Photo credit Michael Yarish/AMC

Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, has a shelf full of Emmys and Golden Globes not to mention critical raves for the hit series now in its sixth season. The retro drama about a 1960s ad agency has left its mark on everything from fashion to the way we look at gender roles. So why is Weiner the first to admit he can be a little anxious about being at the top?

Maybe because he’s hardly an overnight success. He can laugh now about all the time he spent after grad school writing scripts, while his architect wife supported the family. Along the way, he wrote the pilot for Mad Men, but received nothing but rejections.

Weiner’s break came when he started writing for The Sopranos. That show was so hot it made his reputation, but even that wasn’t enough to sell HBO on Mad Men. Eventually it was AMC that took the gamble.

Weiner is charming—a great talker—but notoriously close-mouthed about where the series is going and whether the end is in sight. He’s already made his first bid to move to the big screen writing and directing with last fall’s You Are Here starring Zach Galifianakis and Jenna Fischer.

Question: How has success changed you?
Matt Weiner: I’m less combative. Finding an audience of even a few people after being rejected for a long time kind of recalibrates your perception of humanity, believe it or not. But I’m superstitious about the word success. It took awhile to realize that this really happened after years of privation and rejection. Ironically I’m the person who wrote, ‘Happiness is the moment before you need more happiness.’ So even the premise of the question, ‘How do you feel about success?’ is terrifying.

Q: What would you rewrite about yourself?
MW: I’ve got plenty of bad qualities that have not disappeared. I’m working on being more patient. That can be difficult to be around. I am very exacting. I think I can come off seeming unappreciative of the people closest to me sometimes because I have the complete expectation that I’m entitled to their affection. That’s probably my biggest fault—impatience.

Q: Are you different at home?
MW: I’m like every dad, I’m a joke. [He has four sons.] My anger’s a joke. My dissatisfaction’s a joke. My rules are a joke. I’m always fighting to enforce my authority. I work so much that when I come home and say, ‘Hey everybody, don’t do it this way,’ they’re like, ‘If you were here you’d know this is the way we do it.’ It’s like I’m powerless. You know what, once you take physical violence out of the equation, you really have no control over another person. [Laughs]

Q: Have you tried being a diplomat around the house?
MW: I lose my temper. I’ve got a bad temper. I’ll get mad and be swearing and using the ‘F’ word in the kitchen. Afterwards I’m so embarrassed and I look over at my kids in the next room and I’m like, ‘God, I hope they didn’t hear that.’ And I see they are laughing but trying to cover it up so they won’t embarrass me.

Q: What inspired you to be a writer and to stick with that unrealistic ambition?
MW: I had a lot of support from my parents. They loved and admired writers. We have a big poster of Ernest Hemingway in our hallway. I think that that mattered to me that they thought writing could be a heroic profession and a writer could make like a valuable contribution.

Q: What made you aim so high?
MW: I was a terrible student. I had a lot of mentors, teachers who encouraged me, kind of told me whether I believed it or not that I was a late bloomer. I gave a speech at my high school graduation and a dad in my class told me that I could be a TV writer. It wasn’t just any dad, it was Allan Burns who created The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And so I had that in my hip pocket. And then I went to college and did some acting and wrote poetry. Then I went to film school and was out of work for 5 years even though I was writing all the time. I tell people the hardest part about it was not knowing that it was going to be 5 years—it wasn’t that I was going do it, it was those years of not knowing when I was going to be a success.

Q: Don Draper the main character on the show says, ‘Everyone thinks this is temporary.’ Do you think that?
MW: I am extremely aware that the end is coming but not when. I’ve always had to sweat. I never have been sure Mad Men was going to go on again. I live and die by this thing. I want people to say, ‘That was the best season of the show ever.’ I want them to progressively say during the season, ‘That was the best episode of the show ever!’ I am always aspiring to keep it new and fresh. But you’re going to lose if you’re always trying to top yourself. You end up doing something crazy.

