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:' Waldorf Stories

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

We learned, quite early on, that this was one of those what-comes-around-goes-around episodes. We got to see Don as an eager fur salesman who'd hounded Roger Sterling for a job, tried to impress and ingratiate himself to Roger, even showed up in the lobby of Sterling Cooper in order to "accidentally" run into him. Then, many years later, as Don’s been nominated for a coveted advertising award, Roger felt as though he’d found Don and, therefore, deserved credit when Don succeeded.

We recall that Peggy was once Don’s eager secretary who was “found” by Don (actually found by Freddy but it was Don who promoted Peggy) to have talent, whose talent Don uses, without providing proper, public credit, to accept an award for work to which Peggy contributed. And Peggy, justifiably, feels jealous.

Then there’s Danny Siegel (Doyle from Gilmore Girls) who’s like a hybrid version of those characters: He’s an eager wanna-be ad man – but he’s got connections to Roger’s wife’s cousin – who tried to impress Don and who pressed too hard. Drunk Don (!) then proceeded to steal “Roger’s idiot’s” idea and pitched it to a clients -- without providing credit -- after Don’s own advertising campaign idea fell flat.

There were a lot of hurt feelings during this episode. Peggy was hurt by Don's apparent blindness to her contributions which led to his Clio. Roger was hurt that Don didn’t credit him with plucking him out of the fur salesman business and hiring him, though the hungover Roger forgot/wasn’t sure that he even hired Don during his booze haze, kind of like how the drunken Don forgot that he used Danny’s “cure for the common [cereal]” line with the Life cereal people and was then guilted into hiring Danny, though he did try to slime his way out of it.

I loved seeing the early scenes between Don and Roger when Don was making the hard sell, slipping his portfolio of advertising ideas into the box containing the fur Roger had bought for Joan. (Ever notice how Don’s eyes seemed wider – literally – and he smiled a whole lot more in the flashbacks, like he did when he was in the flashbacks with Anna telling her that he was going to marry Betty?)

We saw the reappearance of the sad, drunk Don, who’s well on his way to becoming either a brooding Roger or an embarrassing Duck Phillips, who’s also divorced and whose kids are distant with him, largely because of his alcohol problem.

What was awful to watch was Don, fumbling his way through the Life cereal pitch, using the same “nostalgia” line he used in the season one finale, the one he’d so eloquently pitched to the Kodak people for “the Carousel.” Don was a mere shadow of what he was back then, when it dawned on him that family and loved ones were of paramount importance. Only he realized that fact a bit too late to salvage that particular Thanksgiving with Betty and the kids.



To make matters worse, sloppy, inebriated Don continued drinking on that Friday night after he won the Clio. He went home and slept with an advertising professional and woke up at noon on Sunday with a waitress named “Doris” in his bed who referred to him as “Dick,” because apparently he’d lapsed back into his original identity. He woke up from his bender to an irate phone call from his ex-wife Betty who reamed him out for being more than two hours late in picking up the kids as he'd promised to do, making Betty and Henry miss an appointment. Don didn’t even know it was Sunday yet.

And I thought that the post-Christmas party Allison situation, coupled with her emotional resignation, might’ve been a turning point for him. What is Don, another Rescue Me/Tommy Gavin type who needs to reach about a billion low-points before getting the message that things need to change? If he doesn’t allow that message to seep into his consciousness soon, he could indeed be headed for Duck territory.

As for Peggy, that moron Stan and the Vick's campaign . . . I admire the courage Peggy frequently displays when she’s facing difficult situations with no obvious way out. I certainly wouldn’t have taken the route of stripping naked to prove that Stan’s a full-of-crap-blow-hard when it came to his "we should all live purely and naked" line, but that’s why I’m a fan of Peggy’s. She takes you to very unexpected, and oftentimes pretty great places.

Most intriguing moment: Don reaching for Joan’s hand -- after Joan and Roger had already clasped hands under the table -- just before the Clio award in their category was announced. Plus the way Don kissed Joan after he won seemed curious, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.

