Mad Men -- Don's Violent, Fever-Fueled Dream Freaked Me Out

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Mad Men ahead.*

If the most harrowing scene from the latest episode of Mad Men, "Mystery Date," had not turned out to have been a dream, I would've been tempted to write off the show because it was so wildly over the line. (I've been in a writing-shows-off kind of mood lately, having given warning that my days of regularly reading and reviewing Grey's Anatomy and The Killing may be coming to an end due to my deep dissatisfaction with insipid storytelling.)

If Don had actually murdered his former lover and shoved her lifeless body under his bed (which, as one viewer pointed out, paralleled Sally hiding under a sofa from a mass killer who wasn't there later in the episode) I would've been insanely angry. It was bad enough that during the entire scene I was shouting at the television, "This'd better be a dream!" Luckily, it was a manifestation of Don's fears as interpreted by a fever-plagued nightmare that his marriage to Megan would collapse under the weight of his prior sexual liaisons. (I still believe that his fidelity to the part of the wedding vows about forsaking all others will be short-lived.)

Fear in general seemed to be the overall theme of the evening as Peggy, who appears open-minded and all into gal-power, gave a worried glance at her purse (loaded with cash she scammed from a desperately stupid Roger) wondering if she should leave it there while Dawn was sleeping on her sofa, unattended.

Henry's pill- and Bugle-happy mother Pauline feared that a mass murderer who killed women in Chicago would come to New York and attack her so she kept a giant kitchen knife at her side while she was babysitting Betty's kids.

Sally was so worried about the Chicago murders that she couldn't sleep, so Grandma Pauline slipped her a sleeping pill. (That makes twice during this show's run that Sally had been rendered unconscious, the other time being when Don had taken her to work on a Sunday and she illictly sucked down some alcohol a Sterling Cooper employee had left behind.)

Joan, meanwhile, was initially fearful that Greg would get hurt when he returned to Vietnam for a second tour of duty, angry with the military for sending him back, particularly when he has a new family. But Joan's fear morphed into fury when she learned that not only had Greg volunteered to go back, but he didn't even care enough about her and their baby Kevin to even consult her about the decision. (Kind of like how he never asked her opinion on whether he should enlist. He just did it.)

While it was stunning to see Joan -- who tolerated grevious mistreatment by Greg in the past as the price for landing a husband (she told him he wasn't a good man adding "I know you know what I'm talking about") -- jettisoning her marriage, it shall prove fascinating to see her evolve into a strong, independent, single mother who's no longer simply after getting a ring on her finger.

My favorite part of the episode: Peggy shaking down Roger, shamelessly so, getting him to part ways with $400 in exchange for Peggy saving his sorry behind. Peggy is coming into her own, despite the unfortunate purse incident which came on the heels of her attempts to bond with Dawn and knowing what it's like to be "the only one" of her kind in the workplace.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'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:' The Beautiful Girls

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

This episode was called “The Beautiful Girls,” but what it should’ve been called was “Beautiful Girls Put in Challenging, Compromising Situations.” It opened with Don and Faye taking their relationship to the next level as they literally knocked over a lamp while slamming around on Don’s bed.

The next day wasn’t so amorous for Don. In a day from hell, Don’s secretary died while sitting at her desk while he was in the middle of a meeting with clients and the staff comically tried to drag her body away so the clients wouldn’t see. This occurred right after Don’s daughter Sally ran away from home and begged for him to allow her to live with him “all the time,” by promising, “I’ll be good.”

It was hard not to feel for Sally who hates living at home and her mother clearly dislikes having her there as well, resents Sally. Sally was willing to scream, yell, kick, to do whatever it took so she wouldn’t have to return to Ossining to where Betty does not seem a whit happier than she was when she was married to Don and where she takes Sally’s unhappiness as a personal insult. When Don angrily told Betty to come and get Sally because he had “a business to run,” Betty replied, “Because it’s so easy. It’s so much for to take care of her. Enjoy . . . Enjoy Don, I’m meeting Henry in the city tomorrow night, I’ll get her then.”

The scene where Sally made French toast for her father – she said Carla had taught her how to make the dish, though I doubt she was taught to top with rum – reminded me of the scene after Betty was still in the hospital after having had Gene, where Don made hash and eggs for himself and Sally late at night and sat next to one another at the kitchen counter. The moment was a bonding one, a sweet one between father and daughter, an indication that Sally feels more connected to him than to her mother.

As for Don asking Faye to deal with a distraught Sally after Don had made it clear she had to go back home with Betty (this was the day after he’d asked Faye to watch Sally for an afternoon after she’d turned up at his office), I agree with what Faye said to Don afterward: That asking Faye to deal with Sally was a test, whether unconscious on Don's part or not, to see if Faye’s up to the task of dealing with his kids. I think the jury’s still out on how Faye would deal with the kids if she and Don made things official as she seems very stiff and formal around Sally, contrasting with how comfortable she seems with adults.

Then there was Joan, rocking a set of glasses in that scene at home, who wasn’t having a much better time of things, as her husband was informed he’d be shipped to Vietnam right after basic training. Roger tried to buck up her spirits by scheduling her for a massage then taking her to a dinner, after Mrs. Blankenship died. Then it became even grimmer: Joan and Roger got mugged and then, while they were full of adrenaline, did it in a filthy alley, steps away from where a gun was pointed at them.

Meanwhile, Peggy dispatched with an arrogant, big-mouthed radical activist named Abe who thought she’d find charming his criticism of her for working at an ad agency and doing work for clients who refused to hire African-Americans, especially when said criticism took the form of a “poem.” While Peggy seems fond of dabbling in the counter-culture, she doesn’t seem well suited for someone who’s got a political litmus test for the people he dates.

Most surprising were Peggy’s remarks about racial and gender discrimination: “Most of the things Negroes can’t do, I can’t do either and nobody seems to care . . . half of the meetings take place over golf or tennis at a bunch of clubs where I’m not allowed to be a member. The University Club said the only way I could eat dinner there was if I arrived in a cake.”

I loved it when Peggy got up and left the bar after the sanctimonious Abe, who clearly was blind to gender discrimination, joked about whether there was a need for a “civil rights march for women.”

Best line of the night came from Burt Cooper when speaking of Mrs. Blankenship: “She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut.”

Overall, this episode felt odd to me, not bad “odd,” just odd, odd, with wildly varying themes like Civil Rights and feminism, fall-out from a divorce where a child doesn’t like her custodial parent, the concern of a wife whose husband is being sent to a war zone and the fear of one's own mortality in the face of a colleague's sudden death.

What did you think of “The Beautiful Girls?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.