Q: You are pretty secretive about the plots of the episodes.
MW: I’m not trying to tease people. I just don’t want to give away to viewers what’s coming because not knowing what is going to happen is part of what keeps people interested. I think fans of the show, the ones who really love it, don’t want to know. But it is hard to talk about a new season without getting specific. At the beginning of a season I’m always like, ‘I’m starting a whole new story. If you don’t like it, then it’s not for you. But it’s not because it’s not as good as last year. It’s just different.’ No matter what happens you’ll be able to understand it. It’s a TV show, it’s not War and Peace.

Q: Are there lessons that having a huge hit have taught you?
MW: At a certain point you realize that being mature in this job is not thinking that you can do it all by yourself. You can’t forget that other people have the best stuff to offer and you need to be excited when you hear something you didn’t think about. I try to remember that I don’t always give enough praise. I get so much attention for my contribution to the series, and I wish I could share the glory a little bit more. I always mention the work of my producers and co-writers but it seldom gets printed. And I want people to know that that’s not my fault. That I try to share the wealth.

Q: What’s the right way to handle fame?
MW: I remember watching Jennifer Lawrence fall on the stairs as she went up to accept her Oscar. And I just thought, ‘If I were to write an acceptance speech, it would start like that.’ That moment to me was kind of like instant humility. She recovered with such grace and good humor. That’s a hard thing for people to understand. You just don’t want to attract the evil eye, become arrogant, rest on your laurels, and take it for granted.

Q: Does the great acceptance of the show give you more creative confidence?
MW: Trying to put a dream into words is a lot of what it is at the beginning of the season. And the ship leaves the port but you still don’t know if it’s any good. That’s the thing that never goes away. You don’t even know, even when the season’s over, even when you win an award, if you like pulled it off. And you know anyone who says they’re only interested in satisfying themselves is a fool.

Meet Mad Men Creator Matt Weiner The Saturday Evening Post

I must have been 12 or 13 when my father suggested I go downtown with him to get some money from the bank. It was a Saturday afternoon, and, although he was a senior executive at the “Multibanco” in Chihuahua, I doubted he was going to be admitted on the weekend to help himself to some pesos. So I kept watching soccer on TV. My team, Atlético Español, was finding a new way to lose; that’s what they did.

But no, Dad was clearly up to something. “C’mon, I have a card that will get me cash,” he said, grinning. He did have a sense of humor and an adventurous streak, so I figured I should play along.

“OK,” I said. “Vamos.”

We got into our un-air-conditioned orange VW Caribe and headed downtown. The Multibanco was right across the street from the zócalo, in the shadows of Chihuahua’s 18th-century cathedral, the first and last baroque structure built in our otherwise unpretentious city.

Outside the bank, by the parking lot, was a small kiosk I had never noticed before, like a walk-in phone booth. We walked over to it, and my dad fumbled for a card that he reverentially slid out from a little envelope and into an opening that caused a buzz and click, and in we went to the booth, where he proceeded, before his wide-eyed, jaw-dragging son, to retrieve a few hundred pesos from a machine. I don’t think I could have been more astonished had he beamed us into the 23rd century.

Three decades later, I type down this memory on a plane as I listen to one of a few hundred albums on my iPad before settling in to read one of the dozens of books on the same nimble tablet with the interactive screen.

We live in an age when we can have nearly anything all the time, and my first inkling of that coming age came that languid Saturday afternoon in Chihuahua, when Dad pulled his act of magic at the city’s first ATM.

There were other milestones along the way, of course. The Walkman seemed like a huge leap forward, providing stereophonic mobility. So did having an AT&T long-distance calling card. When I first came to school in the States, I had to drag rolls and rolls of change to the payphone down the hallway to connect for a few minutes with Mexico to speak to my parents or to enjoy some awkward, static-filled small talk with a certain Margarita. Then came these calling cards that let you commandeer any payphone as if it were your own, without the need to have a piggy bank in tow (although those monthly bills were an invariable shocker).