What’d you think of “Waldorf Stories?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'Mad Men' -- Christmas Comes But Once a Year

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

After watching last night’s episode of Mad Men, I had to wonder whether or not the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd had screened an advance copy, what with her column comparing Don Draper to Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s that ran in yesterday's paper. Dowd wrote:

“Even though many of us grew up not realizing it, Holly’s a hooker. And in the new season of AMC’s Mad Men, which started last Sunday, Don hires a hooker and wants to be slapped . . . In Mad Men, the single Richard Whitman from Pennsylvania coal country morphs into the married Don Draper after an accident in the Korean War. In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the married Lulamae Barnes morphs into the single Holly Golightly to get out of the backwater Tulip, Tex.”

Dowd's column was fresh in my mind as I watched Don Draper – now openly, widely pitied in his office (called "pathetic") for going home drunk and alone to his dark apartment alone every night (so drunk that his neighbor Phoebe often hears him drop his keys and one night helped pour him into his bed and remove his shoes) – have sex with his stunned secretary Allison on his sofa after she left the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Christmas party to bring his apartment keys to him because he’d accidentally left them behind.

It was a painful scene, watching Don looking (*gasp*) ugly as he slobbered all over the wide-eyed Allison, taking advantage of her, similar to the way he tried to pull Phoebe down on top of him, only Phoebe is not employed by Don and she's not as naive as Allison. Even worse was the scene the following day in the office, when Don didn’t actually acknowledge the reason why Allison was smiling so broadly and instead handed her an envelope – her Christmas bonus – with two $50 bills, cash, inside the card which felt, at least surficially, as though Allison had been paid for services rendered . . . complete services, everything from buying Don’s kids’ Christmas gifts (and wrapping them), fetching him ice and aspirin, to satisfying his drunken sexual needs. Don became THAT guy in this episode, the one who sleeps with his secretary and then acts like it never happened.

It seemed as though a number of people in the episode were, in some ways, prostituting themselves, or trying to bend others to their will by giving them favors and expecting a return on their investment.

There was Peggy’s baby-faced boyfriend Mark who handed her a pathetic plate of cookies -- that he didn’t even make, just stole from work – and expected that the presence of ill-gotten confections would somehow make Peggy fall onto the ground and let him have his way with her. Mark – “We’re not doing anything I can’t do myself” -- actually said, “I brought you cookies!” He tried all these high-pressure tactics to try to persuade Peggy to sleep with him, including bogusly claiming that Swedish folks “make love the minute they feel attracted.” (“You’re never going to get me to do anything Swedish people do,” Peggy replied humorously.)

“If Lee Garner Jr. wants three wise men flown in from Jerusalem, he gets it,” Roger Sterling said.

Lee Garner Jr. knows that he’s one of SCDP’s biggest clients, therefore everyone, particularly Roger, has to do what he wants (including firing Sal Romano) lest, as Don said last season, Lee would shut out the company’s lights. After a drunken Roger made of mess of things during a telephone call with Lee, Roger wound up telling Lane that they had to have a big Christmas party – despite the fact that they don’t have the money to do so – because that’s what Lee wanted. That’s why Lee can and does order Roger around. That's why Roger donned a Santa suit and let Lee take photos of him as Lee ordered various employees to sit on Roger’s lap. That's why Roger allowed Lee to taunt him, by telling him to be careful with Santa’s sack. “Don’t want you to have a third heart attack,” Lee said as he put his arm around the sparkly Jane.

Meanwhile, Glen “Stanley” Bishop was trying to send a signal to Sally – who told him she hates where she’s living, what with always half expecting her father to be around every corner – that he’ll do . . . whatever, to get into Sally's good graces, including risking getting caught trashing the house that she hates by chucking food everywhere and making a general mess (raw eggs in Bobby’s bed!) all except for Sally’s bed, where he left a tell-tale calling card to let her know that he was looking out for her. And given this creepy walk-in-on-you-in-the-bathroom-ask-for-a-lock-of-Betty’s-hair kid’s history – particularly in season two when he told Betty, during her first separation from Don, that he’d protect her – you just know that this unbalanced boy is going to come around looking for payment from Sally at some point.

