How cold and cyncical characters can succeed: Work in advertising!

Second episode of "Mad Men" Season 3 sets up more plot points for the series - Mrs. Draper's dad, suffering from Alzheimers, comes to live with the Drapers, and he'll be impossible to manage; the conflict between Cosgrove and Peter Campbell as they face off to become chief of accounts heats up - Campbell screwing up a meeting with the group that wants to tear down Penn Station (Draper comes to the rescue and takes on the account, personally), Cosgrove working to land the Diet Pepsi account. Peggy steps out of her shell a bit, inspired by an Ann-Margaret film clip, and wants to be more sexy - heads into a bar alone, hooks up with a guy. He's a dolt and thinks she must work as a secretary, and she doesn't disabuse him. I'm guessing we won't see him again, though a love interest for her might be a good plot element. Roger Sterling (John Slattery, my lookalike) dealing with family estrangement - his daughter doesn't want his new 20-something wife at her wedding. The Brits who bought Sterling Cooper seem unable to manage the company. As noted, lots of plot elements - not much coherence - in this episode. And other issues raised in episode one - Don's infidelity, Sal's homosexuality - don't even come into play. You get right down to it and Mad Men isn't so much about plot as about style and vignettes: the incredible coldness of all the characters, the cynical way they fake themselves through life, and turn that cynicism to their advantage as account execs.