Oddly enough, what should have been more obvious milestones on the road to “everything all the time” didn’t seem like such. My first desktop computer in college felt more like a spiffier typewriter than a potential conduit to all the world’s information, but then it wouldn’t be another decade until I “dialed” online after getting one of those AOL CDs in the mail (it was probably the 10th one I’d gotten). And even that didn’t feel so noteworthy, truth be told; I quickly grew bored of a couple of chat rooms and went back to the TV.

Amazon did feel epochal, this notion that you could be sitting in your PJs at midnight and order a book from your bedroom that would show up a few days later at your doorstep. The memory of those first orders in the late ’90s still gives me chills, even now when I can download two entire books onto my iPad in the time it takes to board a plane, as I just did.

Let’s get back to TV for a second. That’s been an entertainment constant throughout my life, but precisely because it has been a constant—at least the physical act of staring at a screen—it’s the starkest illustration of how we’ve moved from a life of fleeting moments to this everything-all-the-time age.

The World is Getting Better, Not Worse! The Saturday Evening Post

I learned so much about Penny Marshall while reading My Mother Was Nuts that my awareness and appreciation of her talent has grown. I must say, I wish I had Penny as a friend.

From early in her life, she lived by a few valuable rules: always try hard, play by the rules, tell the truth, help your friends, don’t get too crazy, and have fun. As she began her groundbreaking career as a director in film and TV, she learned another important rule from her brother, Garry Marshall: how she could “give someone a life.”

Born October 15, 1943, in the Bronx, New York, Carole Penelope Marshall was the third child of Marjorie and Anthony. Penny’s father was of Italian descent, and he changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall before Penny was born.

Her mother was a dancer and entertainer, and gave dancing lessons in her own school, the Marjorie Marshall Dance School. It was clear to Penny at an early age that her mother hated her husband and found her independence in teaching other people’s children to dance. She had 360 students over the years, and according to the book, she was beloved by 359 of them. Penny was the hold out.

Dancing did give Penny confidence and eventually put her on the stage of the Ted Mack Amateur Hour with a group of students from her mother’s school. Penny found her acting start on the stage and in bit parts on TV shows like That Girl. Garry was the producer of the hit sitcom Happy Days and cast Penny in five episodes as Laverne before he wrote and launched a spin-off. Penny went on to become Laverne DeFazio in the popular sitcom Laverne & Shirley, which ran from 1975 to 1983. She received three Golden Globe nominations for her performance.

Penny was married and divorced twice, the second time to actor Rob Reiner who has also become a successful director and producer. While Laverne & Shirley was the No. 1 sitcom on TV, Rob was working on the No. 2 sitcom, All in the Family. It made for an interesting social and home life.

During this time, Penny began to make history behind the scenes as the first woman director of a feature film and the first woman to direct a film that grossed over $100 million, not once, but twice. Over the course of a decade’s time, she directed Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Big, A League of Their Own, Awakenings, Renaissance Man, The Preacher’s Wife, and Riding in Cars with Boys.

Penny’s path as an actress and director is impressive, and it led her to connections and lifetime friendships with a long line of names we all know. But who knew she had such a long and wonderfully romantic adventure with Art Garfunkel? The name-dropping in this book is amazing—her personal Rolodex is an impressive collection of Who’s Who from the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. Her loyalty and devotion to her friends, and they to her, is truly inspiring.

Throughout this memoir, Penny talks frankly as if she’s sitting next to you. She tells it as it happened—the good, the bad, and the weird; the successes and the struggles; all the fun she’s had and that she still wants five more minutes.

My Mother Was Nuts is available from Amazon for a list price of $26.

Book Review: My Mother Was Nuts The Saturday Evening Post

Of course you don’t need cable or satellite to get basic network channels. When the U.S. transitioned to digital TV in 2009, broadcast channels got a major makeover with dramatically better picture resolution, color, and clarity. Today’s over-the-air TV is a different animal from the bygone days of fuzzy signals sent to rabbit ears that your grandfather had to hold onto to keep any picture at all. Digital TV is very good—if you can get it. To find out what your digital TV reception is like, go to the FCC’s DTV Reception Map at fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps and enter your zip code.

