It’s pretty well-known now that “Mad Men” creator-writer-producer Matthew Weiner wrote and co-produced “The Sopranos.” That he learned his lessons well from that show has been rather spectacularly proven as Season Two of “Mad Men” commences, to wit:

Promotion: As good as “The Sopranos” was, a fan had to get used to the media running the same damn article about the show’s cast each season: how none of the cast knew what was going to happen on the show from episode to episode until they got the script, and how all of them feared getting a script or a phone call from writer-producer David Chase learning they were to be “whacked” on the next show to shoot. (As it turned out, none of the main “Sopranos” cast were whacked, save Adriana, until the final season.) Cast members said that they always check the cast list to see if they are listed on each script they receive.

Well, the “Mad Men” cast members in articles last week told us that none of them know what is going to happen on the show from episode to episode until they get the script, and one cast member, John Slattery (whose character had heart attacks last season) says he always checks the cast list to see if he is still listed on each script he receives.

As an adjunct to these “Sopranos promotion templates,” Weiner and his cast are, of course, sworn to secrecy. Which they should be careful about: “The Sopranos” cast got downright haughty about saying nothing at annual critics junkets…and the critics turned on them.

Story timeline breaks. “Mad Men Season One” closed on Thanksgiving, 1960. Season Two begins on Valentine’s Day, 1962. Matthew Weiner said such a time jump allows new plots and characters to be introduced “in progress” (Don has a new secretary) and allows other storylines to tantalizingly disappear (Where is Peggy’s baby? Where is Don’s Jewish lover?)

That’s straight from “The Sopranos” where, after the season in which Adrianna was killed, we jumped a year and found her fiancée, Christopher, already with a new, prettier fiancée.

Season Two Opening Musical Montage. Season Two of “The Sopranos” began with a montage of all the various characters being reintroduced to the Sinatra song “It Was a Very Good Year.” Season Two of “Mad Men” began with a montage of all the various characters being introduced to the Chubby Checker song “Let’s Twist Again (Like We Did Last Summer.”)

Season Premiere Episode Aimlessness: From Season Two on, “The Sopranos” was famous for having Season Premiere episodes in which the main plotline didn’t appear, but rather, we eased into a reintroduction of our main characters with little vignettes and clues to new developments. Then the storyline kicked in after a couple of episodes (example: Steve Buscemi didn’t appear on his season of “The Sopranos” until the second episode of that season.) The first episode of Season Two of “Mad Men” had a similar sketchy, minor-key feel.

Note: “The Sopranos” was famous for unleashing climactic action in the second-to-last episode of each season, and then “easing out” with a final episode containing a serious development. So did “Mad Men” in its first season.

Finally, Matthew Weiner seems to have learned one lesson from “The Sopranos” which is leading him to break with “Sopranos” traditions.

Weiner told reporters that “Mad Men” will unfold in two-year seasonal jumps because “I’m not on a ten year plan, I’m on a five year plan” for the series to last. So Weiner is aiming “Mad Men” to be a five season show.

Methinks Weiner remembers that “The Sopranos” peaked at the end of Season Five (with the deaths of Adrianna and Buscemi’s character) and then split into a greed-based “Season 6A and Season 6B” which, together, were unfocussed, wasteful of valuable storytelling time on subplots, and badly wrapped up a the end of each “mini-season” (an anti-climactic Xmas party at the end of Season 6A; underthought endings for Melfi and for Tony at the end of Season 6B.)

“Mad Men” looks good for a five season run. That’s really all the time we’ll want to spend with these damaged people (honestly, the ratings right now don't have "Sopranos" strength for much longer, anyway), and the “every-two-years season spacing” should end the series in the perfect year: 1968, when America reached its revolutionary peak of the counterculture, assassinations, war, and riots…and when Richard Nixon, the “Mad Men’s” losing Presidential client of 1960, finally won the Presidency. Will Sterling Cooper represent Nixon again?

I was a Sopranos fan from the start, and am the same with MM. Your comments on both are insightful and useful.

Thank you.

Matthew Weiner wrote some of the best of the "Sopranos" scripts and, I think, thus carries forward some of that series "voice" (which was his as much as David Chase's and Terence Winter's and other writers on the show) forward into "Mad Men." I have the highest regard for both shows (warts and all, with "The Sopranos" and its weakish final seasons and endings.)

One more borrow on "Mad Men" I forgot from "The Sopranos" playbook:

"The Sopranos" quoted quite a bit from modern literature ("Slouching Towards Bethlehem," that Be-Bop poem that opened one season in narration, etc), and now "Mad Men" Season Two opens with a narrative poetry reading by Don Draper at episode's end.

Both shows are certainly literate in an "English lit major" kind of referential way.

