How and why Mad Men won me over

I'll be the 2 millionth person to weigh in today on the conclusion of Mad Men, and I've scrupulously today avoided reading what others had to say so I don't know if I'm w/ the mainstream or on my own but I found the final episode to be pretty much a success: yes, there were too many strands to untangle and too many plot lines that were just a check-in, and no I cannot buy the relationship between Peggy and Rizzo - and maybe we're not supposed to imagine it could last more than a few hours? - and yes it was hard to keep in mind the complexities of Don's switched identities and his obligations and loyalties to the family left behind in LA - but overall I think the final episode had a suitable balance of mystery, resolution, surprise, and inevitability. I love that we see Don change at the end - maybe not permanently, maybe not forever, but the scene in which the "ordinary man" whom everyone ignores tells his life story in the group session - he's a guy completely the opposite of Don, Mr. Anonymous, Mr. Nerd - and he breaks down into tears about his life and Don comes to embrace him and he, too breaks down - wonderful - it's not that Don saw himself in the man (as he did w/ the hustler to whom he left his Cadillac), as that he sees everything he isn't, he sees that he's the one everyone envies and he, too, feels hollow and insignificant. But it's also great that he doesn't disappear or die - rather, we see very subtly that he gets back into advertising - the Coke commercial closeout - but perhaps with new responsibilities and insights. His teach-choked farewell to Betsy was also quite painful and beautiful - he offered to take their children, and we kind of know he won't, but the very nice family scene in which his daughter is very sweet to Bobby, the now growing up kid brother, reassures us about that family without being saccharine. I know that many viewers were put off by the whole series, but if you stayed with it and began to care about the characters and to forgive them their trespasses, I think the journey was worth the candle so to speak: we really got to see characters, and actors, grow and evolve over a long course of time - in weird way it reminds me of that movie Boyhood - and, unlike other weaker series they may have started w/ strong characters or a great premise and then just lost stem and interest (Damages, The Killing) Mad Men continued to improve and grow (cf Breaking Bad) and it felt always in control, as if Weiner knew if not exactly what would happen episode by episode how he wanted to build the grand arc of his story: women coming of age and becoming themselves, men looking into their past and beginning to be held accountable for their bad behavior, with a few unrepentant scamps thrown in there as well. It's a show that was always on the verge of being cynical and immoral, but ends up being neither. It's a show about people I never thought I would follow or care about or care to know but it won me over - one of the best.

Silent flows the Don: Wondering how they'll wrap up Mad Men over the next 3 episodes

The final season, or half-season, if Mad Men is stumbling toward its close and has taken a while - finished now with the first 3 of 6 episodes, to figure out exactly how to wrap things up without going over the top and without leaving too many strings untied. We see quite clearly in the first (and 2nd) episode that Don is still a player - as he seduces a coffee-shop waitress and then tries to very awkwardly to enter her life: his visit to her tawdry, Hopperesque mid-town apt., a world away from his East Side penthouse, is one of the striking moments in the series. We don't see ex Meagan until the 2nd episode, nor do we see Betty or any of his children until episode three. But by episode three the shape of the final season begins to emerge from the fog: Roger dragoons Don into writing a piece for an agency annual Bahamas retreat, in which he'll reflect on the past accomplishments and present a vision of the future of the now corporate-owned ad shop. So Don spends time in episode 3 asking people about their goals - and he is surprise - not sure why he should be - about the mundane and predictable goals they espouse: success, fame, riches ... Obviously, he's going to write something far more personal, profound, and astonishing, though we have no idea what. Meanwhile, he squabbles w/ daughter - as his flawed personality becomes increasingly obvious to her as she mature - he's a shameless flirt and Don Juan, even among her teenage friends. A young ad exec also confronts done - saying he has no great strength or moral fiber, he's just good looking - and Don fires him on the spot. Hm. Meanwhile, Megan has left and cleared out all of Don's furniture - and he's selling the condo - leaving a sad shell of a place behind. Behind - but what lies ahead? A thrme of episode 3 is also atonement, or at least apology: Don wrestling with the idea of apologizing to those he's hurt or insulted or disappointed - but there are so many. We also have to wonder whether Don will also, in some way, come to terms with his complex childhood and the poverty of his youth that he's run away from - even from his identity - for his whole life: at the end of the previous season, he showed his children, for the first time, the house in which he grew up - blowing apart the myth he'd created of teh Midwestern boyhood - but will anything more come of that, or will Don's skills as a marketeer and a maker of illusion continue to hide the man behind the mask.

