Like many, I was really taken in by the premise and pr front of Mad Men, the new drama series from AMC depicting 60’s Madison Ave. ad execs in all their three-martini-lunch, womanizing glory. Ten episodes later, I’m not so sure that this series has any staying power, and whether or not I want to watch any further. Here’s where I see trouble ahead.

First off, AMC is showing us too much of the inside of the sausage factory. If you go to their website they have short interviews with actual ad men from the period, character-by-character costume analysis by the designer, and a corny 60’s trivia quiz. While AMC intention is surely to build up the culture on which Mad Men is based, they are effectively exposing the show as raw elements, and in doing so destroying the walls holding in this highly-convincing fictional world. The whole effort seems at once desperate and self-congratulatory.

Coincidentally, it was this very kind of analysis, by the creator Matthew Weiner talking to Terry Gross on NPR, that roped me in in the first place. Weiner enthusiastically described the way visible drop ceilings, slightly dated-for-the-time costumes and stray hairs add realism to the office of Sterling Cooper where most of Mad Men takes place. He was right to focus on them, since these details are convincing, the best part of the show by far.

Yet after ten episodes, I have absolutely no emotional attachment to any character. Don Draper is too clever and too distant, and the rest of the cast is either unlikable, too shallow or two dimensional. But even unlikable characters can be brought to life by a coherent plot that raises questions and surprises us with how they are answered, but both are hard to find in Mad Men.

It would seem unfair to draw comparisons to the Sopranos, had AMC not reminded us again and again that Weiner wrote and produced for the show-to-beat. But since they brought it up, the Sopranos got everything right that Mad Men got right, and everything right that Mad Men is tanking on. The Sopranos was at least as convincing a modern-day suburban New Jersey as Mad Men is a 60’s Madison Ave (even with the benefit of a doubt M.M. gets from someone born well after Don Draper’s prime). But the Sopranos also managed the oft-applauded feat of making a very likable murderer, and put this murderer through plot arcs both wide and narrow, allowing the show to be enjoyed on a episode, season and series level.

I hope Mad Men pulls out of this early dive, but to do so, it’s going to need to get over its flawless style and start putting these witty, well-dressed mannequins to work.