The Mad Men Variety Hour

After the gang from SCDP/CGC got a visit from Dr. Feelgood, all trippy hell broke loose for a full June 1968 weekend.

Ken Cosgrove's "It's My Job!" tap dance became an internet sensation, as it should have. I was watching somewhat live and rewound 3 times to believe the television moment I thought I had just witnessed.

Not only did a shot in the ass have Ken's foot feeling all better after his misadventures with the GM suits, but he managed to turn it into a satirical, stage-worthy routine with the cane as a prop. And you had to feel the undertones of a minstrel show with the black secretary Dawn looking on in bewilderment.

But all kinds of things were happening as the office in the Time-Life building turned into Vaudeville. As Rick James once posited on Chappelle's Show, "Cocaine is a helluva drug." I don't know what was in that shot, but it was a helluva drug. It gave Don Draper visions of his very troubled childhood, it made Stan Rizzo a pick-up artist, and it brought the whole gang to Michael Ginsberg's maturity level.

While the episode was entertaining and thought-provoking, as a medicinal journey might advertise (advertising!), it seems like a cheap trick in a tired series.

The Sopranos, from which Mad Men boss Matthew Weiner evolved, was guilty of these types of episodes multiple times. Tony Soprano had hallucinations while in the throes of food poisoning, he had "the test dream," and tripped on acid with a Las Vegas hooker.

Other shows have done it too, and it seems like a ploy from the writers to be outrageous. Drug-enhanced visions have to be added to the criteria for Jumping The Shark.

Don Draper's character has become a little tedious with the flashbacks, the introspection, the women troubles. He will never find peace, not in the late 1960s. Not when his apartment's being robbed because of his carelessness, not when he's ignored his children for a married neighbor.

So where is the show going? What's the next TV writer hook to get us through the next episode? Stay tuned, I guess.

Mad Men: The One Where MLK Gets It

It wasn't a prediction I made in a public forum, but those are words I said to another human in advance of Sunday's episode.

Yes it's a spoiler, and yes it's as insensitive as Harry Crane bitching about missed commercial advertising opportunities with the ongoing MLK assassination coverage. Though I enjoyed watching Pete Campbell take the moral high ground with his displaced outrage.

Mad Men lives off these reactions to the times of 45 years ago, and the ensemble's soulful response was definitely something I was right to look forward to.

Matthew Weiner's storyboard also dealt with the ugly riots in the aftermath of the death of Dr. King. It was reminiscent of an incredibly poignant episode of The Jeffersons, which flashed back to "The First Store," George's first store opening the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. George had to sift through his anger and find the perspective to cool down his son Lionel.

But I digress - we wondered how Don & Peggy would continue to be connected after she left SCDP.

After the submarine job by Peggy's firm did on Heinz last week, the shock on award night was a perfect opportunity for them to intersect. And the national tragedy was a great chance to realize what's around them that they've taken for granted.

Don has a son who is growing up, opening Don's eyes for the first time while they take in a double-feature of Planet Of The Apes. But Don is haunted by his own childhood and his own father and realizes briefly how lucky he is.

And Don has great scene with Megan. Despite all the pretending in their marriage, she seems to be the one person who can extract Don's innermost feelings.

Peggy put her bid in on an impressive Upper East Side apartment, and it fell through. So she finally asks Abe, her hop-along hippie/flunky boyfriend what he really thinks. Abe wants to raise their children around "different kinds of people," and suggests the West Side.

I think Peggy's move to the West Side over the East Side is one of the great triumphant, seminal moments in the history of the show, but I'm biased.

Don and Peggy's self-hating, shallow lives in advertising have somehow netted people that love them unconditionally. And it took a horrific event to jolt them into reality.

Cigarette Lighters, A Violin, Headphones And A Shine Box: The Mad Men Season Premiere

There's nothing avant garde about a psychotherapy session in a TV drama, but Roger Sterling on the couch was as entertaining as television gets. Not only that, it set up the theme for the episode and the season: mortality.

"What are the events in life? It's like you see a door. The first time you come to it you say, 'Oh, what's on the other side of the door?' 

Then you open a few doors, then you say, "I think I want to go over that bridge this time, I'm tired of doors.' Finally you go through one of these things and you come out the other side and you realize that's all there are: doors. And windows and bridges and gates, and they all open the same way. And they all close behind you.

Look, life is supposed to be a path, and you go along and things happen to you and they're supposed to change you, change your direction. But it turns out that's not true. It turns out the experiences are nothing. They're just some pennies you pick up off the floor, stick 'em in your pocket, and you're just going in a straight line to you know where.

It is the eve of 1968, one of the most turbulent years in our nation's history. How will Matthew Weiner and the Mad Men think tank handle the ongoing Vietnam War? MLK and RFK assassinations? LBJ's lame duck year? Bloody riots? Black Power? The Detroit Tigers?

They've already dealt with life and death - Don Draper's encounter with the doorman and the surgeon (and the surgeon's wife and Dante's Inferno) all set against the backdrop of his Hawaii trip and a young serviceman facing the horrors of Vietnam and marriage: "The jumping off point."

And Roger's self-analysis comes fill circle as he deals with the death of his mother (This is my funeral!) however delayed the reaction. And his experiences with his ex-wives (both of them) and his daughter are just more pennies in his pocket.

Now only if we could kill off Betty Draper Francis. She's a character that continues to be unnecessary, unlikeable and unsympathetic. That would be a mega plotline - Betty dying (most likely behind the wheel - don't think that reckless driving ticket was in the script for no reason) and the kids moving in with Don and Megan. That would be a significant doorway to inch through. And deal with death in the most personal possible way.

Mad Men Season 3 Premiere: Limit Your Exposure

For the first two seasons of TV's best drama, the show was the first to really reflect the times. Think about "Happy Days" turned on its ear. If you were a white man, it was your world, whether you wanted it or not. If you were a woman, a minority, a homosexual, you were limited and repressed.

Mad Men actually seemed dark and heart-breaking until Sam Mendes' 2008 film Revolutionary Road really delved into living the Great American lie that existed almost two generations ago. So I think season 3 is off to a brighter start.

***CAUTION-SPOILERS***

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner took his Sopranos background into this project. Don Draper was the powerful, miserable Tony Soprano-type. And his wife Betty was the unfulfilled housewife with all the material goodies and all of the frustration of Carmela Soprano.

And like The Sopranos, while the main character drives the series, the colorful ensemble is what makes it so rich and deep. And when season 2 got underway, in very Soprano-esque fashion, we got the scoop on where all the characters were in their lives.

In this season opener, there was less "exposure" and more storylines.

The new London management of Sterling-Cooper has everyone on edge that they might be fired. Or pitted into a winner-take-all power struggle, like Campbell and Cosgrove sharing the position of head of accounts.

Salvatore Romano is outed after his first same-sex dalliance is interrupted by a hotel fire alarm, as is Don's effortless tryst with a sexy stewardess. Funny how seriously people took fire alarms back then.

And Don is still conflicted with "the lie," his idyllic suburban family life with a beautiful wife, two kids and a third on the way. Or is he really just the slick, self-absorbed pitch man who takes whatever he wants.

On the flight back from Baltimore, Don and Sal had the conversation that wrapped everything into a neat fortune cookie. The ad for London Fog raincoats: "Limit your exposure."

But even better, there was no cursory character development. There's a whole season to see what's going on with Peggy and her child, or Kinsey's foray into the civil rights movement. Or Joan's own lie with her very flawed heartthrob doctor fiance/husband.

Basically the debut of Season 3 was a major success, because there was plenty to sink our teeth into, but left us wanting more. Isn't that what advertising's all about?