Jon Hamm Hosting SNL

Mad Men's Jon Hamm is slated to host Saturday Night Live this weekend and I'm hoping he'll kick some serious comedic behind. I need some laughs, please. The last time he hosted, he impersonated newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. Is another Mad Men spoof too much to ask for this week?

In the meantime, I've been catching up on SNL, in particular The View satire which wasn't as funny as it could've been given the ample source material the show's been providing lately. I hope this week's episode will be better.

Notes on Pop Culture: Mad at 'Mad Men,' Don Draper & Co. in Cartoons, 'The Big C' Finally Comes Clean

Mad at Mad Men

After allowing myself to stew about the Mad Men season four finale for a few days, I wrote this piece over on Mommy Tracked. The more I thought about the fourth season in its entirety, the more I became annoyed with how Betty Draper Frances was depicted as a distinctly unlikeable, unsympathetic character, as well as with Don’s choice of a substitute mate.

Other critics, including New York Magazine’s Emily Nussbaum, likewise weren't overjoyed with what has become of Betty ("While the ladies around her bloom, Betty hardens. Her character . . . gets even icier, vainer, more alien – nearly camp at times") and the New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante observed, in light of Don’s proposal to Megan, that the show exacted “vengeance on Faye for her lack of maternal instinct” and that Betty was portrayed negatively because of “her horrific one.”

The most interesting thing I discovered while researching my column: In season one, Don told Betty that she was a better mother than “anyone else in the world,” adding, “I would’ve given anything to have had a mother like you, beautiful and kind and filled with love, like an angel.”

Don Draper & Co., Cartoon Style

I’m still trying to figure out if this is some kind of a joke . . . but the internet is buzzing about these picture books that the UK's The Poke has created based on chain-smoking, expletive-spewing Mad Men characters.

The Poke has posted images of "Mr. Draper," "Little Miss Joan," "Mr. Campbell," "Little Miss Betty" and "Little Miss Peggy," and has posted the complete 17-page version of a book called “Mr. Sterling Gets Angry” in which there’s a debate over who drinks more whiskey, smokes more cigarettes and has more “inappropriate sex,” Roger Sterling or Don “I’m a goddamn sex machine in a suit” Draper.

I’d love to get these in print.

The Big C Finally Comes Clean

It finally happened, 10 episodes into The Big C’s freshman season on Showtime. Laura Linney’s Cathy Jamison character, who has spent most of the season not telling her husband and son that she has a serious, fatal case of melanoma -- and instead of getting treatment she had an affair, got her first bikini wax, bought a red sports car, took Ecstasy and punished her husband to the point where he finally asked for a divorce – finally told her husband, in the closing seconds of the episode, that she has cancer. NOW, things are going to get interesting. I reviewed this episode, “Divine Intervention” on CliqueClack TV.

Image credits: The Poke.

The Good Old Days: EW's Cast Reunions with 'Gilmore Girls,' 'West Wing' & 'Alias'

The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, which is on stands now, has this great reunion package where the casts of favorite TV shows and movies (like Back to the Future) were brought together for new photos, interviews and the occasional video.

My favorite video – unavailable for embedding on blogs – was the Jennifer Garner/Victor Garber Alias reunion video where Garner and Garber (sounds like the name of a law firm) sadly, batted down any talk of an Alias movie (Garber said everyone’s too old) while they fondly remembered the hellish long days of filming the pilot episode. Garber, who officiated Garner's wedding to Ben Affleck, said he stays at Garner's house whenever he's filming in Los Angeles. They're so cute together.



Meanwhile, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel from the Gilmore Girls also addressed the rumor of a Gilmore Girls film and reminisced about the season four episode "The Festival of Living Art" where they both posed on stage as famous works of art.



My other favorite EW reunion was seeing many of the castmates from The West Wing talk about what the show meant to them. I didn’t realize that Elisabeth Moss -- who played Zoey Bartlet and is now Peggy Olson on Mad Men -- was 17 when she started working on the show. And sometimes I forget that Kathryn Joosten was Mrs. Landingham before she was Karen McCluskey on Desperate Housewives.

'Mad Men's' Fools in Love, Or Just Plain Fools?

