Sgt. Don Draper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

BY EMILY VIVIANI

Could the Beatles’ classic album be providing the blueprint for an otherwise random and chaotic Season 5 of “Mad Men”? (Credit: Capitol Records/Emily Viviani)

On June 1, 1967, the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Don Draper” turned 41 (or maybe 21?). It’s true! And in my mind, Sunday’s seventh installment of “Mad Men’s” fifth season confirms it: Matthew Weiner is a genius.

I know I may be crazy, but for a show all about 1960s America, there’s a notable shortage of John, George, Paul and Ringo in the world of  Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce. However, this season is beginning to make me think they’ve been with us all along.

Please entertain my theory: Sunday’s episode, the seventh hour of the thirteen slotted to make up Season 5 marked not only the end of Act I, but also the end of “Sgt. Pepper’s” Side One.

 Bold (subtle) moves! Weiner is using “Sgt. Pepper” – structurally, lyrically and thematically – as a template for Season 5. Each track is an episode. Chronologically, Side One has been nearly identical to the season’s first half (with the exception of the transposition of “Tea Leaves” and “Far Away Places”).

SIDE ONE

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  (A Little Kiss,Hour 1)
2. With a Little Help from My Friends (A Little Kiss, Hour 2)
3. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Far Away Places)*
4. Getting Better (Mystery Date)
5. Fixing a Hole (Signal 30)
6. She’s Leaving Home (Tea Leaves)*
7. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (At the Codfish Ball)

*switched

501: “A Little Kiss, Hour 1” (“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”)

About the song: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

“In November 1966, on the flight back to England after a holiday, McCartney conceived an idea in which an entire album would be role-played, with each of The Beatles assuming an alter-ego in the ‘Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ which would then perform a concert in front of an audience. The inspiration is said to have come when roadie Mal Evans innocently asked McCartney what the letters ‘S’ and ‘P’ stood for on the pots on their in-flight meal trays, and McCartney explained it was for salt and pepper. This then led to the ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ concept, as well as the song.” [i]

How it relates to 501:

In the finale of Season 4, Don is coming back from vacation where he had just impulsively proposed to Megan. The premiere episode of Season 5 is the curtain opening on their life together, the start of the show. Similarly, McCartney was struck with the impulse to create a song and album structured like a theatrical performance and based on role-playing, while on a flight back from vacation. Evans’ innocent curiosity (what the letters “S” and “P” stood for) is even reminiscent of Sally asking Don about the “Anna + Dick ’64” painted on the wall of Anna’s house in the Season 4 finale. “That’s my nickname sometimes,” Don explains. The sounds of an orchestra tuning up very clearly mimics the sounds of the bustle on Madison Avenue that play in the opening scene of the premiere. I guess the real question is: who is Billy Shears?

Applicable lyrics:

It was twenty years ago today, (Don Draper the character was born. This episode marks his 20^th, not 40th, birthday)

So may I introduce to you

The act you’ve known for all these years

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Don Draper’s been an act for years.)

That the singer’s going to sing a song

And he wants you all to sing along

So let me introduce to you

The one and only Billy Shears (Who is this new character? Happy Don? Megan?)

And Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (He’s not the headlining act of this episode – someone new is).

502: “A Little Kiss, Hour 2” (“With a Little Help from My Friends”)

[Instrumental bridge and transition into “With a Little Help from My Friends.” My guess is that this was what the psychedelic music (Sally waking up scene) was all about.]

About the song: “With a Little Help from My Friends”

“Lennon and McCartney deliberately wrote a tune with a limited range…The song was written for and sung by The Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr as the character ‘Billy Shears.’”[ii]

How it relates to 502:

Season 5 premiere: June 1, 1966 (Don Draper’s/Dick Whitman’s 40^th birthday). “Sgt. Pepper’s” was released just one year later. The lyrics directly relate to the plot of the episode, which features Megan singing a song to Don at his birthday party and his reaction to the performance. This episode is also one of the first times we see Don interacting with “friends.” But he’s still not looking for loads of friends; he really just wants Megan. (“Do you need anybody? I just need somebody to love.”) I also think the lyric “Would you believe in a love at first sight?  Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time,” is in direct reference to Joan’s reaction to Don’s proposal to Megan in the Season 4 finale: “It happens all the time.”