Mad Men sprints toward the finish and stumbles a bit on the way

The half-season of Mad Men has ended with a closing segment all too familiar: reorganization of Sterling Cooper, this time sold out to McCann and continuing under Rodger's management independently, the sale making all the partners quite wealthy. I find the corporate dueling the less interesting part of the series, and actually not very credibly presented - these matters take months or years to work out, but in the show they seem to take a ten-minute meeting and show of hands. To me, the season seems to have focused on Don and has left far too much unanswered: His marriage to Megan seems to be over, as she prefers to be in LA with a set much more attuned to her age and to her artistic interests. In others words, to her he's a hunk but a square, and a father figure at that. I think where the final season has to push is Don becoming clear about his background and more focused on his goals and responsibilities, a transformation of Don, similar to the process of therapy in a way: discussing or admitting all the trauma he endured (he touched on that in the Hershey meltdown), coming clean about his switched identity, and then moving on; it appears to me that staying in NYC advertising will kill him. That said, I do like to see the ad pitches and how they develop the concept and sell it to a client - and hope we can see more of that - but the pitches all must be in the service of character development, or, as it happens, of character conclusion as we near the end. Betty and the children played a surprisingly big role in this final episode of the half-season: is that a hint? Megan had almost no role; she may be being pushed aside, on line speculation to the contrary. We all hope Peggy and Joan will find some happiness, right? But why is Ted being brought back to NYC (and into the plot again, after almost vanishing for 7 episodes) - something to do w/ Peggy, or a rivalry w/ Don, or a new element, as he has said he's sick of advertising, yet he's bound to the wheel of fire. Not much of a spoiler, but: Was anyone surprised that Cooper died? But what was with that soft-shoe he performed post mortem? For a moment I thought I was watching an Ally McBeal re-run.

An image that capture the insidious nature of advertising

Though apparently there's one more episode in the current half-season of Mad Men, it's worth weighing in on a few points in episode 6, which, while not the best written of the series - it's a bit choppy and over-burdened with plot - does advance the story line in some significant ways. As we depart from episode 6 we see that Megan is moving ever farther, emotionally and professionally, away from Don: she doesn't seem to miss him all that much, and she's bring more and more of her "stuff" out to California. Suddenly, the character of Joan is revived in this episode, and she makes a rather beautiful confession: that she's truly for romantic love, for a man who will care for her, and, as she puts it, rather than accept a proposal of convenience (from a gay colleague who wants to be married for appearances, and will certainly treat her well every way but sexually and romantically) she would rather die at least hoping for that chance. This moment is significant largely because of its contrast with everything else in the MM world. As this season focuses increasingly on Don (with a little pull-back in this episode), we see a very beautiful scene in which he's working late at night or early a.m. even with Peggy and confesses to her that he feels his life is a failure - and we know how empty and alone she feels, how she feels she has driven men away from her - and then a Sinatra song comes on the radio and Don asks Peggy to dance, and he lightly kisses her hair, not at all as a come-on but almost paternalistic. He's still her mentor, and in this key scene, she is big enough to realize that he's the true genius and she wants to learn how he thinks. She does think: and comes up w/ the idea for their client, Burger Chef!, that at their restaurants "every table is a family table." She pitches that to Don and to the despicable Pete and in an incredibly poignant closing image we see the 3 of them sitting at a table in Burger Chef - and could there be any 3 people who are less involved w/ family? Each has spurred or destroyed a family, maybe several. Each is basically alone. They barely trust one another. But there they sit, talking about every table being a family table, and for us, it's a tableaux, like a renaissance painting perhaps, the annunciation of the insidious, deceitful, self-delusional nature of advertising - brilliant minds using words to ill effect. It's no wonder Don considers himself a failure - but what will he do?

