Mad Men, AMC's critically acclaimed period drama, is about happiness, too—at least the things we think will make us happy. It's about high-gloss lies hiding long-buried truths. It's about the objectification of women, the idealization of family and the importance of a new-fangled television. It's about the long-held conviction that drinking makes you cool, smoking makes you sexy and a shiny new gizmo makes you a better person.

In short, Mad Men is all about ... advertising.

New and Improved!
The title Mad Men refers to the advertising execs who worked on New York's Madison Avenue during the 1960s, during what many consider advertising's golden age.

"To be in advertising then was the sexiest job in the world," says Matthew Weiner, Mad Men's creator. "Ad men were the rock stars of the era—cocky, eloquent, anti-authority creative people who made a lot of money and lived hard."

No one seems to epitomize that brash self-assuredness more than Don Draper, creative director of the fictional Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. Draper, with his chiseled face and dapper grey suits, looks as if he was clipped from one of his own photo spreads. He's crafted his own American dream from scratch, complete with beautiful wife, two adorable children and a big house in the suburbs. He's drunk on power, praise and three-martini lunches.

But Don's pitch-perfect life masks darker realities—including the fact that he's not Don Draper at all, but a guy named Richard Whitman, a one-time know-nothing soldier who volunteered for the Korean War to get away from an abusive home. When Draper's lieutenant dies in a wartime accident, Whitman switches dog tags and takes his commanding officer's name, cutting all ties with his previous life.

Is that a bad thing? Draper doesn't think so. In fact, he's willing to do it again when things get dicey, asking his lover (one of two he has in the first season) if she'd like to run away with him. And certainly no one in his biz is likely to punish him for his duplicity. When advertising subordinate Pete Campbell uncovers Draper's secret and tells their boss, he's bluntly told to mind his own business.

"Mr. Campbell," the boss says wearily, "who cares?" In this go-go world of advertising, image really is everything.

It Slices! It Dices!
Draper's own successes and secrets are a microcosm of the world of Mad Men. The era feels as unfamiliar and exotic as Renaissance England. It's a far more gracious, elegant time, when people "dressed" for dinner, rarely swore (we do hear the occasional s-word, "d--n" or "h---," but it's a far cry from Weiner's previous show, The Sopranos) and never talked about their problems. But it's also a time blissfully unaware of its own sins, clueless that its own excesses are spawning rebellion and dissatisfaction.

These mad men drink constantly, smoke incessantly, make racist remarks and treat women like cheap, pretty baubles. They call the office secretaries "sweeties" and ogle their assets. One wrestles a girl to the ground to see what color panties she's wearing. Another beds a secretary before and after his wedding day—a tryst that spawns a neglected baby boy. Marriage vows, it seems, are about as treasured as month-old coupons. The only character who seems to be (so far) reasonably loyal to and happy with his wife is Salvatore Romano, a man who battles homosexual urges.

This is a man's world, and women get by the best they can. Joan, the agency's head administrative assistant, is successful not by challenging the status quo (she is, after all, a secretary), but by mastering it—getting ahead by using both her brains and body. Betty, Don's wife, has realized many a mid-century girl's dream—the life of a well-to-do housewife—which, what with Don's philandering, doesn't seem all that dreamy. And then there's Peggy, a proto-career woman who becomes the first woman copywriter at the male-centric Sterling Cooper firm—just a little while after getting a prescription for birth control pills. Those pills, by the way, fail to do their job, and she gets pregnant by the previously mentioned slimy ad exec. (Instead of letting the new baby hold back her career, she passes him off to his grandmother.)

But Wait! There's More!
Clearly, the show has problems. Sex scenes can be raw, with flashes of breasts and behinds. Men cavort in strip clubs, and audiences sometimes see strippers wearing nothing but panties and pasties. The few minority characters we see are largely dismissed or derided. Most every character's sense of morality is just shy of abysmal. No wonder folks backing the show want to see it eventually go commercial-free like the series on premium cable channels HBO and Showtime. (AMC currently adheres to a commercial-dependent financial model.)

"A brand wants to sponsor a show and not face family-values attacks," Jon Kamen, CEO of the company that initially backed the Mad Men pilot, told Advertising Age.

But there's more at play here than just an excuse to glamorize the bad choices and ideas of the 1960s. Weiner realizes that the joys most of his characters chase are less than ideal. One suffers a heart attack in the first season—presumably brought on by all his smoking, drinking and three-egg breakfasts. Another loses a father he never really knew.

"I'm big on consequences," Weiner tells TV Guide. "We've seen Peggy's baby and we saw her reject it in the hospital. I'm trying to see if it's possible to show how life moves on past big events, and at the same time show that it doesn't."

Draper, for all his faults, is at times the show's moral center. He refuses to be blackmailed, turns down advances from young women (occasionally) and seems to be searching for something deeper. In the Season One finale, Draper decides to spend Thanksgiving with his wife's extended family rather than work through the holiday—a marked change for this driven company guy. But when he gets home, he finds his family's already gone. We see him sitting on the stairs, cradling his head.

"Don's trying to be a better guy," Jon Hamm, who plays him, tells The New York Times. "He's trying to get back to what it means to be a person in a family. He has a marriage he's not that involved in, kids he's not that involved in, a brother he wasn't involved with at all. He realizes these things have consequences. He tries to make amends a day late and a dollar short. That's his great tragedy."

There's that word consequences again.

Advertising is built around the idea that happiness doesn't come with consequences—that this cheeseburger is tasty (never mind it'll make you fat), that this plasma TV is nifty (never mind it'll wreck your credit), that this TV show will make you smarter (never mind that it won't). Yes, I'm talking about Mad Men, a slick series that won't make you a lick smarter no matter how many reviews you've read that indicate otherwise. It's crass and uncomfortable and without a clear role model anywhere in sight. But even as it goes gaga over bad behavior, it does dole out consequences. So at least there's that.

"All of us who professionally use mass media are the shapers of society," said legendary ad man William Bernbach. "We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level."

Mad Men, truthfully, does a bit of both.