'Mad Men' Madness: The 60s, The Women & Don Draper

*Warning: MINOR season three spoiler ahead.*

It's Mad Men week here at Suburban Mom, leading up to the season three premiere on Sunday night. Set your DVRs for 10 p.m., August 16 (9 Central), even though I know that true fans will go old school and watch it live.

My new pop culture column this week is all about the award-winning AMC drama. It examines the show's first two seasons and concludes that while Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is clearly the star -- the central figure from which everything and everyone else is an offshoot -- the collection of Mad Men women represent "the moon, providing the show its gravitational pull."

Meanwhile, the New York Times had a piece about Mad Men which finally provided an answer to one key question about season three: What year will it be? The answer, according to the Times, is 1963, the year of the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, the Bull Connor-led attacks on peaceful civil rights protesters, Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," and, THE event, the John F. Kennedy assassination.

I'm hoping that in the third season, the women's stories continue evolving the way they have, messily, realistically and, in some cases, providing an aspirational empowering message. (I speak, of course, of Peggy Olson, advancing quickly in the masculine world of advertising). Plus I can't wait to see Don interact with a baby. Does Don Draper do diapers?

What are you most looking forward to in a new season?

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC.