AMC's Mad Men makes its return for a second season this Sunday and its been a year too long for me.

As implied in this post title, the show is indeed a mix of melancholy and cool. It's a vision of the 60s that, like The Sopranos, isn't afraid to embody as many contradictions as possible.

Here's the 4 reasons you should check out Mad Men:

1) Art Direction and Production Design - As it should be, nearly everything in this show is about two or more years behind where you'd think it would be. It's 1960 in season one, but the clothes and houses looks like it's 1958. Not only does this make the show more accurate--high fashion and the really cool stuff always takes few years to be truly mass market--but it adds to the show's themes of America being in constant transition. Everyone is simultaneously experiencing the past and the present.

2) Advertising as metaphor and prism- Setting this in the advertising world allows for some interesting observations on post-WWII/Cold War life in America. It also opens the door for characters to discover and revel things about themselves. Watch for Peggy's special encounter with an exercise belt that's brimming with literal and figurative connotations. And watch Don's inspired campaign for Kodak's Carousel that comes much too late as another prime example.

3) Secondary characters galore - All great television shows have secondary characters that come into their own. One of the best combination of moments is in episode 12 "Nixon Vs. Kennedy" and the follow up in episode 13 " The Wheel" when one indiscretion totally derails a character's marriage. An entire season's worth of character arc occurs in a total of 5 minutes across two episodes and is totally believable and is even more devastating for being so.

4) Don Draper and Peggy Olson - Too much to explain here, watch the show.

MGM finally announced what half the fanboy world already knew, Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) has signed on to do a sequel to Robocop. Harold and Kumar are getting a third outing (doesn't that violate the puff, puff, pass rule?). John Waters has agreed to outline a sequel to the musical Hairspray which was itself an adaptation of the stage musical, which was an adaptation of the original film.

When I first really started getting into film, I used to get upset at the announcements of remakes. Sequels were wholly dependent on who was involved and could the story logically continue. Which means I usually hated the idea because half, or all, of the original cast were out and the new story wasn't/or couldn't flow straight from the original.

Eventually, my disdain for remakes and sequels before I had seen them disappeared. What brought me around was the history of Hollywood itself. Since the early days, the biz has cannibalized its own catalog repeatedly. Sequels were a natural part of the cycle. And franchises, long before they were called such, were a huge part of the studio system.

There's the The Thin Man films (featuring the great Nick and Nora Charles), of which 6 were made, two of which are considered true classics. Before Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland there were more than half a dozen versions of the story. Sherlock Holmes holds the record for appearances on film at 200 plus, with Dracula coming up a close second. Considered one of the greatest romances in film history, An Affair to Remember (1957) is a remake of Love Affair (1939), and was directed by the same director, Leo McCarey. Of course, there's Hitchcock, who remade his own The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) with Jimmy Stewart in 1956.

When you realize that the 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much* and the 1957 An Affair to Remember are much more entertaining films than their counterparts, it's much more enjoyable to wait and see what comes of a remake or a sequel.

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan revived an entire Trek franchise and is still considered the best of the lot. Godfather II is an academy award winning masterpiece in its own right. And the recent The Dark Knight has proven that a superhero sequel can approach Best Picture status.

So are sequels and remakes a sign of no imagination? Do they lack heart and soul. No. Badly made sequels and remakes are signs of no heart, soul or imagination. But, doesn't that apply to all films?

*And yes, I do think that the 1934 version is much more entertaining and fun that the remake.