In episode 11 of the third season of Mad Men -- entitled, “The Gypsy and the Hobo” -- Betty confronted Don about that secret box that he kept in his locked drawer in his office. She demanded to know who was this man who called himself her husband, really? Why were there all these photos inside of his mystery box which included ones picturing Don, only they had a different name on the back of them? Who was Don’s first wife? Why did he buy her a house? Why were there multiple sets of dog tags inside? Why had he kept all this -- his secret identity, his lies about his family – from her after being married to her for more than a decade?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Betty asked. “Why couldn’t you tell me any of this?”

“When?” Don pushed back defensively. “The day we met? On our first date? On our wedding night? Why did you need to know?”

When Betty said she didn’t really feel like she knew him even after all that time together, she said, “You lied to me every day. I can’t trust you. I don’t know who you are.”

“Yes,” he said in a small voice, “you do.”

When Betty finally decided to end her marriage, in the wake of the JFK assassination at the end of episode 12, “The Grown-Ups,” she did so on the grounds that Don had started their marriage atop of a stack of lies, therefore rendering its foundation unstable from the beginning. “I don’t know where to begin . . . I want to scream at you for ruining all of this, but then you tried to fix it and there’s no point.”

At what point along the way will something like this conversation happen with Don’s wife-to-be Megan? Don certainly had an opening to tell her about his secrets when he tepidly told her, “I’ve done a lot of things,” and adding that Megan doesn’t really know him. To which she replied, “I know who you are now.”

Don may see Megan as his own, personal “fresh start” after a really crappy year which he spent punishing himself (including paying a prostitute to literally abuse him) for his failed marriage, but she’s not a fresh start, she can't be, not with Dick Whitman out there, lurking like a wet blanket. Eventually she’ll find out about it and he’ll have to endure this same conversation all over again about why he never told Megan that his real name isn’t Don Draper. Why he didn’t tell her when they met, or on their first date, etc.? Faye knew all about Don's stolen identity and was willing to stay with him anyway, but he made fast work in dumping her. Stupid man.

Does Don think the trick of telling his wife the truth again will actually work the second time around? Shouldn't she know about these vital pieces of information before marrying him? From this perspective, he’s not moving forward, he’s moving in circles, repeating his mistakes, only with a younger, improved model, one who’s good with children and doesn’t tend to explode in anger. Oh, and this new one speaks French, whereas the Bryn Mawr educated Betty spoke Italian.

Image credit: AMC

Don’s crazy marriage proposal to Megan also reminded me of Roger’s similarly impetuous move in season two which also occurred in the eleventh episode, “The Jet Set.” Roger had recently told Mona he was leaving her after three decades of matrimony to marry his young secretary Jane. After a romantic interlude in a hotel room, Jane was wrapped up in stark white sheets, her dark, wavy hair loosely hanging around her shoulders as she read aloud poetry she’d just written. (By contrast, Megan "Maria von Trapp" got Sally and Bobby to serenade Don in French in a hotel room.) Roger, who’d just emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a bright white bathrobe, sat down next to Jane and caressed her face and hair.

“Oh God, you’re getting to me,” Roger said. When Jane said she was afraid he was going to send her packing he said he’d never do that because, “I love you Jane.”

While she thought about that, he pressed forward, “I’m not being impulsive because I’ve been thinking about this all the time. I want you to be my wife.”

“What?” she asked, shocked.

“Marry me,” Roger said.

“What, Roger are you serious?” (Maybe she questioned his sincerity because he didn’t present an engagement ring like Don did to Megan.)

“Will you do that for me?” When Jane nodded yes, Roger donned the same kind of stupid grin on his face that Don wore when he sat down on the edge of the bed and asked Megan, who was wearing a nightgown, to marry him.

In the very next season two episode, “The Mountain King,” we saw that same kind of smile again, in flashbacks, when Don was confiding in Anna on Christmas Eve that he’d met someone, Betty. “I met a girl,” his face positively beaming in a boyish, naive way that you didn't see in the present day Don. “She’s so beautiful and happy. She’s a model and she’s from a good family and she’s educated . . . I just like the way she laughs and the way she looks at me. I want to ask her to marry me.”

Yes, that was Don talking about Betty. As laughing, as happy, as giving him adoring looks which he loved. And yet somehow, all of that went away and she blamed Don's cheating and lying for it.
“This is a chance at a whole new life,” Anna told him at the time. And that's what Don's counting on now, and what Roger was counting on when he proposed to his secretary in season two, yet in season four he impregnated the office manager in an alley and Faye said Don's fiance should know that he only likes the "new" parts of a relationship.