Top it all off with Don, literally fleeing the room when a survey is being conducted by consumer research professionals who want SCDP to use their services because of the “level of intimacy” required in order to participate (questions about one’s feelings about one’s father, for example), Don seems as though he’s trying to distance himself from true emotional contact with anyone to try to make sure no one gets inside of him because he’s already in pretty crappy shape, self-medicating with booze. Things like receiving that letter from Sally saying what she’d really like for Christmas is for Don to be there on Christmas morning to give her her gift in person, though she knows that’s not possible, are like scratching at a still-bleeding internal wound about which he’s doing nothing to staunch the blood. When you throw in the scene from last week, where Don hired a call girl and asked her to slap him around while they were having relations, Don is in a very, very bad place right now.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Giving 'Mad Men's' Women the Last Word

The folks from PopSugar have put together a video collection of one-liners uttered by the women during the first three seasons of Mad Men, proving that Roger Sterling doesn't corner the market on snarky commentary.

One of the best lines came from Midge, "You know the rules, I don't make plans and I don't make breakfast."

Do you have any favorites that are missing from this video?

A commenter on BuzzSugar asked where Betty's "My people are Nordic" quote was. Also missing, Betty's "Only boring people are boring" and any of the terrible one-liners she has directed at her kids. Surely there must be some Trudy one-liners that should've made it too.

JibJab Guys Jump on 'Mad Men' Bandwagon

Love the JibJab guys, the ones who make those snarky online videos featuring caricatures of real people. (My favorites are their political ones and the year-end wrap-ups.) Now they've leapt into the wonderful world of Mad Men, as we get ever-closer to the fourth season premiere later this month. (Sunday July 25 at 10 for those of you keeping tabs at home.)

You can either watch the Mad Men JibJab video as they've designed it:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

OR, you can personalize it but uploading your own photos so that you can re-envision what Don Draper, Betty Draper, Joan Holloway Harris and Roger Sterling's faces look like.

It really amazes me to see in how many different ways people take something like a single TV show and then add their own creative twist to it, like with the Mad Men Yourself images and the book I'm reading in advance of the new season, Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing is as it Seems. (A very scholarly read, though with many cool observations.)

'Mad Men' Crew Does 'Bye Bye Birdie'

The Movieline web site has happened upon a gem of a video: The cast and crew of Mad Men hamming it up (pun intended) by "singing" (and I use that term loosely) Ann-Margret's Bye Bye Birdie number which featured prominently in season three, especially in "Love Among the Ruins." Well, most people are singing or trying to sing except for Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) who's messing around with her BlackBerry.

Be sure to catch John Slattery (Roger Sterling) in the wig.

Missing 'Mad Men' Yet?

Sunday nights have felt so . . . empty . . . lately without Don, Betty, Peggy and Joan.

And we can't forget about Roger, whose killer one-liners were reliable moments of humor amid the disintegration of Don's personal life this past season. New York Magazine compiled Roger's one-liners (and two-liners) from the third season in this video below . . . making me miss Mad Men just a little bit more.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Grown-Ups

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*


The latest episode -- built around the assassination of President Kennedy and the destabilizing impact that violent act had on everyone in the Mad Men world -- was unexpected and outstanding.

I would’ve never imagined, for example, that the combination of losing the senior accounts post to Kenny-boy Cosgrove and watching the news coverage of the Kennedy assassination would've prompted Pete Campbell to retreat into his apartment with Trudy where they clung to one another, to opt not to attend Margaret Sterling’s wedding (a risky professional gamble) and to seriously consider Pete jumping ship to Grey with Duck Phillips.

