Long and serious. Insightful but never quite enough. Well written, but I could never like anyone enough to want to spend that much time with them. Often I felt the ugliness of some of the characters so intensely that I wished I could be spared their company--it began to feel almost pornographic to watch them enjoy their sadism.

Maybe that's the point--the relentless everyday abuse from which there's nowhere to hide--but I got that point already and I'm only halfway through.

Full disclosure--I avoided watching Mad Men for the first few years because of a hatred of the culture of the 1950s but later came to appreciate it.

--

So I finished it. There were moments when I was really into it. And then there were these other moments when I couldn't wait for it to be over. There were surprises and there were clichés. It was large enough for all of that.