Meet Michael Ginsberg: On ‘Mad Men,’ Sterling Cooper gets a Jewish copywriter

“Mad Men” is like the Jews — it gets a lot of attention for a show watched by less than 2 percent of the population.

To kick off its fifth season, the 1960s period program, winner of four straight Emmys for best drama, has a new Jewish character. To be more precise, the advertising firm at the center of the AMC show has its first Jewish employee: Michael Ginsberg (played by Ben Feldman).
And he’s, well, too Jewish.

At least he was in his first appearance, the two-episode season premiere earlier this month. It was like watching Eugene in a high school performance of “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

You know you have a problem when Roger Sterling and the WASPs at the advertising firm formerly known as Sterling Cooper seem less offensive than the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, and the writing crew (actually, Jon “Don Draper” Hamm directed the episode, so maybe he bears some of the blame).
The whining: Think Woody Allen on steroids. And the father … oy, with the Yiddish accent. It was like watching one of the well-meaning gentiles from “Waiting for Guffman” take a stab at the father from “Shine" (Armin Mueller-Stahl: No one will love you like I do).

If that weren’t enough, the episode ended with Ginsberg telling his father that he got the copywriter’s job and dad breaking out the priestly blessing generally recited by parents over their children at the Shabbos table.
Things took a turn for the better last weekend in the season’s third episode.
Whether Ginsberg was feeling more comfortable at work or the show’s writers had gotten some shtick out of their system, the character felt less forced. (OK, he staged a holier-than-thou walkout and had a talk-too-much moment that could have had him fired, but that just tells you how bad things were the previous episode.)

Ginsberg even gave us a line worth chewing on. After Don — that’s Don Draper, the firm’s creative director and the show’s sexy, charming and womanizing protagonist — makes a crack about Ginsberg’s voice, Ginsberg responds without missing a beat: "It’s a regional accent — you have one, too."

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