Betty Draper became unmoored, especially after seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Don Draper -- who has appeared distinctly uncomfortable with outward, expressions of deep emotion and sadness -- responded by glibly telling Betty to take a pill and go to bed the night Kennedy died, and continued repeating the line, “Everything’s going to be all right,” as though it was a mantra that would fix everything. But it didn’t. Kennedy was still dead, as was Don's marriage and Betty's trust in him. But, ever the ad man, Don seemed as though he was trying too hard to push the "Everything's going to be all right" pitch, thinking that if he said it enough times, it would be so.

I absolutely did not see coming that witnessing Oswald’s murder on TV would send Betty running to Henry Francis, particularly after the doting behavior Don displayed toward her at the Sterling wedding. I was likewise stunned to watch as Henry proposed marriage to a cash box-hurling woman he doesn’t even know.


The more I thought about the varied reactions to the Kennedy assassination, the only parallel I could make that resonated with me personally was 9/11. On Sept. 11, 2001 and in its aftermath, not only was I, along with millions of other Americans, riveted to news coverage for upon days and days as we sat there feeling stunned and shocked, but there was the lingering fear that we were no longer safe (something Trudy mentioned when she said that if they could get to the president, they could get to anyone). There was an instinct to draw closer to the things and people who were important to you. Thanksgiving 2001 was particularly poignant for Americans as we remembered and cherished what was dearest to us.

Perhaps Mad Men mastermind Matt Weiner was trying to convey that same powerlessness and fear created by Kennedy's and Oswald's public deaths as he had his characters do things that they otherwise might not have done, like ask a veritable stranger to marry you, tell the spouse who’s been lying to you since the day you met that you no longer love him and feel nothing when he kisses you, call your former lover on the phone – your voice brimming with longing -- when your shallow young thing of a second wife is passed out drunk on the bed beside you, and blow off opportunities to advance your career at work when you determine that there’s no longer any future in it.

While darkness and gloom swirled around each character – in particular around a broken Don who sat alone in his shadowy bedroom after learning that the thing he always feared would happen if the truth about his identity came out, had actually came true: that someone like Betty would never love someone like him – there was a bit of lightness in the person of Margaret Sterling in all her bratty, self-centeredness. As the scenes switched from location to location depicting people’s reactions to news that the president had been killed, mostly with tears and astonishment, there was Margaret, in a heap of rich, blindingly white fabric crying, “It’s all ruined!” Mourning her wedding, not the president.
 
Mourning . . . doesn’t that seem like a common thread throughout “The Grown-Ups?” Don was mourning the death of love. Betty was mourning the president and the death of her marriage. Pete was mourning his once promising career at Sterling Cooper and the fact that people at work cared more about business than what had transpired in Texas. Roger seemed to be mourning the fact that he no longer had Joan as a confidante. Margaret was mourning the disintegration of her parents' marriage. And there were Sally and Bobby, their childhood innocence shattering, bit by bit, as they sat in front of the TV and learned that the president’s young children had lost their father.

What did you think of “The Grown-Ups?” By the way, was anyone else miffed that the preview for the season finale contained no new footage? I'm unwilling to accept that next week is the last new Mad Men episode until next summer.

UPDATE: Just saw someone mention on Twitter that there was a similarity between the Aqua-Net storyboard in Peggy's office (four people in a convertible) and Kennedy's limo. I didn't catch that.
Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' Season Three Still Photos

The New York Daily News has two dozen new still/promotional photos for the third season of Mad Men on its web site. Though we don't yet know in what time frame the new season is set -- the last season ended at the conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- the images are interesting. For example, in some of the photos indicate an evolution of style, a bit different than in the first season, at least for Betty Draper. And I did notice in a couple of photos that Roger Sterling's not wearing a wedding ring, like in this photo. (Last season he told his wife he wanted a divorce and asked Don Draper's 20-year-old secretary to marry him.)

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC via the New York Daily News.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Mountain King

This was another one of those Mad Men episodes which contained a jarring scene that -- like most problematic situations on the show (except for Freddy Rumsen's mishap that directly led to his termination) -- is not likely to be dealt with directly or openly. At least not right away. But more on THE scene of the episode in a bit. We must first dish on The Dish of Mad Men: Don Draper/Dick Whitman.

