We weren't going to watch Mad Men; it sounded too retro-sexist to us from what we had read. But some very progressive friends said that it was a must, so we got the just released Second Season (the Third Season will be available on DVD in 2010), and became mesmerized.

Unlike the vast majority of Hollywood writers who tend to be heavily male, Mad Men has a primarily female writing staff -- and it shows.

Yes, the Madison Avenue Ad Men (Mad Men) are sexist, philandering, non-stop smoking booze hounds, but the series slowly removes the veneer and underneath are men living, as Thoreau said, "lives of quiet desperation."

The show is immaculate in its re-creation of the '60s -- from sets to fashion to news breaking on TV sets and in papers. It's like getting in a time machine and traveling at full warp back to the early '60s.

Mad Men is a sociological time capsule, with a smart, knowing script and wonderful acting. Yes, you can get drunk just watching all the boozing and start coughing from the cigarette smoking, but you'll quickly accept that as part of the background to a far more telling and captivating historical and cultural narrative.

Directed by Matthew Weiner, who worked on the Sopranos, Mad Men knows how to pace itself in revealing character and relationships; there's always a surprise around the corner, which is vital in any captivating story telling.

But most importantly, it's a lush tale set against deco backgrounds of the period of characters caught in the cusp of history, as the Civil Rights Movement explodes, Kennedy is assassinated, the fear of nuclear war has people on edge, and there are the first nascent stirrings of women breaking away from the Alpha male dominated work world (incarnated in the character of Peggy).

History, however, is just a subtle and occasional intruder into the unfolding story of the characters who are centered around the creative department of Madison Avenue ad agency Cooper and Sterling. Don Draper, the head of the creative department, is the center of the onion that gets peeled away as the series progresses. Nothing is what it appears to be. In many ways, the Mad Men of Cooper and Sterling are the forerunners of the modern Republican Party; hypocritical and cynical to the core.

BuzzFlash is starting with season two, but if there is enough interest, we will also offer season one.

Be warned; it's addictive, whatever you might think of the men in the movie. They get what they deserve; their inner souls are confused, frustrated or miserable -- or all of the above.

"Season 1 of "Mad Men" was brilliant; Season 2 is even more so. Judging from the first two seasons, Matthew Weiner and the rest of the "Mad Men" crew are putting in a strong bid for the title of Greatest Television Program of All Time. As some previous reviewers have remarked, a lot of sins from Season 1 are coming home to roost in Season 2. The characters are endlessly fascinating, the dialogue subtle and sharp, the period recreation of the early 1960s miraculous. The storyline takes surprising yet completely believable turns, and the cast is so great that my favorite actor on the show tends to be the one I happen to be watching at the time."

"Season Two premiered on July 27, 2008 and picks up on Valentine's Day, 1962, two years after the first season during the Kennedy administration, an era marked by the growing civil rights movement, Bob Dylan, free love, increasing feminine discontent, crumbling marriages, the threat of nuclear annihilation, Leave It to Beaver, and New York poet Frank O'Hara's ever-ominous 1957 message of mortality: Meditations in an Emergency. Much of Season One's comic edge is now gone, and the tone of the show is more melancholic."

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