Applicable lyrics:

What would you think if I sang out of tune,

Would you stand up and walk out on me.

Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song, (“Zou Bisou Bisou”)

And I’ll try not to sing out of key.

Do you need anybody? (Don & Megan)

I need somebody to love.

Could it be anybody?

I want somebody to love.

Would you believe in a love at first sight?

Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time. (Joan’s response to Don and Megan)

503: “Tea Leaves” (“She’s Leaving Home”)

About the song: “She’s Leaving Home”

Paul McCartney:

“John and I wrote ‘She’s Leaving Home’ together. It was my inspiration. We’d seen a story in the newspaper about a young girl who’d left home and not been found, there were a lot of those at the time, and that was enough to give us a story line. So I started to get the lyrics: she slips out and leaves a note and then the parents wake up … It was rather poignant. I like it as a song and when I showed it to John, he added the long sustained notes, and one of the nice things about the structure of the song is that it stays on those chords endlessly. Before that period in our song-writing we would have changed chords but it stays on the C chord. It really holds you. It’s a really nice little trick and I think it worked very well. While I was showing that to John, he was doing the Greek Chorus, the parents’ view: ‘We gave her most of our lives, we gave her everything money could buy.’ I think that may have been in the runaway story, it might have been a quote from the parents. Then there’s the famous little line about a man from the motor trade; people have since said that was Terry Doran, who was a friend who worked in a car showroom.”

The newspaper story McCartney mentioned was from the front page of the Daily Mirror about a girl named Melanie Coe. Although McCartney made up most of the content, Coe, who was 17 at the time, claims that he got most of it right. Her parents wondered why she had left… “She has everything here.” [iii]

How it relates to 503:

This episode is about how unhappy (and bored, and fat) Betty is her new marriage, but how she doesn’t understand why. Much like a father, Henry loves her unconditionally and has given her everything, but it’s clear that Betty, who is like a little girl, would still like to runaway to “a man from the Motor trade,” aka Don (remember that before he was an ad-man, Don was a car salesman). Structurally, the long-sustained notes running throughout are similar to the bed of stability and tedium that she feels in her new life as Mrs. Francis (“She has everything here.”). Also, the parallel story of Don at the Rolling Stones concert concerned for the little Lady Jane (“None of you want any of us to have a good time, cause you never did.”) references several of the lyrical themes.

Note: Melanie Coe, who shares the name of the Pete Campbell from Ken’s short story in “Signal 30,” was 17 and this episode closes with Betty and the song “ Sixteen Going On Seventeen.”

Applicable lyrics:

The plot is almost sequentially identical to the song (see the full lyrics here, and just replace “handkerchief” with “Bugles,” and “Meeting a man from the Motor trade” with “Telephone call to Don”). Specifically, note these lyrics:

She (what did we do that was wrong)

Is Having (we didn’t know it was wrong)

Fun (fun is the one thing that money can’t buy) (Lady Jane)

Something inside, that was always denied, for so many years…

She’s leaving home…bye, bye (Birdie?)

504: “Mystery Date” (“Getting Better”)

About the Song: “Getting Better”

“The song’s title and music suggest optimism, but some of the song’s lyrics have a more negative tone. In this sense, it reflects the contrasting personas of the two songwriters. In response to McCartney’s line, ‘It’s getting better all the time,’ Lennon replies, ‘It can’t get no worse!’  Referring to the lyric ‘I used to be cruel to my woman/I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved/Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene/And I’m doing the best that I can,’ Lennon admitted that he had done things in relationships in the past that he was not happy about.”[iv]

How it relates to 504:

“Mystery Date” is about how Don and Megan’s happiness is threatened by Don’s adulterous and misogynistic tendencies. The song title, “Getting Better,” is appropriate since the entire episode is about Don being sick. Instrumentally, Harrison’s use of the Indian tambura correlates nicely with the exoticism of Don’s violent fever dreams. Obvious parallels can also be drawn to the ending of Joan and Greg’s marriage. The ironic relationship between much of the melody and lyric, as it relates to the episode tone and plot, mimic the emotions of the episode’s closing song: the Crystals “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss).”