Don Draper comes to terms with his life: Mad Men final season

I guess Mad Men has always been about Don Draper but the (final) current season (7?) is really the story of Don - he's a much more prominent figure here than in any of the preceding: his "first family" barely plays a role in the first 3 episodes, except for daughter, who by the way has blossomed into a terrific teen actress - and one of the best segments of the first 3 episodes was Don's struggle with her and his gradually winning her over through not bullying but caring and communication. The preceding season ended with Don's Hershey meltdown, when he told the sordid story of his life, more of less, during a horrifyingly wrong pitch; final moment was his taking his kids to the dilapidated house where he was born - at last he is opening up to others about his difficult childhood. But those themes have not precisely been picked up in the final season; rather, we see other ways in which Don tries to know himself and be a good man: he turns down opportunities for gratuitous sex, he truly seems to want to get back to work, in particularly at Sterling (spoiler: at end of 3rd episode he does go back, accepting, or at least so it seems, very unfavorable and constricting terms). Again and again I'm impressed with the writing - as in the great The Wire, there's not a line you want to miss, everything that's said adds some to plot or character or both. As Don gains his stability, the agency seems to be reeling - and if I have any quibbles about the top of season 7 it's that we don't really see enough about the ad business: in earlier episodes, it seemed most episode was based on a single pitch, but we've moved off of that by now and the story is more about the characters, which leads to the danger of the plot veering toward soap or melodrama. That hasn't happened - yet - and Don's return to the office may bring us more about the business life, and it's obvious that office politics here are a blood sport. The wild card now is Don's relationship with Meghan, who is in LA and trying to make it as a TV actress, with some - but not complete - success. In episode 3 their relationship seems very endangered - and Don may ultimately have to decide between building his profession in NY or moving out to LA to save his marriage. Is he married to Meghan or to his work? I suspect the latter - but that will have to evolve. Betsy's ominous presence in the 3rd episode might also be a looming plot element - is it conceivable that Don would get back with her in some way? She remains the iciest of ice queens, and we have to wonder how long 2nd husband will put up with her, too.

Advertising men, they con - End of Season 6 of Mad Men

What are we up to now, Season 6 of Mad Men? Watched the season-closer last night and once again found the season entirely compelling even though there's hardly a character that we like. Yet we love to loathe them: the addicted and narcisstic and sexist men, the ice-cold and ruthless women. Yes, we kind of like Joan and Peggy, and yes Megan has become a very nice and caring if beset-upon spouse and soap actress, and yes some of the peripheral characters in the ad agency and even Roger, my twin, have their redeeming qualities - but what a world! What's great about this season, at last, and particularly this final episode, is the evolution of Don. From the first episode, when he thought about Hawaii as a place to disappear, I was pretty sure that Don would vanish into a new personality - as he had done after his service in Korea, when he adopted the Don Draper identity from a comrade killed in action. I was only partially right. By the end, he isn't disappearing into a new personality, but he is at last recognizing and even proclaiming who he is and where he came from. After many flashback scenes to his difficult childhood, he at last recognizes that his childhood is formative - repressing these memories is literally killing him (as he begins to see after a night in the clink for punching a minister - who reminded him of a boyhood trauma). In one of the great scenes in the entire series, Don completely blows apart a client-pitch meeting (with Hershey) by telling the group that he was raised in a whorehouse and he yearned to be like other kids. Everyone at the table is aghast, of course. Roger asks Don if "any of that was true" - his closest friend and business partner, and he'd known nothing about Don's life. Advertising is all an illusion, deceit - obviously - much like Hollywood/LA (where the plot seems to be heading - Don yearning for a new beginning) - and Don is now exposing some of the hypocrisy and lies, especially his own. Partners force him to go on leave indefinitely - and season ends with him showing his astonished kids the dilapidated house where he grew up; amazing that they know so little about him (and I was surprised to learn he grew up in the NY metro area - we'd been led to think he was Midwestern). The look on Sally's face at the end is great - she's become a really good actor, BTW. So where will Don go? One might think that he will give up the business and become a writer - trying to tell the truth about his life. But that's a romantic notion - of writers, and of life.