Cord-cutting is an easy way to save money, but it’s not for everyone. Without cable, you’ll have to work a little harder—or wait a little longer—to watch certain shows. First, you’ll need the right equipment, including a home broadband Internet connection, a Wi-Fi router—both of which you probably already have—and a video-streaming box such as Roku ($50 to $100), which wirelessly sends HD-quality video and audio from the Internet to your TV. You may already have a media streamer in your home and not know it. Many Blu-ray players, game consoles, and other Internet-connected TV peripherals have Wi-Fi streaming built in. Other streaming options include Apple TV ($100), a hockey puck-sized device handy for renting movies and TV shows from iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, and other online services. Apple TV works much like Roku but has fewer channels. For dedicated iTunes users, Apple’s set-top box is handy because it streams your iTunes music, movies, and TV shows to an HDTV.
Google TV is another option. Unlike Apple TV and Roku, Google TV isn’t a set-top box but software that brings online content including Netflix, Hulu Plus,and even full websites (which you navigate with a wireless keyboard, tablet, or other mobile device) to your television. A handful of TVs and peripherals including the Sony Internet TV (starting at around $900) and Sony Internet TV 3D Blu-ray player ($230) have Google TV built-in.

Watching Internet TV is much the same as the cable/broadcast experience, with a few differences. Say you have a Roku box and a Netflix subscription ($8 per month for unlimited movies and TV shows) and want to watch Mad Men. Using your included Roku remote you launch Netflix and select Mad Men from a drop down menu. The catch with Netflix is that it offers only past seasons of shows. The service has seasons 1 through 4 of Mad Men but not the current season 5. And Netflix typically doesn’t have theatrical films just out on DVD. What to do? Using your Roku remote, change the channel to Amazon Instant Video, which rents individual episodes of TV shows and just-released movies at prices ranging from $1 to $5. These costs are an annoyance, for sure, but for most viewers they’ll add up to a lot less than the monthly cable bill.

Caveats? None of these approaches match the convenience of live cable TV. You’ll be relying on a smorgasbord of programming from different sources, which takes planning and thought. If you like to sit back and flip through channels, cutting the cord is not for you. But if you’re willing to take a more active role in searching for programs, you may be ready to take the leap.

Get tips on how to buy a TV today at saturdayeveningpost.com/television.

Save $1,000 Per Year on Cable The Saturday Evening Post

Essentially the choice is between LCD and Plasma. (LED is a subset of LCD, but we’ll get to that in a minute.) LCD (liquid crystal display) screens are brighter and reflect considerably less light than plasma TVs, making them better for sunlit rooms. They’re the more popular choice and, for that reason, slightly more expensive. Plasma TVs, on the other hand, show more vibrant colors and deeper shades of black, and are often preferred by home theater buffs.

LED TVs are really just LCDs, but with LED backlighting. LED stands for light-emitting diode, but the practical bottom line is that LED TVs can be wafer-thin, often less than an inch thick. LED TVs also use less energy than regular LCDs. If cost is a factor—and when isn’t it?—you can get some great deals on LED TVs.

When shopping, you’ll also want to consider the “refresh rate,” measured in Hz (for hertz or cycles per second). A higher refresh rate means less blurring in action sequences. You want the highest refresh rate possible for sports, but it’s not so important for watching talking heads. Shoot for at least 120 Hz.

How to Buy a TV Today The Saturday Evening Post

Cartoons: TV Times The Saturday Evening Post

I’ve been a know-it-all since I was a kid, but last year I found a way to make it pay.

I’ve watched Jeopardy! for years, calling out my answers to host Alex Trebek, as if he could hear me. My wife, Danielle, watching with me, would sometimes say, “You know, you could clean up on this show.” I shrugged. How do you get on a game show, anyway?

