Quote Originally Posted by Monk View Post
The slice of life genre typically is filled with a lot of "nothing" happening. It is more focused on character interaction and exploration rather than plot advancement. Character growth is usually a distant third in this case, as half the point is just seeing how the people act and react to one another. Obviously, it's not to everyone's liking and is something of an acquired taste. You either like it or you don't.
Eh, that seems like an excuse for unimaginative writing. Plus, it's also unrealistic. Many characters on the show go through rather significant dramatic events; events that would have a permanent impact on any normal person going through them. Yet on Mad Men little changes, no one ever learns from the past, and events from more than a year ago (chronologically) might as well have never happened. It shakes the believability of the characters, as well as their reactions to them. Plus, the show has actually had major plotlines at several points. The first season had a very solid plot running all the way from beginning to end. A few of the other seasons introduced major issues (largely work-related) that impacted most of the characters, but even then they were handled haphazardly and eventually resolved without making a significant impact on anything. I'm starting to compare Mad Men to Weeds and Dexter, two other shows I used to love, but eventually stopped watching because they continued for way too long after the writers had run out of ideas.

In any case, I neither like it nor dislike it. I've watched the entire thing from the beginning and will continue watching, though at this point I'm largely watching just because it's "a show I watch" rather than because I am interested in seeing what happens each week.