Applicable lyrics:

It’s a little better all the time (It can’t get no worse) (Confliction)

I have to admit it’s getting better (better)

It’s getting better

Since you’ve been mine (Megan)

Me used to be a angry young man

Me hiding me head in the sand (reference to Faye Miller’s “Get your head out of the sand” advice to Don in Season 4)

You gave me the word, I finally heard

I’m doing the best that I can (Don trying to change)

I used to be cruel to my woman

I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved

Man, I was mean but I’m changing my scene

And I’m doing the best that I can (Fever dream)

505: “Signal 30” (“Fixing a Hole”)

About the Song: “Fixing a Hole”

“In a 1967 interview, McCartney said that the following lines were about fans who hung around outside his home day and night, and whose actions he found off-putting:

See the people standing there,

Who disagree, and never win,

And wonder why they don’t get in my door

Reportedly, McCartney was inspired to write the song after mending a hole in the roof of his Scotland home. However, he has stated that the song was ‘about the hole in the road where the rain gets in, a good old analogy.’”[v]

How it relates to 505:

Lyrically, it directly correlates to the plot: Pete allowing his mind to wander (the high school girl and the prostitute) and working to keep himself busy with his new life in the suburbs, mending a leaky sink (instead of McCartney’s hole in the roof). But in the end, he still has a disagreement (fistfight) with Lane, and doesn’t win. The door he wants to walk through is Don’s. Metaphorically, it’s Pete’s character – hopelessly inadequate. Rhythmically, you can hear the base guitar metronome of the drippy faucet throughout the song.

Applicable lyrics:

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in

And stops my mind from wandering

Where it will go. (Leaky sink)

See the people standing there who

Disagree and never win  (Pete and Lane fight)

And wonder why they don’t get in my door. (Pete’s desperation for Don’s approval)

Silly people run around they worry me (reference to University of Texas gunman, Charles Whitman)

506: “Far Away Places” (“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”)

About the Song: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

“Lennon’s son, Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing he called ‘Lucy — in the sky with diamonds.’ Shortly after the song’s release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the title’s nouns intentionally spelled LSD. Although Lennon denied this, the BBC banned the song.”[vi]

How it relates to 506:

Come on.

Applicable lyrics:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river (“It’s like a boat trip! You don’t cast off thinking

about sinking”)

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies (Maybe a stretch, but the cinematography

with Howard Johnson’s roof consuming the background- Don’s marmalade skies)

Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes

And she’s gone (The scene where Don finds Megan’s sunglasses in the lot, and she’s gone)

Lucy in the sky with diamonds

Lucy in the sky with diamonds

Lucy in the sky with diamond (Repetition of the same day three times)

 

507: “At the Codfish Ball” (“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”)

About the song: “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”

“Lennon was inspired to write the song by a 19th century circus poster for Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal, Rochdale, that he purchased in an antique shop on 31 January 1967, while filming the promotional video for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ in Sevenoaks, Kent. Lennon said ‘Everything from the song is from that poster, except the horse wasn’t called Henry.’ (The poster identifies the horse as ‘Zanthus.’) Mr. Kite is believed to be William Kite who worked for Pablo Fanque from 1843 to 1845.’”[vii]

How it relates to 507:

Thematically, this episode was a lot about preparation and disappointment. Peggy has the expectation of a marriage proposal and ends up with something similar, but “sinful.” Sally is growing up (Go-go boots! Makeup!) and excited about her chance to accompany Don, Roger, Megan and her parents to a fancy event “for the Benefit” of Mr. American Cancer Society. But all the magic of the night gets, as she said, “dirty.” The event itself – Don receiving a noble award for something that was done out self-interest – similarly follows the episode’s maniacal undercurrent. Much like the episode itself, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” lyrically and musically plays like an invitation to something grand that actually turns out be a creepy circus. The background music throughout the episode follows the melodic structure almost identically [most notably in the ending scene, where everyone is sitting and the table in silence, deflation or shock (Sally)]. Also, Don’s “promotional” motive for writing the anti-smoking piece in the New York Times nicely parallels: “Lennon was inspired to write the song by a 19th century circus poster…that he purchased in an antique shop…while filming the promotional video for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’” (Don:  “It doesn’t matter why I wrote it!”)