Then one day, Jeopardy! announced an online qualifying test. It seemed like a good opportunity to put up or shut up. I was interested mostly in satisfying my curiosity, and—let’s be honest—in the money, too. So, on the appointed night, I sat at the computer, calm and focused—until the phone rang, dogs started howling outside, and the kids began crawling on my lap. I made a good effort—or tried to. I won’t say I forgot about the test; but I downplayed it ruthlessly and got on with life. Then, two months later, I got an unexpected e-mail: Could I come to Boston for a live tryout in six weeks?

…

At the audition, everyone was personable and good-looking, while I felt crushingly ordinary in my discount-store necktie and cracked glasses. We all took another quiz, got our pictures taken, then played some practice games. I didn’t freeze up or babble—but neither did I dominate in any way. They thanked us, told us that our applications would be held for up to 18 months, then they let us go. It was late. I raced across town to catch the outbound train back to my family, but missed it. Alone in the empty station with no money to take a cab, I entertained unkind thoughts about Jeopardy!

Spring passed. Summer was a haze of late shifts and reheated dinners. When autumn came, I had not watched Jeopardy! in months. And then, just before Halloween, I got the call inviting me to California as a contestant on the show. Already I was calculating airfares and hotels, thinking, Can I afford to do this?

To read the full article, see the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, on newsstands throughout January and February, subscribe now, or purchase the issue at ShopThePost.com.

Want to be a game show contestant? Check out our exclusive tips only at saturdayeveningpost.com.

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Firsthand America: “I Was a Game-Show Champion!” The Saturday Evening Post

Jeopardy!
Take a practice test and register for the e-mail alerts for the next online registration opening. jeopardy.com/beacontestant/contestantsearches.

Wheel of Fortune
Apply for your chance to spin the wheel at wheeloffortune.com/contestantsandtickets/beacontestant/adult.

The Price Is Right
Come on down! All you need to get on this show is a ticket and a little luck, as the contestants are randomly picked from the audience. For ticket info, visit cbs.com/daytime/the_price_is_right/tickets.

Family Feud
Let your family feuding pay off! Visit familyfeud.tv/beonshow.shtml for show tickets. To apply for your family to be on the show, call (323)-762-8467.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Think you have what it takes to outsmart an elementary school kid? Find out how you can be on the show at fox.com/areyousmarter/showinfo. Maybe you should try the online trivia game first, fox.com/areyousmarter/features.

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire
Who doesn’t! Find out how at millionairetv.com/info-contestant.html. Or play online at millionairetv.com/playonline.html.

Deal or No Deal
Ready to take a chance with the odds? Click here to find out how to apply for this special deal. Or play online at nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/game/flash.shtml.

You Could Be the Next Contestant! The Saturday Evening Post

10.) A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella is possibly the most enduring and familiar Christmas story of all time. It has been adapted for TV and film hundreds of times, including the latest 3D animated version released by Disney this year. Collectively, they are all our number-ten pick. Some of our favorites include Scrooge (1951), Scrooged (1988), starring Bill Murray, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) (TV), starring Scrooge McDuck as Ebeneezer, of course. Two we could do without, both from the late 1990s, are Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol (1999) (TV) and Ms. Scrooge (1997) (TV), starring Cicely Tyson as “Ms. Ebenita” Scrooge.

9.) Love, Actually (2003)

The most modern movie to make our list, Love, Actually, was an unexpected surprise. The British romantic comedy weaves together a number of love affairs into one well-wrapped holiday package. Sure to spark a dialogue among its viewers, as it did with our staff, this hip Christmas movie is actually loved.

8.) Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) (TV)

Developed in 1939 by Robert May for the department store Montgomery Ward, Rudolph remains one of the most recognizable Christmas characters. It’s hard to not feel sympathetic toward the lovable, red-nosed quadruped, and it’s nice to know that even he has a place at Christmas.