P.S. Who was Don mailing that book of poetry TO? And wasn't that a great "fake 50's matte shot" of his neighborhood at night as he walked to the mailbox?

lucabrasi, your in-depth analysis astounds me.

the season premiere was a bit minor-key, though I liked it....it picked up on a lot of character development--betty's insistence on peddling her looks/sexuality, peggy's insistence on putting other women "in their place," pete's feminization/emasculation (he was actually wearing lipstick in some scenes) and don's inscrutability. he insists on probing deeper, though, thus the frank o'hara, wanting to know what he doesn't know, seeking the underground of life. still the boy reading the "signs" like that episode, "the hobo code.

Joan--such a mystery--she, unlike betty, knows what marriage entails, but since she has mastered the male/female dynamic at the office, I think once she gets married (IF she gets married ) we're in for her totally taking over. And I bet her world will always intersect with the world she left--that will be her revenge. Hmm.

I believe Don was mailing the Frank O'Hara book to Rachel (I think that's her name--his Jewish mistress).

...or could it be his erstwhile boho mistress (was her name Madge?) that would show her up...

I still have not read that particular Frank O'Hara collection of poems...I've been reading James Wood's How Fiction Works, as highlighted elsewhere on Slate....

but I have read the title poem...it is below. Pretty amazing (I've always had a soft spot for Frank O'Hara!) I think the poem explains quite a bit about Don.

Meditations In An Emergency

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious
as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous
(and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable
list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with
which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else
for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too,
don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of
pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of
perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the
confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes--I can't
even enjoy a blade of grass unless i know there's a subway
handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not
totally _regret_ life. It is more important to affirm the
least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and
even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing?
Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time;
they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and
disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away.
Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me
restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them
still. If only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I
would stay at home and do something. It's not that I'm
curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it's my duty to be
attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the
earth. And lately, so great has _their_ anxiety become, I can
spare myself little sleep.

Now there is only one man I like to kiss when he is unshaven.
Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How best
discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness
which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How I am to become a
legend, my dear? I've tried love, but that holds you in the
bosom of another and I'm always springing forth from it like
the lotus--the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must
not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, "to keep the
filth of life away," yes, even in the heart, where the filth is
pumped in and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my
will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in
that department, that greenhouse.

Destroy yourself, if you don't know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I
admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a
final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

"Fanny Brown is run away--scampered off with a Cornet of Horse;
I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho' She
has vexed me by this exploit a little too.--Poor silly
Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her.--I wish She had a
good Whipping and 10,000 pounds."--Mrs. Thrale

I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my
dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from
the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where
you don't want me to. It's only afternoon, there's a lot
ahead. There won't be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in
the lock and the knob turns.

Thank you.

Well, that poem's pretty dead on for the whole Don Draper thing, isn't it. Matthew Weiner's training at "The Sopranos" has done him well.

Lots to like in Episode One, but I was intrigued by the treatment by first Peggy and then Joan of Don's new secretary. Peggy tore into the woman (a bit unfairly) for fumbling the cover-up on Don's lunch absence (note: a re-release of "Pinocchio" WAS in release around that time!). Then Joan tore into the secretary for saying that "Peggy yelled at me."

Joan's corrective was telling: She's not Peggy, she's "Miss Olson!"

I was reminded that 1962 corporate American retained a military structure. Joan is in some ways the master sergeant. Peggy stunned Joan by becoming an executive, but now that Peggy IS an executive, Joan will honor her as being "an officer."

For her part, Peggy's shaping up as one tough cookie. Her attitude in the group meetings is now "one of the guys,"and she was upset at not maybe being invited to one meeting.

The cliche-with-truth-in-it about early women business leaders is that they were pretty tough individuals. Their role models were men. Last year, Don even told Peggy "Don't be timid...be a man." Well, we're about to see the results, me thinks.

---

Yes, Don probably sent that package to a paramour. Did you notice how "off his game" Don seemed at the office now that he's toeing the line at home? I thought so. He had trouble coming up with creative thoughts. Wonder if...

But its all questions and wonderings and let's see what happens next. Any good series does that. "Mad Men" is how I personally like to see it done.

Don't forget the Six Feet Under playbook. Rick Cleveland wrote some of my favorite SFU episodes, as well as cowriting two of my favorite West Wing episodes.

I loved last nights episode, fwiw. Jimmy biting his fist at Edith's "I don't have the stomach for it" line....that was funny. It's about time we got some comedy from a source other than Slattery. Who is obviously hilarious, of course.

I am more familiar with "The Sopranos" playbook, as I can only commit "emotionally" to one or two serial dramas at a time. They take too much out of me.

From what I've seen of SFU, it went a bit "wilder" than "The Sopranos" in terms of off-the-deep-end material, though last night's "Mad Men" ended up a rather weird and nasty affair, so maybe that playbook is also being followed.