Applicable lyrics:

For the benefit of Mr. Kite

There will be a show tonight (American Cancer Society Benefit)

The Hendersons will all be there (the important, rich people Roger was trying to schmooze)

Having been some days in preparation

A splendid time is guaranteed for all

And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill! (Dirty.)

If you’re still on board with me on this, things are about to get really weird:

If my hunch is correct, than the Season 5 finale will play to the tempo of “A Day in the Life.” Considering Weiner’s love of running us around in circles, I thought it was notable that “the opening sounds of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” were taken from a February 10, 1967 orchestra session for ‘A Day in the Life.’” This is especially curious when you consider that the sounds heard on the streets of Madison Avenue during the civil rights scene that opens “A Little Kiss” are meant to mimic the tuning of an orchestra on February 10, 1967. Well, if the world is Weiner’s audience, I guess the New York Times is his orchestra.

I would bet my Sterling’s gold that the Season 5 finale, “The Phantom” (“A Day in the Life”), lands on February 10, 1967 and opens with real-life history lesson (“I read the news today, oh boy…”). If you listen to the rest of the song, it’s difficult not to suspect that the plot of “The Phantom” will in many ways draw on the themes we were introduced to, given Pete’s many names and the mini-orchestra in “Signal 30.”

But for now, I’m just ready for Weiner to flip the record.

SIDE TWO

1. Within You Without You (Lady Lazarus)
2. When I’m Sixty-Four (Dark Shadows)
3. Lovely Rita (Christmas Waltz)
4. Good Morning, Good Morning (The Other Woman)
5. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band (Commissions and Fees)
6. A Day in the Life (The Phantom)

---

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band_(song)

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_a_Little_Help_from_My_Friends

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She%27s_Leaving_Home

[iv] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Better

[v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_a_Hole

[vi] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_in_the_Sky_with_Diamonds

[vii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_for_the_Benefit_of_Mr._Kite!

Magical Warfare

BY JOANNA HAYES

 

The conclusion of “The Ghost of Harrenhal” marks the halfway point of Season 2 of “Game of Thrones,” and we are already down a king.

During the last few episodes, the game has been quietly retooled. In a land where the forces of magic have lain dormant for centuries, long enough for everyone but Old Nan to forget, the men and women of Westeros have gotten used to playing the game of thrones through what Cersei calls “schemes and plots.” (As Tryion would so cleverly point out, “Schemes and plots are the same thing.”)

Needless to say, magic and sorcery have gradually been making a comeback since the first scene of the first episode, with our initial glimpse of the White Walker. Everywhere, people continue to deny its existence as anything other than an attempt to entertain and terrify young children like Bran. But it has become increasingly clear that this hesitation to admit magic back into their reality is borne out of ignorance, fear or self-preservation. If they acknowledge the existence of powers beyond their control, then they admit the game has changed forever and they may no longer be best equipped for it. They can either adapt or die.

This fact becomes clear in this week’s opening scene, with Renly’s sudden death at the hands of the shadow baby Melisandre birthed in the last episode. This shadow has grown to look remarkably like Stannis and is tactile enough to drive a dagger through Renly’s heart. While this scene should have been bloodier (as described in the book), it is not much less horrifying to simply see the abomination stamp out a lively young man like Renly. Though Renly was not perfect, he could have made a good king, perhaps an even better king (if not warrior) than his late brother and certainly better than most of Westeros’s other options.