7.) How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) (TV)

The Grinch is the most famous holiday villain, and Chuck Jones’ 1966 cartoon is Seussean to a degree the big-budget, live-action Christmas movie just couldn’t achieve. Christmas isn’t Christmas without Cindy Lou, roast beast, and this TV classic, and we’d all do well to see our own hearts grow three sizes in a day.

6.) White Christmas (1954)

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, is the lone musical to make our list. The popular song by the same title actually first arrived on the American scene in 1941 when Crosby performed the song on his popular NBC radio show, The Kraft Music Hall. The rest, as they say, is history. In 1942, the song was released as part of an album from the film Holiday Inn. In 1954, White Christmas, the film, was released, building on the song’s popularity, which subsequently became the top selling record of all time, selling more than 50 million copies.

5.) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

No holiday family function is complete without the dysfunction of Clark W. Griswold Jr. and clan. Unequivocally quaint and quotable, our number-five pick is already a classic in its own right. It’s hard to not feel right at home at the Griswold’s table, and the disaster that is the Griswold family makes us all feel a little better about our own.

4.) A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) (TV)

The first animated TV special based on the popular Peanuts comic strip by Charles Shultz is also arguable the best. It is easy to see a little of all of us in the downtrodden Charlie Brown as he attempts to see past the secularism of Christmas to find true meaning.

3.) It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

The bells still ring for this 1946 black-and-white classic starring Jimmy Stewart. As one of Stewart’s most memorable achievements as an actor, the flick delves into darker and more dramatic themes than most Christmas movies, including financial woes, troubled family life, and suicide. Still poignant today, especially in the midst of the current economic climate, this tale of retribution, family, and community captures the true spirit of the holidays.

2.) A Christmas Story (1983)

It’s Americana, nostalgic, and an almost perfect Christmas classic. In many minds, A Christmas Story is the quintessential Holiday tale. What is more American than spending the holidays with one’s family under the warm glow of a gleaming, Italian, sex-exuding “major award”—complete with fishnet stockings?

1.) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, New York City, and Santa—it’s Christmas in America, and our number one Christmas movie of all time is sure to make almost any Christmas curmudgeon believe.

Best Christmas Movies Ever The Saturday Evening Post

If you are of the population not fortunate enough to have seen St. Elsewhere, it was the first of the modern ilk of medical dramas. What separated it from its predecessors was the reality with which it treated its subject matter. The television portrayal of doctors until that point was more in line with what we think of as super heroes. The patients always got better, the doctors never made mistakes, and everyone, as Garrison Keillor might put it, was above-average. The thinking of the time was, “Who wants to turn on their television only to be depressed? The advertisers certainly wouldn’t like that.” That strategy worked fine for many years, but it turned out not to work on the slightly-more-cynical younger generation. St. Elsewhere followed this new direction, and almost the entirety of the current hour-long medical genre owes its place on TV to “a show that ruined television.”

Welcome to the Multiverse

How does a show like this, with all the good it did for its craft, end up ruining television? The answer comes in two parts. The first is that St. Elsewhere was a very popular, and it continues to be well-respected among people who make decisions for television. The show did numerous crossover episodes where characters from one series appeared on St. Elsewhere or vice-versa. Crossing Jordan, Cheers, Boston Public, Chicago Hope, The Bob Newhart Show, M*A*S*H, and Homicide: Life on the Street are among the shows where this happened. Outside of this, there are shows that reference St. Elsewhere in a way that makes it clear they are intended to be in the same world. The hospital’s PA system on St. Elsewhere was used at various times to call doctors from other series, even though they were not appearing in that episode. The reverse of this was used on the Canadian show, Degrassi Junior High, where doctors from St. Elsewhere were paged through the school’s announcements system.

