By Michelle Lerner

Once you get into it, MAD MEN may just be one of the best shows on TV right now. Just as none of the characters are comfortable in their own skin, the show never lets you get comfortable next to it.  There is hidden meaning in everything, even something as fundamentally dramatic as a heart attack. Everyone is wrestling with who they are, and who they are supposed to be.

I was a little surprised that tonight’s episode didn’t begin with Betty Draper getting carted off to the insane asylum, where she belongs. Last we saw her she was shooting her neighbor’s passenger pigeons out of the air with a rifle in her bathrobe. At the start tonight I saw the suitcases, and thought “Ah!” They’ve finally realized that she is batshit crazy! But no, she’s off to the beach for the weekend with her father and his new special lady friend. Betty could not be less approving. Don talks her off a ledge.

This being MAD MEN, nothing goes how you think it’s going to. Don’s now got a night in the city, which on MAD MEN is an excuse for bad behavior. Roger, who never disappoints, corrals him into picking up some models; twins, Max. They retire to Roger’s office for cocktails and seduction. Don is clearly uncomfortable in the situation. Not that he has any scruples about infidelity; I just think Don doesn’t want any thing that’s too easy. Both his mistresses are modern and brunette. One’s an artist in Greenwich Village, the other is a scion of a department store fortune, and actually holds a high-powered job. They are as far from Betty, his prattling crazy blond wife as you can get.


Roger, who is also married with kids, is like a pig in shit. He’s got young women and booze. There is a hilarious scene of him riding his young model into the room like a horse. Did that really ever happen in real like? Maybe I should have expected the heart attack, but honestly I didn’t. Don, who was trying to leave, dismisses the girls as though they were nothing more then misbehaving children. And they scoot. Only he and Roger will know what really happened.

This sudden confrontation with mortality makes both men anxious to the extreme. The anxiety forces them to confront themselves, which on MAD MEN no one ever does. For Roger, this means realizing that living like he was on shore leave for twenty years might not be as meaningful as being able to talk to your daughter. For Don, it means exposing a truth. We find out, after a very sexy scene with Rachel that he is the son of a prostitute who died in childbirth. It’s a strong scene. A reticent man who came from nothing, surrounded by splendour, spilling his guts. Unlike, say, GREY’S ANATOMY, there is no flippant glibness or banter. The truth is simple on MAD MEN, even though it is buried under layers of manners and rituals.

The b-story on tonight’s episode was no less affecting. Joan, the sexy red headed secretary who is also Roger’s usual mistress, find herself thinking hard after seeing the film THE APARTMENT. She is the kind of woman who is used to being looked at and adored. Yet in her shallow way, she is beginning to realize there is more to life then subservience to men. She knows exactly who she is and knows she is good but also wants more. Her roommate, a woman, comes on to her, and Joan handles it with graceful tact. But then she seduces an ancient professor. If life in the sixties was anything really like MAD MEN, then men had it good. There’s no way this guy could have gotten her today.

Joan is called into the office very late by Bertram Cooper, the other head of the firm. He needs her to help him send telegrams to all their clients  She is understandably upset, but gets to work like the pro she is. In a call back to THE APARTMENT, when they leave together, Cooper asks her to hit the lobby button for him in the elevator. Sadly and reflexively she steps forward and does as she is told.