So many unanswered questions were addressed in this episode with regards to Don. The woman who we saw in the flashback a few weeks ago -- when Don was but an awkward-looking used car salesman -- was Anna Draper, the wife of the man whose identity Don stole. It was to Anna that Don sent the collection of Frank O'Hara poems, Meditations in an Emergency . . . which, by the way, is the title of the season finale next week. In a flashback we saw that after Anna initially confronted Don about his pretending to be her husband, he told her the truth, a novelty for the character we've come to know throughout these two seasons.

Anna and Don seem to have the most honest relationship of all the characters on Mad Men. In Anna's presence, Don was at ease, boyishly giddy at times and true. We saw scenes of Don at Anna's California house celebrating Christmas, fixing furniture for her and telling her that he'd "met a girl" (Betty) who was "from a good family. She's educated . . . I just like the way she laughs, the way she looks at me." (He had to ask Anna Draper to grant him a divorce so he could marry Betty.) Don thanked her for allowing him to create a new life for himself and for not divulging his secret; Anna thanked Don for paying for her oceanside home, his refuge of sorts too, where you can smell the salt air from the porch.

When the episode opened, we saw that Don had abandoned the spoiled socialite he met during his business trip, and retreated to Anna's. He slept while she made him food, bought him clothes. He talked and opened up about what's become of him, saying: "I ruined everything . . . I've told you things I've never told Betty. Why does it have to be that way?"

Poignantly, he also observed: "I've been watching my life. It's right there. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can't."

Later, as Anna was giving a reluctant Don a tarot card reading, she wisely remarked, "The only thing keeping you unhappy is the belief that you are alone." The final scene of the episode showed Don walking into the ocean, as if being cleansed -- baptized -- while a song about "a new life" played in the background.

Back at the Draper home in New York, Betty had to get on with the business of life, paying the bills, signing Don's signature to checks, taking care of the kids and disciplining her daughter (pulling her by the ponytail and shoving her in a closet!) after Sally was caught smoking in the powder room. After Sally blamed Betty for driving Don away, Betty realized she had to come clean with Sally about her "disagreement" with Don and tell her that she didn't know when Don would be back. Her outburst at Sally notwithstanding, Betty seemed much more in control and independent than we've seen recently.

But at Sterling Cooper, things don't seem so under control. Bert Cooper, while uncomfortable with the precarious economic situation in which Roger Sterling's libido has placed the firm, agreed to merge with another, larger company which has promised to deliver an infusion of money. (It's not clear if Bert understands the condition of Duck Phillips being appointed Sterling Cooper's president.) Peggy Olson landed a big account -- adored her Popsicle pitch! -- as well as a new office next door to Don's office, where she used to be the secretary in what seems like a lifetime ago.

Then there was Joan Holloway. If Don is just watching his idyllic life and trying to find a way into it that feels authentic, Joan is seeking what she thinks she's supposed to want: A marriage to a handsome, affluent, respected physician, Greg Harris. But he's an oaf, a coward and, as of this latest episode, a rapist. Cowed by Joan's sexual experience, he refused to let her take the lead in bed, then, after picking up on a vibe between ex-paramours Joan and Roger at work, Greg ordered Joan to fix him a drink in Don's office where he forcibly raped her on the floor as she tried to fight him off.

In the first scene with Joan and Greg in bed when he seemed put off by her history, Joan said, "There is no 'before.'" Well following this violation of Joan's body and her trust, I hope that the "after" does not include Greg, no matter how badly Joan wants to be a "Mrs."

Will Don be "reborn" into an entirely different persona yet again, or will we see him try to reclaim the life he says that, up until now, he's just been observing from the outside? Predictions for the season finale? Will Joan dump Greg?

Image credit: AMC.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Jet Set

Okay, so it's a Mad Men Tuesday instead of Monday . . . because I decided to take a day off with the family. But the extra day certainly gave the show's fans time to ponder the dramatic turns in "The Jet Set." I'm still scratching my head as I have no idea what'll happen next.