Summer of 68: Mad Men latest episode one of the best

Season 6? 7? whatever we're in in Mad Men had been generally running on empty for a few episodes, but the Sunday broadcast gave the series a jolt of energy - I noticed on the credits that creator Matthew Weiner wrote this episode, so I was expecting a pretty good one - not disappointed. After a langourish but promising opening episode - too long and slow-paced, two-hour episodes are a mistake - but it did establish the important theme of the disintegration of Don's personality and hinted at a possible 2nd new identity for the shape-shifting hero: this theme, however, has not been developed or even touched on really since the first episode, though we do see Don increasingly as a sex-addicted man who will ruin everything in his life eventually just to seduce another woman. He even breaks the taboos - sex with wife of close friend - just because he can; meanwhile Meaghan is getting to realize that Don is no longer interested in her, or not the way he was. Enter this episode, in which among other things: M.'s French mother convinces her to dress sexy to keep Don's interest, it works (for now), Don tells off the despicable Jaguar dealer, kissing that prestigious account good-bye and pissing off everyone in the agency; Pete runs across his father-in-law in a Manhattan whorehouse, embarrassing for both, but the dad pulls his account from the agency - Pete getting increasingly isolated, and tensions building in Peggy's relationship with the Jewish journalist, as she's obviously getting more interested in her boss, and finally Don and Peggy's agencies pitch a Chevy account jointly and decide to merge - great, because Peggy had been slipping off the edge of the plot lately. All of this sounds very gossipy and soap, but despite that the series keeps us, or me, tuned in because of the strong central personalities, the evocative period detail (we're now in 1968, a hopeful moment when people though McCarthy or RFK could win the nomination), and the inside look at developing an ad pitch and wooing and winning clients. One of the best episodes - and the series sure needed it at this point in the season.

Too much of a good thing can make it a bad thing: Mad Men 6 premier

Unlike friend TB who enjoys the commercial interruptions on Mad Men as if they're commentary on the show itself, like illuminations in the margins of a medieval manuscript, I am thankful for DVRs that let us more or less skip over the ads to watch the admen - and still - even foreshortened - a 2-hour episode is just way too long; episodic TV is meant to be an hour or less and that's it - 2 hours makes it into a bad movie rather than a big episode - and in fact there was plenty of material for a good (if not great) episode in the MM Season 6 premier: Roger crying over the shoeshine guy's box, Donald's smirky expression while Meagan's having fun on the beach, Peggy oblivious and officious, a mean boss and the most talented one on the room, Betty's visit to the lower east side. And yet - all stretched too think way too much dead space, too many plots twisting around one another and strangling the life out of the series. Sadly, the show seems to be edging away from life in the office - the mixture of talent and debauchery, the office politics, the way in which we see how ad folks work and think, the strange moral confusions involved with client relationship - and becoming more about a bunch of relationships among people who just happen to work in the same place or in the same industry. Friends and sub-friends on FB have been chattering about this episode, and noting the many death injuries have surmised that Don will die in Season 6; I doubt that (especially as there will apparently be a final Season 7) - mostly I see the death images as being subsumed to the images of change in identity: we know that Don did assume a new identity after the Korean War, and the urge to shed his identity and assume a new one is more than broadly hinted at here: from his reading The Inferno in the opening scene (In the middle of my life ... ) to his obvious boredom with Meagan and with his work, to the encounter with the Army guy and the inadvertent exchange of lighters (his first ID change involved an Army buddy, too), the wedding in which Don an obvious outsider poses as a friend of the groom, and finally the bizarre ad campaign he develops for the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the end of Season 6, I predict, Don will be alive but will no longer be Don.

What, me worry? About Mad Men.

Though the final episode of Season 5 of "Mad Men" was disappointing - lots of check-ins on various characters and plot elements (Pete's affair with fellow commuter's wife, Megan's fledgling acting career) there are no real developments or surprises or cliff hangers, the strongest moments in the episode being Don's visit to Lane's widow and her cold and cutting dismissal of his offer of financial help - she obviously blames his death on the Madison Avenue culture of male irresponsibility and indulgence, and she's right - and the weakest element being Don's inexplicable toothache, what's that about?, and why is he suddenly having visions of his suicide brother? - and the most intriguing being Roger's affair with Megan's mother, is he about to become Don's step-father-in-law? crazy? - but having said all that, Season 5 was very fine altogether. As in the best of TV series, we see characters grow and develop over a long span of time, with broadcast time literally matching calendar time in the actors' (and our) lives - and we come to like and appreciate characters we'd at first found dismal and hopeless or even malevolent: case in point Don, who showed many signs of real moral fortitude in Season 5, the lone objector to the plot to pimp out Joan in order to win the Jaguar account, the only one who could truly speak kindly to Lane; and Megan, whom at first most of us dismissed as a bimbo and a hopeless mate for Don - the French can-can song she sang at his birthday party being her low point probably - has grown into a smart and kind character, specially wise with children - though in the final moments of the season she looks ridiculous dressed up for an ad shot that Don landed her - seems beneath her standards and harmful to her self-image, as she's trying to build a career on her own, or at least I'd thought she was. Too bad Joan had only a small role in the season - though the Jaguar episode was one of the best Mad Men episodes of all time - and too bad Betsy has been pushed aside. Otherwise, a very strong season, and may Mad Men live on.

Sexism, sexy cars, and one of the best Mad Men episodes ever

Have to note - spoilers here so stop if you haven't seen it - that this week's episode of "Mad Men" is clearly one of the best in the whole series: the episode centers on the Jaguar account and the lengths to which, or depths to which more accurately, the team is willing to go to win this big account: the head of the Jaguar dealership lets the sales team know that he'll make it impossible for them unless they set up for him a night with the office beauty - a B-52 I think he calls her - Joan. This is repulsive - far worse than garden-variety sexism that exists throughout the agency and throughout the culture - it's just plain pimping and prostitution. And it's amazing to see how everyone goes along with this, and how the writers and producer Weiner make this credible and complex and interesting. This episode examines sexism and exploitation in many facets, without every getting didactic or polemical - just explores these themes through excellent writing and acting: Megan hoping to begin her acting career but realizes her dreams may be thwarted by the expectations of her husband, Don, that she'll be there for him every night (and apparently she loses a part because she's not sexy enough); Peggy feeling belittled by Don, who wants her to remain forever his protege and in his thrall - and she actually gives her notice (not sure how they can carry through with this) and Don is weirdly moved. Also, the Jaguar campaign itself - selling the car as like a "mistress." And most of all Joan, who has to wrestle with this decision - pushed along by some of the partners who each has his own selfish motive - and if so at what price. Very interesting twist in the plot as Don at first doesn't believe she slept with the scum, and, when he realizes that she did, has no faith that the agency won the account because of the best pitch - which completely taints the victory for him - episode ends with him miserable, Peggy walking out, everyone else joyous. There's so much going on in this episode - and especially when you think about the 5-year arc of the whole series and how the role of women in business and society was changing so rapidly over that course of time, from 1960 to 1965.

Nasty, gruesome, impossible not to watch - Mad Men

The world is not a gentle place for the characters in "Mad Men" Season 5 - where shall I begin? Don Draper increasingly concerned about the waning of his creative talent, and actually picks a rivalry with the supersmart, creative, but completely unpolished copywriter Ginzberg - who is feeling (rightly) unappreciated: Does he bolt? Roger now broken off with his 2nd, much younger (of course) Jewish (surprise) wife, but is feeling lonely and gets back with her for one fling - and she's spiteful and resentful. He claims to have been completely changed by one LSD trip - one of the less credible elements of he season. Betty Draper is moving to the fringes of the show, still a manipulative bitch, but we're building a little bit of sympathy with her as we watch this beauty struggle with her weight. Pete Campbell narcissistic as ever has a fling with the lonely wife of a very obnoxious and sexist fellow commuter, and this episode seems to haunt him - he can't stop obsessing - and most of all (and this goes for many of these sad character) he doesn't realize how fortunate he is: he's married to a lovely woman and is throwing it all away for nothing. Don's new wife (his 3rd, as we're reminded) is actually one of the most likable characters in the season - easy to write Megan off as a bimbo, and to scorn her dreams of becoming an actor, when she doesn't show any obvious drive or talent - but she proves time and again to be wise and compassionate, one of the few good people in the lives of Don's kids, especially the oldest daughter - becoming a troubled young woman who's starting to push Megan away in spite? or in fear of closeness? Joan has almost no role in the middle of this season - after a great episode in which she kicked her army doctor husband out of her life. Peggy is robably the best character in the season - always crisp and smart, totally independent, we've watched her over 5 years mature as a character (and watched Elisabeth Moss mature as an actor as well). I still love the working scenes and the team develops an ad concept and tries to sell it - one great episode involved the Heinz account and Peggy's futile effort to interest the company in her pitch. Another great one had Ginzberg deliver his own pitch for a Cinderalla campaign for a shoe company - a great pitch, that provoked Don's ire, and jealousy. One really strong episode ended with all of the main characters sitting around a table at an awards dinner, all glum and depressed, but each for a different reason. The season is uneven, but the show continues to fascinate - it's like a car wreck - nasty, gruesome, impossible not to watch.