Renly’s greatest weakness was that he was too proud and self-assured that his land forces would win him the throne with ease. He was glib with his brother when they met to try to broker a deal and paid no heed to Stannis’ threats. Renly failed to realize that the game has changed and that it is no longer about who has to most troops or the greater love of his men. Renly has grown up listening to the heroics on the battlefield of superior warriors like Robert Baratheon and his friend Ned Stark, and he doesn’t realize that the days when bravery won wars are drawing to a close.

When the Germans first used chemical warfare on a large-scale at Ypres during the First World War, the Western world was both shocked and horrified. Though the gas was largely nonlethal, the effects were gruesome and painful, and the cultural effects of this new threat were far-reaching. But was gas warfare really worse than having your body torn apart by machine gun rounds or blasted full of metal shrapnel? What inspired such fear and rage among the Allies was something else. Success in warfare was supposed to be determined by the qualities of the men who fought: it was long held that a side’s strength, cunning and valor would earn it the victory. Poison gas, delivered not by a foe you could see and kill, but by the very wind and air you breathe, meant the dawning of an era of warfare where individual strengths and bravery earned you no added protection from the carnage of war.

Renly is a skilled statesmen with two of the best knights in the realm serving as his kingsguard, and yet he is powerless against the magical warfare unleashed by his brother. Like Germany’s poison gas, his death is borne by the wind by an enemy Brienne cannot combat. In her grief and rage, she ends up slaying two of Renly’s guards who mistake her for the killer. This is a brilliantly emotional scene that not only shows us how phenomenally skilled (and large) she truly is, but also just how much she loved her lord. She is a strong, brave knight reduced to fear and crippling disbelief because the conventions of warfare that she holds as sacrosanct have been challenged in the most devastating way.

Magic and sorcery are rendering Westeros’s few remaining warriors with honor and bravery nearly obsolete (I say “nearly” because Brienne continues to be the most loyal and chivalric of any of them, after the powerfully touching swearing of fealty with Catelyn). The true players are adapting.

Tyrion visits the alchemist’s guild to learn about his sister’s order of Wildfire, a magic potion that melts everything, including human flesh. Bronn finds the magical warfare unbelievable and even foolhardy, and at first we think this is what Tyrion believes, as well. After all, they have Wildfire enough to destroy all of Stannis’s ships and men. No matter how strong and brave those bannermen may be, they will lose the war and their lives to magic warfare. Just when you think Tyrion is going to turn away from this horror, he takes the Wildfire into his own account, knowing that it is his only hope for holding the city when his best men are in the riverlands with his father.

Meanwhile, Arya has taken up her role as cup bearer for Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal and, while fetching more water for the lion, reconnects with Jaqen H’ghar. In return for saving his life and the lives of the two other men in the prison cart, he grants her three deaths. Arya does not quite believe this, and chooses the Tickler as the first man she’d see dead. Of all the names in her hit list prayer, the Tickler (the resident torturer of Harrenhal) seems an odd choice, but it is clear that she does not quite believe in the magic of Jaqen’s offer. After all, in perhaps the best sequence of the episode, Arya had just stared down Tywin Lannister himself and declared that she did not believe the magical stories about Robb (stories like the one where her brother can inhabit the body of his direwolf). Instead, she remarks, “All men can die.” Indeed, that is true now more than ever.

However, when she sees the Tickler lying dead and Jaqen looking on with a telling detachment, her eyes open to the mysticism of this strange traveler’s power. All men can die, and no man, no matter how strong or brave, is now safe.

Other thoughts from “The Ghost of Harrenhal”:

– Maisie Williams (Arya) has been submitted for an Emmy this year, thank god. Her performance this episode was outstanding. When she stood toe-to-toe with Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister), she matched the great actor on screen and provided one of the most memorable showdowns of characters’ wits in the series thus far. However, in a far more subtle scene, I really loved the way Williams played Arya looking forlornly onto Gendry (shirtless!) practicing with his sword. She looked so tired, worn down, and more childlike than she’s been in ages. Strong as Arya is, you forget just how young she is and how miserable she, too, must be after losing her family and experiencing such traumas on her own.