Roger and Don: Fools in love or just plain fools?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

The Cure for the 'Mad Men' Void: 'In Treatment'

The secrets we keep

The lies we tell

The truth we hide

It all comes out.

Season 3 Trailer

The intense, almost claustrophobic HBO therapy drama, In Treatment returns for its third season on Monday October 25 at 9 p.m., and just in time, as far as I'm concerned, because I’ll be anxiously using sessions with Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) to fill the philosophical/intellectual entertainment void that Mad Men left behind in the wake of the conclusion of its too brief fourth season. (Ironically, the advertising copy for this season's In Treatment -- listed above -- sounds like it could also be applied to Mad Men.)

For the uninitiated, In Treatment is a series of regular “appointments” for each character. There are new characters each season, with the exception of Paul who has been in all the episodes. You watch that character’s session on his/her day/time each week, watching all the patients' sessions or just the ones that happen to interest you. At the end of the “week,” Paul visits his own therapist and reflects on what’s been happening.

Here’s the schedule for the sessions/installments:

Monday

9 p.m., Sunil: A retired math professor from Bengal, who moved in with his son and his son’s American wife in New York City, is struggling with the recent death of his wife.

9:30 p.m. Frances (Debra Winger!): A recently divorced actress can’t seem to remember her lines and has been experiencing anxiety because her sister, like their mother, is dying of breast cancer.

Tuesday

9 p.m. Jesse: The HBO write-up for Jesse says he’s “a gay teen, full of creativity and angst” who “wrestles with his identity and his relationship with his adoptive parents.”

9:30 p.m. Paul: The therapist himself submits to his own therapy from Adele (Amy Ryan from The Office) because he wants her to give him a prescription for sleeping pills, only Adele makes him confront the skeletons in his closet.

Season 3 Preview

'Mad Men's' Weiner: Finale Looks at Life You Want to Live

"Tomorrowland is about who you want to be," that's what Mad Men creator/writer Matthew Weiner said about the season four finale. The episode, Weiner said, was about "what are you going to make of your life."

In the case of Don, that would be the same mistake Roger Sterling made, at least in my opinion.

Jon Hamm offered some insightful commentary in the AMC video above, about the fact that Don is starting a relationship with someone who doesn't really know much about him smacks of Don and Betty 2.0.

Of all the interviews in the video, I agree with Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) the most.

What did you think of Weiner's assertion that the finale was about what you want to make of your life?

'Mad Men' Finale -- Tomorrowland

Image credit: AMC

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season finale of Mad Men.*

I’m very annoyed with Matthew Weiner right about now. And after the jump I'll tell you why. (I'm putting the jump in to avoid spoiling the episode for the late-watchers.)

Creative Take on 'Mad Men' Theme, Matt Weiner on Finale

As we draw closer to Sunday night's final episode of Mad Men's exquisite fourth season -- Matthew Weiner & Co. created, by and large, an outstanding set of episodes this year -- I thought you'd find interesting this video of NBC Nightly News anchorman Brian Williams' daughter Allison who combined the Mad Men theme with the lyrics from the Nat King Cole song Nature Boy and got this:



About that Sunday night finale, entitled "Tomorrowland," Weiner has remained pretty tight-lipped about it, though he told a TV Squad blogger in an interview:

". . . [W]hat I really hope for for the finale is that people will see the finale and understand the journey that they went on for the season. They've been looking at it week by week, and they've sort of been on board with it, and I think they've enjoyed learning so much about Don and seeing him pushed to the end, and seeing him either rise to the occasion or, as you're saying, not rise to the occasion. But hopefully they will see at the end what the journey that he's been on."

Earlier in the interview, Weiner said of Don's experiences this season:

"He got to a place this season, certainly in the middle of it, where he was very close to being a different person and sort of accepting who he was and saying, I'm tired of . . . and then the shit hit the fan. Now we're seeing this person is come out. Is it the same person we met at the beginning of the show? I don't know."

I don't know about you, but I'm in complete denial that, after Sunday night, I'll have until next summer for new Mad Men episodes.