Season 5 of Mad Men at last came together in episode 4

We're four episodes into Season 5 of "Mad Men," and I'd been holding off for a number of reasons but mainly because I was somewhat disappointed in the first 4 episodes - especially the dull 2-hour season opener (far too long a time segment for this kind of incrementalist series). Season 5 seemed to be having some trouble establishing, or re-establishing characters and finding an over-riding theme: Don settling into marriage with Meagan and dealing with issues such as his wayward past, his being much older than Meagan, his sense of guilt about the breakup of his marriage - kind of well-worn territory; Betsy's angst about her weight and a medical scare as well (January Jones either gained weight for the part or the did some digital reimaging); the breakup apparently of Joan's marriage to that stiff. All of this, however, came together beautifully in episode 4 (directed by my clone, John Slattery) - a terrific and really funny blending of several plot lines: the insufferable Pete gets into a fist-fight with the needy and nerdy Lane, a hilarious suburban dinner party and Pete's in which Don wears a weird madras jacket, fashionable at the time, and Don becomes the new exemplar of marital fidelity (!). The only thing slightly off in episode 4 was the young exec's writing career, which he keeps under wraps - not sure why that would be so, thousands of ad guys (Heller, Yates, Gaddis) pursued serious writing on the side. I also really like the rough-edged genious ad guy Ginzberg introduced earlier, who had no role in this episode - and I hope he stays a part of the team.

The shocker at the end of Mad Men Season 4: Can you believe it?

"Mad Men" Season 4 ends with the expected ambiguity and tension - this series gets better and better as the plot lines and the characters mature. Lots of spoilers to come: I expected the season to end with some major crisis involving Don's daughter Sally, who seems to be on a collision course with adolescence, but she seems to have grown up a bit, with help from a very nice psychologist - the real tensions remain between Don and Betty, Betty now behaving with such impulsive cruelty that even her good-guy husband, Henry, has begun to call her on it - she needs to go back into therapy, but of course she was badly burned before by a therapist who unethically spilled her secrets to Don. Meanwhile, talk about impulsive, Don takes his secretary Megan (what kind of name is that for a French-Canadian?) with him to California to watch the kids. Unsurprisingly, they have sex - he's such an addict that he can't keep away from her, even though he was developing a really good relationship with a research psychologist who seemed totally right for him and devoted - OK, so if it's just sex, so what, but then, amazingly, he proposes, she, totally smitten, accepts - back in the office everyone, especially the girls, roll their eyes - falling for his secretary, the oldest one in the book. What are we to make of this? Can you even believe it? It's a little hard to accept that he would propose - but now that he's done so, what good can come of this ridiculous relationship? The wild card is that Betty is now unhappy with her marriage, and how will those two forces collide in Season 5, whenever that happens. Still totally interesting to watch the business side of advertising develop, too, as the young staff at the agency go after new accounts to keep the firm from crumbling. A really good series that could possibly go on for many years. Let's hope.

Don Draper hits his lowest point, and Peggy Olson continues to surprise : Mad Men

Season 4 of "Mad Men" part 2 (episodes 6-9) brings Don Draper to his lowest point and from there can only build him up. The terrific episode 7, probably the best-scripted in the entire series, takes place in one harrowing 24-hour span, the day that Clay KO's Liston, a hot May night, Don and Peggy working late, Peggy standing up her boyfriend and standing up to her parents, some sexual tension between Don and Peggy, ends with Don drunk and puking, then clumsily wrestling with the loathsome drunk Duck, and dawn and last and a fresh start. From this point, Don realizes he has to cut back on the drinking - but how can he do so in this heavy-drinking culture? The one guy who quit, Fred, is considered a square and a pariah. As Don tries, a little, to clean up, his family life gets even worse and stranger, with at last a big blow-up with Betty over their daughter, increasingly disturbed - young girl shows up at Don's office, and she says she never wants to go back home, she hates it there. How can he deal with this? His bachelor cave is no place for daughter to stay, barely even to visit. Meanwhile, Peggy, whom everyone misunderstands and presupposes to be an uptight prude, again proves to be smarter, cannier, and actually more progressive-thinking than any of the louts around her - as she speaks out for women's rights and actually pushes back against a client that won't hire black workers in the South. We'll see if this strand of hers is just tolerated as an eccentricity or gets her in trouble, marginalized, or canned.

