With the brilliant period drama Mad Men returning this weekend almost a year after the close of its first season, its devoted fans are waiting in anticipation for a whole new batch of intriguing episodes. Just as enthralling as an Oscar-worthy film, but with many more hours of enjoyment to offer (and arguably more depth), Mad Men was created by Matthew Weiner, who was formerly a writer and producer of the mob drama The Sopranos. In fact, many of the top-notch creative people behind Mad Men worked on that much-loved HBO show. Critics have showered Mad Men with praise, it has already garnered numerous awards, and it recently received 16 Emmy nominations. As much as I’d love to tell prospective viewers to just tune in on Sunday, there’s too much to love and enjoy about those first 13 episodes for me to condone simply jumping in at this point — every episode deserves to be appreciated. It’s not too late for new viewers to join in, though, as that premiere season was just released on DVD earlier this month. Here’s an examination of what makes Mad Men such a captivating viewing experience, why you should be watching, and what to expect if you make the wise decision to purchase the DVD set.

When Mad Men, AMC’s first original drama series, premiered last summer, I was immediately transfixed. I’d never really wondered what life in an advertising agency was like, let alone a Madison Avenue ad office in 1960, but the show makes its subject riveting – not via heavy plot devices or extreme narrative turns, but through its characters. This is a key element that many a period drama sacrifices in favor of reveling in the styles of a particular era, but Mad Men succeeds in recreating the look of the time without losing sight of what really matters – creating intriguing, well-developed characters. In fact, the gorgeous visuals on display – from stylish furniture to an elegant dress to a handsomely cut suit – tend to serve as a superficial contrast to the hollowness of many of the ideals of the time. Everything looks great, but many of the characters are clearly unfulfilled by the material excess that is marketed to society by admen such as themselves. It being 1960, the professed morals of the time and the societal ideal of the nuclear family are shown in stark contrast to the actuality of boozing, chain-smoking, cheating businessmen and hemmed in women, be they secretaries, housewives, or the occasional businesswoman.

All the characters are stuck in their respective roles, but many are clearly stifled by the limitations of constantly playing the part. They’re on the precipice of all the changes that are soon to come in the tumultuous decade, but those societal revolutions are only a whisper as the series opens. Casual sexism, racism, and general misogyny are the norm – secretaries are assumed to be loose women, and even the idea of a divorced single mother moving into a neighborhood is regarded as a possible threat to real estate values. Race issues are on the periphery most of the time, but sexism is often at play, especially in the form of sexual harassment, before it even had a name. That’s not to say that the characters are treated as despicable, vile people who need to be taught a lesson, nor that the show itself is guilty of a corrupt world view. That’s where Mad Men is fascinating. It humanizes all of its characters and refuses to judge them outright; most of them have sympathetic moments as well as shameful ones. Men and women – even husbands and wives – are so culturally segregated from each other that the lack of opposite-sex peers has fed into their misconceptions about one another. Class and race issues sometimes come to the forefront, but they are always presented with finesse and to serve the story rather than to just illustrate a politically correct point.

Mad Men examines all of this turmoil and creates many enthralling character studies, peeling away layers slowly over time to reveal more and more about who these people really are. Front and center is the show’s enigmatic leading man, Jon Hamm, as star adman Don Draper. Classically handsome, well-dressed, and more than a little charming, Draper looks like the ideal man of the time; however, he’s incredibly secretive about his past and personal life, and the more we learn over the first season, the more it becomes clear that the foundations of this persona are not nearly as sturdy as he appears to be. Other male characters are also multifaceted, including lascivious agency co-partner Roger Sterling (John Slattery), and the weaselly junior account manager Pete Campbell (played to perfection by Vincent Kartheiser). Nonetheless, one of the best things about the show is that its female characters are just as rich and complex, from the naïve yet clever new secretary Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) to the shrewd, alluring office manager Joan Holloway (played by the refreshingly voluptuous Christina Hendricks), the understatedly elegant Jewish businesswoman Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), freewheeling Bohemian Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt), and even the seemingly perfect housewife Betty (January Jones). It would be easy for a period drama like this to focus mostly on the men – especially with a title like Mad Men – but in giving just as much priority to exploring the lives of its women, the series creates a much richer view of the era.

There has been a good deal of commentary about the excesses of the show, especially the smoking, the boozing, and the aforementioned prejudiced notions expressed by many of Mad Men’s characters. Yes, those elements are there, and maybe the former two are more indicative of the specific setting of the New York ad agency than society at large, but whether the behavior is totally accurate or somewhat exaggerated isn’t really as important as the fact that it serves the story well. If the behavior is heightened, perhaps it’s as a means to draw a more extreme contrast to the idealized wholesome morality of the day, setting the scene for a narrative that refuses to coat the past with rose-colored nostalgia. Characters may be behaving badly, but the show doesn’t sensationalize things just to get a rise out of viewers. All of the “isms” on display are presented so casually, often in jovial conversations, that it can be jarring at times, but it shows how much those ideas were just the status quo in 1960, and sometimes people didn’t know any better (though sometimes they were just jerks, of course). One hopes that they will eventually learn the error of that type of thinking, but that’s not the point of the series.

Despite the show’s more excessive elements, a great deal of restraint is exercised in the writing. Storylines are developed subtly, mysterious elements about characters can take a whole season to pay off, characters are allowed to evolve organically over time – Mad Men lets its inhabitants live rather than forcing them into contrived situations just to entertain the viewer. Nonetheless, the writing has a well thought out structure to it; the story arcs of the season are satisfyingly developed, but individual episodes also hold up on their own. Not to mention, there’s a great deal of humor and wit on display as well! We also get fascinating behind-the-scenes looks at the development of numerous ad campaigns; the characters struggle to figure out how to sell everything from Lucky Strike cigarettes, amidst initial reports about the health dangers of smoking, to the uptight persona of Richard M. Nixon as the much more charismatic John F. Kennedy wages one of the first presidential campaigns heavily influenced by modern advertising. Mad Men is a smart series that presents an in-depth examination of the era in which pop culture fully began to take hold of America, focusing on those who had a hand in shaping it. By also showing many of their lives to be hollow and unfulfilling, it serves to subtly question modern society’s much more rampant materialism as well.

So, if you’d like to experience Mad Men for yourself, the attractively packaged, reasonably priced new DVD set (also available in Blu-Ray) is well worth the money. The box itself is made to resemble a Zippo lighter, and opens up to reveal the four red discs as well as a small episode guide. There is commentary for every episode, and often there are two tracks per episode. Now, commentary is not something that everyone likes to dig into, but the set certainly offers a wealth of it for those who do. I tended to appreciate the writer and director commentaries more than the actor ones here, but the makers of the set really went out of their way to include a variety of the cast, from the main players to those in much smaller roles. Commentaries with creator Matthew Weiner, especially the pilot and the finale, are particularly interesting, as he has such a passion for the show and the period, and is very informative. Strangely, on a few others, there are several people on a commentary who are clearly being recorded separately, and their comments are just edited together. The writer, in one such instance unfortunately gets the short shrift, and at that point I just wish there was another track! There’s also an interactive costume, hair, and production design feature that’s a little bit guilty of form over substance; it displays people and sets in shadowed silhouettes until they are spotlighted and discussed, but it presents everything very slowly and has limited examples of each style or set. Additionally, there’s a lovely photo gallery, a featurette on the scoring of the show by composer David Carbonara, a music sampler of the tracks from the soundtrack CD that is now available, and a season two “preview” (which is really only includes shots from season one), but the premier special feature here is truly the hour-long documentary “Establishing Mad Men.” This featurette really goes in depth to chronicle the making of the show and includes people from every area of the production; it’s well put together, incredibly informative, and offers a lot of the info occasionally mentioned in the commentaries (without one having to sit through lots of chitchat). Overall, it’s a very impressive DVD release. With engrossing performances, intricate period production design, gorgeous cinematography (presented in attractive letterboxed format), and top-notch writing and directing, Mad Men makes for great marathon viewing, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

Mad Men returns to the television with its second season on Sunday, July 27, at 10 p.m. on AMC.