Notes on Politics: 'The View' Walkout, Oprah Hearts Jon Stewart & Campaigning While Female

The View Walkout

Today I've found myself thinking about a famous quote from comedian Phyllis Diller: “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

I feel the same way about political discourse which, on far too many occasions, devolves into mean-spirited name calling, especially in the internet era. What would improve matters? If someone doesn’t agree with what someone else is saying, responds by making a rational, strong counter-arguments bolstered by evidence. If there’s common ground onto which both sides can stand side-by-side, great, if not, the two people could agree to disagree. (Of course you need two rational people to do this, folks who aren’t calling one another names and who are willing to engage intellectually.)

So when I heard about the dust-up between Bill O’Reilly and some panelists from The View over the controversial proposed mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, I was greatly disappointed to learn that Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the stage after becoming enraged by what O’Reilly had to say. It was heartening to see Barbara Walters respond by making the sage declaration, “We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands and screaming and walking off stage.”

People are taking sides on this, about whether Goldberg and Behar were right to leave the stage or whether their behavior was ridiculous. What say you?



Oprah Hearts Jon Stewart

Certainly you’ve all heard about the satirical rallies The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are planning in Washington to mock the extremism that’s been permeating both ends of the political spectrum these days. Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” will face off against Colbert’s “March to Keep Fear Alive” and both were in the news this week after Oprah bestowed upon them her golden touch by offering Stewart’s studio audience transportation to the rally.

Colbert’s response to Oprah favoring Stewart? Not storming off the stage in a huff:



Campaigning While Female

Female candidates running for office this season continue to fend off attacks which appear to be directed at them because of their gender, not because of their stances on public policies.



Over in California, the candidates for governor debated the comments made by an associate of Jerry Brown’s in which said associate called opponent Meg Whitman a “whore.” Twice.

After moderator Tom Brokaw asked Brown about this, Brown gave a half-hearted apology to Whitman, the kind which goes like this: I’m sorry someone got caught calling you, specifically, a whore, but someone from your campaign said members of Congress are whores too, so there. Whenever one's apology is followed by the word “but,” that oftentimes negates the sincerity of the apology. Plus there’s a big difference between singling out one person and lobbing an insult at her -- like “liar,” “crook” or “whore” -- and making a general criticism of a large group of people, like members of Congress. That being said, it would’ve been prudent for Whitman to have at least said that no one should be tossing around words like “whore” in the context of a political campaign.

UPDATE: It was with disgust that I read that the president of the California chapter of NOW told the political blog Talking Points Memo: "Meg Whitman could be described as 'a political whore.' Yes, that's an accurate statement." And people wonder why many folks dismiss the likes of NOW as a liberal/Democratic organization that only supports fellow liberal/Democrats while feeding conservative and/or Republican women to the wolves. So much for the sisterhood.



Meanwhile, a female congressional candidate in Virginia is being haunted by racy photos taken of her at a costume party six years ago when she was 22 and a recent college graduate, which were posted online in an attempt to embarrass and discredit her.

The candidate, Krystal Ball, who cited Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton as political inspirations, told Fox News:

“The tactic of painting successful women, successful politicians as a whore, it’s nothing new. Ask Sarah Palin, ask Meg Whitman, ask Nikki Haley, Christine O’Donnell. Lots of women face this same thing. And so I decided, although I wanted to just sort of hide in a corner and cry, that I couldn’t let these tactics succeed.”

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Mad Men's' Roger Sterling, 'Grey's Anatomy' & 'The Event'

Image credit: AMC

John Slattery on Roger Sterling: ‘I don’t think he has any interest in killing himself'

Mad Men’s Roger Sterling has had a bad time of things this season. His marriage to his super-young former secretary, which upended his entire life, hasn’t quite turned out the way he hoped as his eye has wandered back to the woman with whom he shares an intense emotional connection, the married Joan Holloway Harris. When Roger and Joan were out on the town, they were mugged. Joan lost her wedding ring and the duo had sex in a dingy alley . . . which led to an unplanned pregnancy followed quickly by an illegal abortion, after Roger plainly told Joan that if she went through with the pregnancy he'd disavow paternity.

On top of all that, Roger’s one big client, American Tobacco -- which represented a huge hunk of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s revenues -- left Roger high and dry after decades of working together, putting the entire future of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in jeopardy. Then Roger lied about losing the account, pathetically faking a phone call and a trip.