Mad Men (season 4) remains totally compelling - like a car wreck

Season 4 of "Mad Men," with the crew from Sterling Cooper now set up as a new, struggling agency (thought it looks pretty well established to me) and with Betty remarried to the governor's aide and Don living in dingy bachelor quarters reamins a totally engrossing, compelling, watchable series - much as a car wreck beside a highway is totally engrossing, compelling, and watchable. The characters in Mad Men remain (almost) totally unlikable and, even when sympathetic, deeply flawed, selfish, valueless - and yet, and yet - how can you not be curious about them and even root for them to get that next contract or to meeting a nice guy or gal and settle down with their lives? One of the many pleasures of the series is how well it captures the look and the idiom of the era, now moving forward to early 1964 - though still a bit retro, even for its day. These guys are 50s throwbacks in a changing world, and Peggy is at times a window onto this changing world, the youngest of the crew and though she seems to be a total "square" she is much more than she seems, as she begins to hang out with a Village crowd (her new boyfriend assumes she's inexperienced - boy, is he wrong). Betty/January Jones has moved more toward the margins of the series, and she has become even more ice-cold and a brutal mother. Don/John Hamm remains the stolid central character, plunging ever deeper into his alcoholism - we know he'll come out of it, we know he'll establish a relation of sorts with one of the many women around him (I'm betting on the public-opinion researcher), but will it save him or destroy her?

Flying off to Reno, as Mad Men Season 3 concludes

The 3rd season of "Mad Men" ends on two entirely different "notes." One the one hand: as an ad conglomerate is about to buy out Sterling-Cooper the corps team (most of the main characters in the firm, but not all) put together a surreptitious plan to leave and start their own firm, at first operating out of a hotel suite. It's kind of unlikely, and kind of fun - they're like kids in one of the old movies - Let's put on a show! - and also a bit like the 7 Samurai, selecting one by one the perfect members of the team. On the darker note, not only does Ice Queen Betsy tell Don she wants a divorce and forces him to leave the house (and kids), she appears to be going through with it, heading off to Nevada at the end, baby in her lap, with her new beau (Henry Francis, the governor's aide) alongside her. I suppose it's possible they will marry in season 4, but can this last? Can either one of them be serious? Obviously he's attracted to her - he's not the only guy who is, if you like that type - but they've said hardly a word to each other, just gone through a telephone flirtation and a few brief meetings, in mostly public venues. I guess people have gotten married impulsively and foolishly before, on a wing and a prayer, but this seems pretty ridiculous and out of character, especially for Betsy. Anyway, final episode of the season mostly a plot wrap-up, though it effectively sets up some good situations to develop in Season 4. At least the likable Sal will probably get his job back!

The death of a president darkens Mad Men

I was wrong, but kinda right. I knew that Season 3 of "Mad Men" was heading toward a denouement, which I thought would culminate in the Kennedy assassination, but it happens that the assassination occurs in episode 12, the penultimate. Though one of us thought this was among the most powerful episodes, I have to disagree. I think the Kennedy assassination, so troubling and dramatic, dominates the show. I was far more interested in seeing the many news clips, which they cleverly play on the old b/w TVs with the ever-annoying "vertical hold" issue, who remembers that?, disturbing the images, ever in the background. That's what I wanted to watch, the old film clips - makes you realize what a different world we're in now, the newsmen then all rumpled and the information moving so slowly and no visuals or backgrounds or news crawls or logos or anything that glows in the dark today. Strangely, this made the whole hi-def set of Mad Men look much more contemporary, a jarring effect. In this episode, focused on the disastrous wedding of Roger Sterling's daughter (ill timed), Betsy tells Don she doesn't love him, she's even colder than usual, just as he seems (somewhat) chastened and maybe willing to become a good father and husband. But she's driving him away, and again wrestling with her attraction to the governor's adviser. Meanwhile, Peggy continues her relation with the hateful Duck, Pete Campbell passed over for a promotion and extremely bitter (I actually begin to like him for a moment), and what ever happened to poor Sal? Increasingly, I begin to think that, with the exception of Don, the Mad Men have better wives (or ex-wives) than they deserve.

