Having watched all three TV shows. I feel MM, The Deuce and Show Me a Hero are all brilliant companion shows providing a dramatic narrative of New York City and the Boroughs.

Mad Men/The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.

Both shows have this cultural deep innocence of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Life is stratified, culture is defined by deep ingrained morals and certainties. As the years pass, a cultural haze drifts over MM as we pass into 1967-1968. The Vietnam war is gradually strangling the life out of its young.

Yet slowly the rot sets in, and the decades capitalism is becoming bloated, self agrandized and selfish. As Don Draper reckons with his failing self goals and morality. NYC is described as filthy and rotten by the characters.

The Deuce

The Deuce picks up right after or nearly at the same time of Mad Mens final season set in 1970. We move off Madison Avenue and to Times Square. NYC is beyond reproach, dangerous and unhealthy. If Mad Men was a portrayal of sauve capitalism and money, the Deuce is the underbelly and shadow of all that money. The character are broken, failed by society and feeding/leaching off everything broken in NYC. This finally catches up with everyone with the introduction of HIV/AIDS in mid 1980s. As Times Square is gentrified, NYC collectively forgets everything that came before it. It trades it away.

Show Me a Hero.

Yonker, New York. Society moves forward with racial integration against the wishes of many many people, the poverty, corruption and hubris of the 1980s hangs over the plot. You sense the move into 1990s was more like awful sickening hangover. As Don Draper could see the future of advertising in the 1970s and Irene could see the future of the adult industry, Nick Wasicsko reckons with struggle of political power and delivering promises to his constituents.