It's no secret that Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, is really uptight about spoilers. But according to James Poniewozik of TIME Magazine, too much is too much. The journalist has expressed his disappointment in Weiner's policy with an article titled "I Have No Idea What Is a Mad Men Spoiler Anymore." Poniewozik's incredulity is expanded greatly in the article, citing that Weiner does not hold to himself the standards he does to other journalists:
"AMC sent out review copies of the season's first episode to critics, with a request from Matthew Weiner that reviews mention no plot details whatsoever from the episode. Weiner was upset that some reviews mentioned plot points anyway: for instance, the fact that Don and Betty Draper were divorced, a fact Weiner confirmed in an interview last fall." Poniewozik noted that this "spoiling" on the part of journalists was the reason that AMC gave for withholding further advance episodes.
"If he and AMC want to be absolutist about secrecy," Poniewozik wrote, "that's their prerogative."
Poniewozik also declared that AMC's spoiler policy toward Mad Men is even stricter than the much more popular shows LOST and The Sopranos had.
It's actually pretty common for shows to send out DVDs with cover letters asking that critics not mention specific scenes and plot developments; I pretty much always honor those, as do most critics I know. A reasonable list of no-fly zones in the cover letter probably would have eliminated most of the problems. But when AMC basically rules, "Everything's a spoiler," and then violates its own policy, it's hard to know how seriously to take them.
Poniewozik noted that AMC had also sent out a couple of sneak peeks from episode 4.03, "The Good News," something he viewed as even more hypocritical: "I simply cannot fathom in what universe the relatively mild, if not downright obvious, information critics mentioned in pre-season Mad Men reviews are "spoilers," yet the episode 3 clip AMC willingly released is not."
Of course, such spoiler policies are completely up to AMC and Weiner, but personally, I agree with Poniewozik. AMC seems to be completely violating its own spoiler policy, and then punishing journalists for even lesser offenses than that.
Weiner has been famously tight-lipped about spoilers, even refusing to tell reporters how much time has passed between seasons. Is it pretentiousness, or just creative protection? Either is possible, but the extent that Weiner goes to might just be slightly pretentious.
Regardless, Mad Men is one of the best shows on television, and I really don't care what Weiner and AMC do, as long as they keep churning out new episodes of the drama. That's all that really matters to me, at least.
Read Poniewozik's full article here.
I think that with the way the Internet, the blogosphere, and the Twitterverse works nowadays, if you want to surprise anybody with the show or movie you're doing, you can't reveal ANYTHING. At this point, if you visit any pop culture website, you know everything there is to know about any TV show that's currently on, because you've read the headlines of every article posted. And while "Mad Men" seems like a strange show to be so ultra tight-lipped over, I absolutely understand and support producers not wanting to reveal anything.
Interesting article, Sam. Food for thought.Things like the Internet and Twitter have made it really hard to avoid spoilers. I can't even look at Twitter within a few hours of the East Coast airing of some of my shows because everyone tweets everything and spoils it. And it's a fine line between wanting to know what's up with some of your favorite shows, and ending up spoiled. I like reading news articles about shows I love, but I have to be really picky what I choose to read because things get revealed. The only way to really, completely avoid spoilers seems to be to go into a little bubble and not come out.That said, if they really don't want critics to talk about ANYTHING from an episode, then why bother sending it out for review in the first place? They have to write about something.