Some have speculated online as to whether Roger, played by John Slattery, is suicidal. (He was darkly joking about suicide after Ida Blankenship died, saying he, a man who survived two heart attacks, didn't want to die at his desk.) Slattery chatted with New York Magazine about this issue, as well as Roger’s very bad season.

Grey’s Off to Good Start

Grey’s Anatomy’s writers have certainly not taken the easy road as the drama’s seventh season has begun and, as a result, the show's off to a fine start. There've been no neat and tidy resolutions following the mass shooting in the season six finale. Seattle Grace staffers who survived intimate contact and threats from the homocidal shooter has left them with emotional damage, some more so than others. The characters' reactions have been varied, though I must say that Lexie Grey is getting on my nerves.

I was particularly fond of the interplay between McDreamy and Cristina in last week's episode, particularly the scene in which Derek said they would’ve never chosen each other as friends but now they’re family and he was worried about her withdrawal from her work. And because she saved his life, operating as the barrel of a loaded gun was next to her head, he feels as though he owes her. I reviewed the latest episode here.

Any Grey’s fans think the season has been going well so far?

The Event: Is It Worth Sticking with It?

Still feeling burned by Lost’s series finale and unhappy with the way FlashForward ended while leaving a million loose ends dangling (thanks ABC), I’m leery about latching onto another show that's a dense serial drama where answers won’t immediately arrive, that is, if they ever do.

Which brings me to The Event. It’s got all these layers and conspiracies. Scenes flash around from time period to time period. People are dead and then they’re not. A jet liner disappears just before crashing into the president. Amidst all that, you know what was flashing in front in my eyes? Red flags. Giant ones.

Is this all going to make sense? Is it irrational, in light of Lost's final "hey they're all dead" season, to expect that answers will be forthcoming? That the network will encourage viewers to get all involved and then pull the rug out from under them, a la FlashForward? I’m very skeptical. You?

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'Mad Men' -- Blowing Smoke

Image credit: AMC

*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Addiction. Addiction to tobacco. Addiction to heroin. Addiction to lies, to false facades, to impulsive actions, to getting involved with the wrong people. Mad Men was awash in bad-for-you addiction in its second-to-last season four episode and not just Don “I’m falling off the wagon” Draper.

First of all, seeing Midge return was a surprise and kind of refreshing, until of course we saw the sorry state into which her life has fallen, courtesy of her addiction to heroin as she and her husband offered to prostitute herself for the sake of more money for the next score.

While he himself had hired prostitutes in the last year to feed his addiction to his self-loathing, Don surveyed the wreckage that is Midge’s life and was stunned. It was impossible not to think of his life. During the last episode he slept with his secretary, jeopardizing his budding, healthy relationship with Faye. He’s started drinking again and his company’s on the brink.

But Don attempted to redeem himself for some of his bad behavior, paid Pete’s portion of the mandated partner contributions in order to keep the company afloat, a nod to Pete’s discretion when it came to the Dick Whitman matter.

Don also sought to cleanse himself of his company’s “addiction” to Lucky Strike -- the loss of which could wind up destroying Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce -- by unilaterally composing and then purchasing a full-page ad in the New York Times telling the world, “Why I’m Quitting Tobacco” and vowed that the agency wouldn’t accept tobacco companies as clients any longer. (Don was shown swimming as you heard his voice-over reading his open letter. Water and cleansing . . . which led to a scene where Don come face to face with Megan.)

Don experienced a Jerry Maguire moment of sorts, although Don’s open letter wasn’t a heartfelt opus, ‘twas but a mere marketing ploy to save his sinking agency. (Loved Peggy’s wry smile when she called Don out on the fact that this was a stunt as much as Peggy’s staged mall over the ham in the market was.)



Bert’s response to Don’s stunningly narcissist act – “We’ve created a monster” – was an equally stunning one, quitting. Certainly Bert isn’t really gone, he can’t be, can he?

Maybe he really can be, given what Robert Morse, who plays Bert Cooper, told AMC’s Mad Men blogger that:

"You never know with Matt [Weiner] what is going to happen, and you never know what the future will bring, whether I'll be going to the unemployment line looking for another job or whether I'll be coming back or anything. So all I do is pick up my shoes and say good-bye to everybody and I'm out of the office. What happens next year I don't know. I hope I get a phone call. I think it's the best show in the world. . . Maybe we'll have to get a thing going: bring Robert Morse back.”