"Mad Men" follows the workplace-home-snappy patter true line of "The West Wing" (what a "workplace", though), though "The West Wing" was constrained by network TV standards in a way that "Mad Men" is not.

Still, "Mad Men" isn't granted HBO/Showtime candor.

Still yet, Don Draper's final physical assault/negotiation on the comic's wife was certainly pushing it, basic cable-wise.

The episode was so heavy that Slattery's interlude of dealing with Harry and his raise was like a smile-injection moment. Great initial camera angle on Roger at his desk, spectacles on and huge distance to him from Harry.

I also had great regard for the sequence in which the men sequentially blamed each other for the debacle with the sponsor and his wife.

The sponsor and his corpulent wife and the danger of joking about her rather reminded me of the Johnny Sack and fat wife scenarios on "The Sopranos," btw.

And: "Sack" isn't two far removed from "Duck": in both series, these men started out as non-confrontational associates of the anti-hero (Tony, Don)...but Sack became a major foe and Duck is shaping up that way.

Last week Duck told Don: "You thought you'd do a great job for a small airline and the big airline would say "we want that guy", well it didn't play out that way!" On Duck's challenge to Don's "wunderkind" status, Don advanced and Roger put up a cautioning hand: "Easy...." Duck's plan -- sell out an existing little client and pimp out the death of Pete's father -- provides an interesting moral conflict with Don's "talent wins" approach.

In a recent episode, Don Draper menacingly demanded that two younger men in an elevator take off their hats in the presence of a woman.

In a season of "The Sopranos," Tony Soprano walked over to a young punk customer at Artie's restaurant and menacingly demanded that he take off his hat.

Don had to remove the hat from his young punk. All it took from Tony was a look -- the punk took it off himself.

---

Meanwhile, Duck's reliance on "who you know, not what you know" blew up nicely in his face when the American Airlines meeting was sabotaged because Duck's "inside man contact" was fired before the meeting took place.

Game, Don Draper.

Still a fine show, and a worthy successor to "The Sopranos."

Episode 5 "The New Girl" had perhaps the biggest lift yet:

On a secluded country highway, Don Draper and an amour had a car-flipping crash that created a crisis.

On "The Sopranos," it was Tony and Adrianna who had that crash (they weren't trysting, but Chris wasn't buying), and later, (in an episode written by "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner), it was Tony and Chris who had a crash -- allowing Tony to kill the injured and helpless Chris.

So blatant was the copying here that I really think it was an "homage" from Weiner, to "The Sopranos" and to himself, and it came with a "twist": how will Don Draper get out of this scenario, given that he lacks a gangster's murderous clout?

P.S. The show has flirted with Hitchcock references, and this episode had a big one: for his visit to an outlying police station after the crash (with a DUI charge in possible play), Jon Hamm's Don Draper was costumed in Cary Grant's famous gray suit/gray tie/gray socks outfit from "North by Northwest," also about a womanizing ad man who spends a night in a New York coastal jail facing DUI charges.

Yep. Good call.

I about peed myself with the cut from Pete at the fertility doctor to Sterling and his paddle. He is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters ever.

Who is becoming the favorite character? Sterling or Pete? I like 'em both. Advantage: Sterling, for his amoral middle-aged cool.

The paddle bit was quite funny.

And I've since learned that with re the "North by Northwest" reference: both Don Draper and Cary Grant's character are in LONG ISLAND police stations, thus making the homage complete.

Though I figure more people will see the "Sopranos" connection than any to an old Hitchcock movie.

Slattery/Sterling is the one becoming an all-time favorite. He's out of hand.

Much of the humor in this show is reminiscent of the sense of humor often displayed on the Sopranos as well. It leaves me with a similar feeling. It tends to be a very quick punch and leaves a quiet beat for digestion and a chuckle. Pete's comment about the nurse, for example. And the aforementioned paddle bit.

John Slattery IS great, and the show "toys" with him. At this point, he's the only character with the potential to die on us (two heart attacks in the first season.) We really don't want to lose him. Though Slattery says that Matthew Weiner says in real life, Weiner's uncle had SIX heart attacks before dying.

--

I've come to feel that "Mad Men" is a continuation of "The Sopranos" in many ways. Not so much in the characters -- though Don Draper is as good/bad in his way as Tony Soprano was bad/good in his -- but in the writing with its dark humor, in the pacing, in the stylistic fades-in and fades- out, and in how every episode credit roll ends with a well-chosen popular song or mood piece as "The Sopranos" always did.

Nobody gets whacked on "Mad Men," and it lacks the "hard R" sex-and-nudity allowed on HBO, so it will never get "Sopranos" ratings.

Still, both shows share this: to study American worklife, home life, marital life, and family life, a "hook" is added. On "The Sopranos," it was Mafia Murder. On "Mad Men," it is early sixties nostalgia and ironic history.