Don Draper

In "The Jet Set," Don Draper was literally reaching out for joy:

Joy, the 21-year-old, uninhibited sexpot who had a voice strongly reminiscent of his wife's, who wore a bikini (Don had told Betty she looked "desperate" when she wore one), and who had a rich father who'd apparently be willing to subsidize Don's life as long as he played with Joy, which seemed to consist of skinny dipping, drinking, reading Faulkner and eating food prepared by the help while planning a new escape to an exotic, posh locale.

Joy, the feeling that has eluded him his entire sad, shady life, something that he never thought he deserved whether because of the circumstances surrounding his conception, his infidelities or his identity theft.

After arriving in California for a business trip with Pete Campbell, Don initially chastised Pete for wanting to lounge around at the pool and enjoy the sun, telling Pete that they were there to work. Then hypocritical, talking-out-of-both-sides-of-his-mouth Don was vigorously pursued by a beautiful socialite and ditched Pete on a whim. With no belongings (the airlines lost his luggage), Don hopped into a white convertible with Joy. (This was the only time I've ever felt any degree of sympathy for wormy Pete.)

Don's decision to abandon his work, his responsibilities and his life in order to spend a couple days in a stranger's house, with a strange girl and her odd parents (her father walked into the room where she and Don were naked after having had sex, and called Don "beautiful") was surprising, even though escape has historically been Don's MO. On separate occasions last season, he spontaneously asked Midge, and later Rachel to go away with him, but they both declined. However I thought the season two Don wouldn't have sacrificed the stature, the money and the image he'd crafted at Sterling Cooper on a whim. I also thought he wanted to be a better father to Sally and Bobby than his father -- a violent drunk -- was to him. I was wrong. On both counts.

The final scene -- where Don called someone, identified himself with his given name (Dick Whitman) and arranged to meet with this person -- raised still more questions. Does Don want to reconcile with his past in order to pursue his future, or is that too much to ask of this man who doesn't seem to know what he wants and thinks he deserves nothing?

Sterling Cooper

Are Sterling Cooper's days numbered? Will Roger Sterling's womanizing and subsequent marriage proposal to Don's 20-year-old (!) secretary Jane sink the ad agency as Roger's estranged wife Mona rightfully attempts to extract her financial pound of flesh from her cheating husband?

I found it ironic that Duck Phillips, sadly off the wagon (Does that mean he'll go searching the dog pounds for the family dog he let loose earlier this season?), is the one who's circling the company like a vulture, scheming behind the scenes to slide into the position of president if he secures a 51 percent buyer for the company. (It seemed like something Don might do if Don could get his head out of his rear to see what it is that he has.)

If Sterling Cooper is bought out, Roger and Don's power within the company would be in jeopardy. I wouldn't feel badly to see Roger get his comeuppance from someone, whether it be from Mona -- who he said didn't deserve any money -- or Duck. I don't really care from whence his payback comes. But he, after two near-fatal heart attacks, hasn't learned from his mistakes. Taking up with a woman around his daughter's age? Roger needs a wake-up call because nearly dying didn't do it.

Peggy's New Do, and New Ally

Actually, Peggy Olson's new hairstyle is a direct result of her new alliance with her Sterling Cooper colleague, Kurt, who outed himself over doughnuts in the break room in front of Joan Holloway, Harry Crane, Ken Kosgrove and Sal Romano. Kurt, the only person on the show who seems at ease in his own skin (Think about it; It's true.) took Peggy to a Bob Dylan concert after she said she liked his music. But before they left, as Peggy was lamenting the fact that she didn't know why she always picked the wrong men, Kurt offered to "fix" her. Then he chopped off her hair, giving her a more modern bob.

What do you think is next for Don as he prepares to meet someone as "Dick Whitman?" Think Duck will take over Sterling Cooper? Will Peggy get renewed confidence?

Image credit: AMC.