Meanwhile, back in the awkward, uncomfortable and emotionally withholding Francis home, Sally had been sneaking around and hanging out with creepy Glen – the one who ransacked the house for Sally earlier in the season -- though it should be noted that Sally took a pass on his offer of cigarettes, unlike in season two when Sally stole Betty’s cigarettes and, when Betty found her smoking, shoved her in a closet. Sally’s truly the product of the duplicitous Betty and Don, telling her therapist that Betty doesn’t really care how Sally feels because Betty just wants compliance.

About Betty . . . the fact that once she realized Sally was hanging out with Glen – a haunted kind of boy who’d previously show an interest in Betty in season two, when Betty dressed him in one of Don's T-shirts and watched cartoons with him – was what prompted Betty to announce that they’d be moving out of the house, when her own husband’s pleas fell on deaf ears, is disturbing. On so many levels.

All of this, plus laying off Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce employees, made me wonder: How will this play in the season finale next week, called, “Tomorrowland?” The AMC Mad Men web site only says this of the season finale: “Opportunity arises for Don and Peggy.”

If you had the ear of the Mad Men writers, what would you hope to see in the season four finale?

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Notes from Pop Culture & Politics: Obama's Bad Day, Solid 'Parenthood,' 'The Big C' Gets Emotional

Obama's Bad Day



Does anyone else think that President Obama is having some rather bad luck these days?

Days after the so-called "Dog Whisperer" criticized him for the way he handles his dog Bo, watching the presidential seal fall off of Obama's podium while he was in the middle of a speech seemed to symbolize so many things that are going badly for the president these days, the least of which are the election results that’ll likely not go his way next month. Current presidential approval numbers are a pretty brutal right now, with a recent Rasmussen poll showing that 29 percent of respondents strongly approved of "the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president," while 41 percent strongly disapprove.

Another Solid Parenthood Episode


Image credit: NBC

 Okay, I know I’m at risk of sounding like a fangirl cheerleader here, but last night’s Parenthood was really strong. The Tuesday night drama continues to provide insightful, authentic and relatable stories, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Once and Again.

When you have everyone from educators to parenting “experts” telling parents that they’ve got to be super-involved, always positive and always available to their offspring, it’s no wonder that the parents get upset when they discover that there’s precious little time left to have a life.

See my review of Parenthood’s latest episode, “Date Night” here.

The Big C Gets Emotional

In my episode reviews of The Big C over on CliqueClack TV, a frequent complaint of mine has been that it hasn’t allowed its main character, Laura Linney’s Cathy Jamison, to exhibit much authentic emotion since receiving her cancer diagnosis. Not only has she not told her husband and child about it, but she’s avoided dealing with the messy, ugliness that is raw pain and potential loss of her situation. The show has spent most of its time having its main character go around and check off items on her bucket list, avoiding the intensity of the fear that cancer instills in everyone.

Until the last episode which included a turn of events which greatly pleased me.

Image credit: NBC.

FNL: The Final Season Promos

Unfortunately, I’m not among the lucky ones who has DirecTV, therefore I won’t be watching when the fifth and final 13-episode season of Friday Night Lights starts airing on DirecTV on Wednesday, October 27. (The final season will air on NBC next year.)

But that doesn’t mean I can’ t drool over the new promos DirecTV has released for a season that a network press release has hinted will be a very challenging one for Eric and Tami Taylor, as a couple, saying specifically that Tami’s attempts to help improve the East Dillon High School system “will force her to make a decision that places a strain on the Taylor’s usually steadfast marriage.”

More of a strain than when Eric moved to Austin to coach at TMU while a pregnant Tami and Julie stayed behind in Dillon? More than last season where Tami lost her job as a result of a witch hunt and Eric had to create a football team from nothing? I'm more than a little curious.

