popculturereferences.com/?p=6604#comment-16741 The problem is that, even here, Don is only fiction-good. The “It’s toasted” slogan for lucky strike was real, but from decades prior to the start of the series. The idea of it being a solution to problem only a brilliant ad man could ever solve is fabricated. It’s still a truly great episode, and great piece of writing, but weiner knows no more about writing great ads than sorkin does writing great sketches. He just built a wonderful puzzle to which an existing ad was the solution. Studio 60 would have been vastly different if they were presenting classic snl sketches as though they were the creations of the characters, whose dramatized lives and motivations were still strictly fictional.

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