The crossovers don’t stop there, though. For example, you’ll notice that St. Elsewhere crossed over with Cheers at one point. This happened in an episode when characters from St. Elsewhere visited the Cheers bar. Cheers, being as successful as it was in its day, ended up creating crossovers with other series on its own. Cheers begat Frasier and another short-lived spin-off called The Tortellis. Since a crossover or spin-off is essentially a signal that the shows happen in the same television universe, all shows connected to Cheers in that way are also connected to St. Elsewhere. The same goes for all the other shows that St. Elsewhere crossed with. They are all, through common characters, happening in the same television universe.

In all, there are around 280 shows linked to St. Elsewhere. The oldest is I Love Lucy, which traces its lineage in this order: I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Danny Thomas Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mad About You, Friends, Caroline in the City, Frasier, Cheers, and finally, St. Elsewhere. Current shows such as Lost, ER, CSI, Law & Order, and Heroes all have their own lineage tied to St. Elsewhere.

Life is but a Dream

The second part of the answer is the bit of trivia mentioned in the opening. In the final moments of the series finale of St. Elsewhere it is heavily implied that the entire series had been a dream of one of the characters. Dr. Donald Westphall discusses his son, Tommy Westphall, which includes this bit of dialogue:

“I don’t understand this autism thing, Pop. Here’s my son. I talk to him. I don’t even know if he can hear me, because he sits there, all day long, in his own world, staring at that toy. What’s he thinkin’ about?”

The next part, the answer to that rhetorical question, shows Tommy Westphall shake a toy snow globe containing a model of the show’s hospital, while real snow begins to fall over the real hospital.

This is the moment that may have ruined television. St. Elsewhere takes place in the same universe as over 280 other shows, and that universe was revealed to be entirely in the mind of Tommy Westphall. So the next time you watch I Love Lucy, Cheers, CSI, Lost, Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show, Law & Order, or any of the other shows connected to St. Elsewhere, keep in mind and take solace in the fact that they are at least two layers of fiction removed from our reality: They are the fictional creations of Tommy Westphall, an already fictional character. Most television, as it turns out, is more fictional than you would have thought.

If you’d like to explore Tommy Westphall’s multiverse on your own, this excellent site has complete documentation of the phenomenon that continues to be updated by contributors. You can take a look at the diagram of all the shows, and check the key to see exactly how they link together. If your friends are good enough at television trivia, you might be able to play a game of Six Degrees of Tommy Westphall.

The Show that Ruined Television The Saturday Evening Post

What is surprising is the show’s popularity among younger viewers—who never saw the 1960s (or the ’70s or ’80s).

You would expect Mad Men to be popular among baby boomers. Every story line, every character, and every set features historical detail of the period that can trigger memories, if not nostalgia, among Americans who lived in those years—whether or not they worked for a flashy New York ad agency.

But how do you account for the show’s loyal viewers among 20-year-olds?

It might be the fascination of watching an America that is both foreign and familiar. The foreign America can be seen in the characters’ enthusiastic drinking and smoking, which is pursued on a scale that only our grandparents could relate to.

Click image to enter the 1963 Ad Gallery.

The familiar America is the world of advertising, which is so much a part of our lives in 21st-century America, it is almost our second language. We hear advertising’s familiar accents in politics, health care, education, religion, even in personal relationships.

Modern advertising proved itself in the 1920s. By the 1960s, though, it grew up.

Advertisers dropped the folksy tone and sensible appeals they were still using in the 1950s to sell their cars and laundry soap. The new ads were more colorful, more creative, and more entertaining. Major advertisers used copy and visuals so effective that, viewed today, they offer a fresh, vibrant view into that decade.

Of course, The Saturday Evening Post was an important part for any national ad campaign. Our readers comprised a highly desirable group of buyers, and the pages of our 1963 issues offer a broad window into the business and culture of the times.

If you’ve been following some of the plotting and machinations at Sterling Cooper, you may be interested in some of the finished products of 1963 ad campaigns. We’ve also included a few of the articles that surrounded these ads. In future Retrospectives, we hope to offer other advertising and visuals from this fascinating era to keep pace with the story line.

View our 1963 Ad Gallery

Mad Men—If It’s Not Nostalgia, What Is It? The Saturday Evening Post