Don Draper Cries (and the world does not end)

At last Betsy Draper confronts Don about his secret past in a great scene, one of the longest and by far the most intense in the entire "Mad Men" series. The scene is amazingly well set up, as Don swings by the house with new girlfriends (Suzanne) waiting in the car - he thinks Betsy and the kids are away - and when he steps in Betsy unloads on him in her steely way. Through the whole confrontation, we can't (Don can't either) stop thinking about the girl outside in the car, like a ticking time bomb. But the real time bomb is inside. Don is truly shaken, trembling, needs a drink, very well acted by the usually too stolid John Hamm. Alomst the entire scene as Don confesses to Betsy all (or many) of the secrets of his past shot in dimly lit close up - the intensity of the two of them is almost unbearable, terrific. Don shows emotion we had never seen in him before. In a way, so does Betsy, moving from fury to a moment, just a moment of sympathy and pity, as she puts a hand on his shoulder. Maybe Don is ready to move on to a new level, to become a (again?) a new man - and yet, and yet - what happens the next morning but he slams shut his office door and calls Suzanne to apologize. He won't, can't, give her up. He's saved by one thing - that she's worried about losing her teaching job - so it's unlikely that she'll pull a Fatal Attraction and burst into his life (I'd earlier thought she would do that). Don is still a deeply troubled man, and one evening of curt and clipped confessions to the ice queen will not change him. Meanwhile, Joanie's marriage seems doomed - can we imagine her as an army doctor's wife? Not hardly.

The gap between Don & Betsy is now a chasm: Two Nasty People

Though I'm not nuts about the complex plot line in "Mad Men" that explores Don Draper's mysterious past, it is a ticking time bomb that eventually will have to explode, and the ticking gets louder in episode 10 of Season 3, as Betsy discovers that box in which Don (improbably?) retains revelatory documents: a divorce certificate, dog tags, childhood pictures. Don - now fully engaged in yet another affair and betrayal, this time with the hot young elementary-school teacher, who will inevitably bring him Fatal Attraction-like trouble - is oblivious to Betsy's discovery, or basically to anything about Betsy. Granted, she's so cold all the time it's hard for anyone to know when she might be angry. But eventually she's going to have to tell him what she's found and ask for an explanation. She still seems weirdly drawn to the gubernatorial advisor - calling him out of the blue, then feeling guilty - and we have to suspect she will throw herself at him eventually. She will want to get back at Don for sure. Less happening at the ad agency this episode, with some of the main characters not appearing at all. But we do learn that the Brits are trying to sell Sterling-Cooper. All told, a quieter episode than some, but a lot of tension is building, as the gap between Don and Betsy widens into a chasm. You keep wanting to like one or the other of them, but they keep betraying your hopes at every turn - they're two nasty people who maybe deserve each other. Don even getting more nasty at work, bullying his staff and curt with everyone else.

Marriage on the verge of incineration (Mad Men)

Everyone's either on thin ice, in hot water, or playing with fire, to use three cliches to describe the terrific 9th episode of Season 3 of "Mad Men." Don now literally being tormented by the increasingly lunatic Conrad Hilton, calling him at all hours with crazy ad ideas and ripping Don apart because he didn't create an ad campaign about a Hilton on the moon. Don will whore himself for any wealthy client, they all will, but it's got to tear him up inside; there's also a real father-son thing going on between these two. Meanwhile, another wealthy client comes on to the closeted and repressed Sal, and when Sal rebuffs him the client wants Sterling Cooper to fire Sal. Amazingly, they do - Don shows he's homophobic, not a surprise, I guess, given the time, but his cruelty to Sal shows once again his nasty streak. Meanwhile, Betsy continues to flirt with the gubernatorial aide, she's obviously not sure what she wants, on the one hand writing notes to him, visiting his office, and then pushing him away, accusing him. It's almost as if she wants Don to catch her, and maybe he will. This episode more than any so far simmers with sexual tension - every marriage on the show looks to be on the verge of incineration, every main character seems bent on self-destruction. Meanwhile, news reports keep leaking in at the seams of the story: civil rights demonstrations, the Goldwater v. Rockefeller primary. My prediction is that the season will end with the news of the Kennedy assassination.