At Least Don Draper Never Slept with Peggy Olson

Has Don Draper come down with amnesia or something? Seriously, because, early on in the season, he did this:



Then this happened:



Then, after he finally got his life in order -- settled down by dating one woman who was his contemporary, cut back on drinking and starting evaluating his life by keeping a journal -- he reverted back to this:



That last scene really annoyed me, particularly because Don slept with his secretaries after they "mothered" him by telling him he'd had too much to drink, by bringing him his keys and trying to tend to his needs, like asking him if he wanted some food and insisting that he have an aspirin. All of Don's other secretaries -- Jane, Joan, Peggy and even Ida "queen of perversions" Blankenship -- had slept with someone from the office, but Don, as far as viewers saw, hadn't. At least until this season where he's slept with two secretaries and a woman who's doing consulting work for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Anyone else hate that Don seems to be taking a giant leap backward?

Mad Men -- Chinese Wall (Or, the Ad Agency's in Trouble)

Image credit: AMC

*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

These are some dark days for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. After spending the bulk of this season focused on the downward-spiraling Don (who seems on the precipice of a relapse to his bad boy tendencies with the drinking and Alison 2.0), the darkness descended upon the brightly decorated home of the ad upstarts at SCDP.

We knew that Roger losing Lucky Strike was going to rear its head and upend the entire, cozy, complacency at SCDP. (You don’t blow off a multi-million-dollar account like North American Aviation without trying to desperately find another way to save it.) However I didn’t expect the fall-out to hit the fan so soon, thought that maybe Matt Weiner & Co. would hold off on SCDP’s near-end of days until the season finale.

And, while viewers knew that, despite all the hard work Don put into reshaping his life (cutting back on the drinking, dating an appropriate woman for him, journaling and going to the gym), he wasn’t going to be perfect and would likely slip up. I expected Don to mess up a bit in the form of drinking, maybe slack off on going to the gym as he worked longer hours, but I did NOT expect for him to sleep with another secretary, particularly given that he’s in a serious relationship with Faye, even ‘fessed up about his alias. Even though Don did give Megan the once-over at the end of the previous episode, I was surprised that he went there. (It was the same surprise I experienced when he started sleeping with Miss Farrell in season three.)

Has Don learned nothing? Don needs to start journaling again so he can see, in his own handwriting, how history is repeating itself and he’s doing himself no favors. I’m just waiting for the Dick Whitman situation to crop up once more to give Don a swift kick in the pants.

Aside from Don’s shaky foothold on leading a healthy life (emotionally and physically), Roger -- he of the stark white hair and the stark white office featuring a print with a blinding white background populated by little black dots -- found himself in danger of being swallowed up by darkness. He sunk to pathetic depths when he didn't tell his colleagues about Lucky Strike in time for them to do anything about it, and when he stood three feet away from them and lied about speaking on the phone with Lee Garner Jr., dovetailed by his cowardly flight to a Manhattan hotel when he was supposed to be in Raleigh having a face-to-face visit with Lee. After coasting by on his father’s coattails for his entire life -- with the exception of his stint in World War II – Roger now seems to be flailing professionally as well as personally.

He tried, once again, to use Joan as salve to make himself feel better, forgetting (or perhaps completely unaware) that he’d torpedoed any shot at a serious relationship with her with his calloused response to her pregnancy, saying he loved her “maybe” and, the icing on the cake, saying that if she had the baby, it wouldn’t be his. Having destroyed his first marriage with drinking and philandering, Roger’s now destroying his second marriage with the same behavior as he miserably skulked back into his home where his bright as a penny young wife/former secretary was waiting to show him copies of his newly published memoir and to tell him how proud she was. Sullen, Roger chose to not fill her in on the cataclysmic events of the past 24 hours and acted as though everything was fine.

As for Pete, who’d really blame him, the man who covered Don’s rear end in the North American Aviation imbroglio, for fleeing the sinking ship that is SCDP, particularly when he and Trudy just had a child? Watching Don chastise Pete for not being “focused” on the Glo-Coat account while Trudy was in the hospital and then accusing Pete of freaking the clients out (when Don spent the whole day at the hospital when Betty was giving birth to Gene), might’ve been the last straw. Or the 47th.

Peggy, well, I don’t know what to make of her hippie-fueled afterglow being doused by news of Lucky Strike, coupled with her feelings that when something good happens to her, she’s going to be punished for it with something bad. I did love seeing her triumph with the Playtex account despite the fact that the spurned moron Stan failed to tell her that she had lipstick on her teeth . . . which kind of proved her point, she was happy she got the account but was embarrassed no one told her about the lipstick.

What’d you think of “Chinese Wall?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.