– The reason why I do not talk about Qarth and Dany much here is that I find her storyline to be rather boring in this part of the series. I felt the same way when I was reading the books. The one positive about these scenes are that they are visually stunning, but Qarth continued to be rather dull this week. The most exciting part was when she fed her dragon.

– Someone get Jon Snow a hat.

– I’m really excited about what is coming up, and the cinematography of “The Ghost of Harrenhal” cleverly highlighted what we can expect in the next few episodes with a number of character shots looking out into various horizons: north of the Wall, into Stannis’s fleet, through the casks of Wildfire and across the sea to the Northern shores.

Stay Where You Are (Because Everywhere Else Is Really Weird)

BY EMILY VIVIANI

Things were weird before, during and after Roger and Jane took LSD on this week's "Mad Men." (Credit: AMC)

This Sunday Mad Men was chock-full, jam-packed and bursting-at-the-seams with Violet candy! Orange sherbet! Drugggggs! Everyone had somewhere to be, no one liked anything and all the girls cried.

The hour was divided into three overlapping stories about one day as it unfolded, first from the perspective of Peggy, then Roger and finally Don. The stories were unified by blatant plot similarities, but also convoluted by dramatic decadence and disorientation (dreams, memories, what time is it? etc.). Peggy jerked off a stranger at the movies. Roger took LSD and divorced his wife. Don lost Megan at a Howard Johnson’s in upstate New York.

Structurally, I think it worked, but thematically nothing seemed to fit. Maybe this was intentional, but I thought there was so much, too much other intentional stuff that in the end, everything felt like the band-aid for some disjointed message that Weiner seemed to be molesting with allusion.

People want to escape? Truth is irrelevant? Relationships are transient? So what? In an episode all about people going to “Far Away Places,” I found the episode’s clearest, most conclusive message came from Mars, via Ginsberg: stay where you are.

It was spoon-fed to us within the first 13 minutes of the episode, in a quiet, perfect scene between Peggy and Ginsberg at the office, after hours. Peggy, who had just come back from her day as Don, asks Ginsberg why he never mentioned he had a family, having met his father in the lobby earlier that day. Ginsberg responded with an explanation that the man she met wasn’t his father, since he, himself was from Mars. At this Peggy laughs, but Ginsberg continues in earnest:

“It’s fine if you don’t believe me, but that’s where I’m from. I’m a full-blooded Martian. Don’t worry, there’s no plot to take over earth, we’ve just been displaced. I can tell you don’t believe me and that’s okay, we’re a big secret. They even tried to hide it from me. That man, my father, told me a story that I was born in a concentration camp, but you know that’s impossible. And I’ve never met my mother cause she supposedly died there. That’s convenient. Next thing I know Morris there finds me in a Swedish orphanage. I was five, I remember it. [Peggy: “That’s incredible.”] Yea, and then I got this one communication. A simple order — stay where you are.”

In contrast to everything else that was said by everyone else in this episode, which seemed to be followed by either a gigantic exclamation point or an enormous question mark, Ginsberg ended everything he said in this scene with a simple, definitive, period.

The scene itself played with Ginsberg’s back to Peggy as he continues to scribble on his memo pad, head down while talking. Peggy in her desk chair is turned toward him, struck by the strange, sad story.  When it ends, Peggy asks if there are others like him and Ginsberg looks up at his reflection in the dark window, in front of his desk (so he is not really, but is looking at Peggy through a reflection of himself) and tells her he doesn’t know because he hasn’t been able to find any.

Maybe it was the mention of concentration camps in an episode where major plotlines pivoted around 27 flavors of ice cream, or maybe it was the look on Peggy’s face or in Ginsberg’s reflection, but what struck me most about the sad scene was how much I liked it compared to everything else this episode. The exchange felt genuine and ironically omniscient, in an hour that otherwise played like, well, a show.  The final scene, Bert Cooper reprimanding Don for his love leave and reminding him that while he had been going places, he hadn’t been doing anything, was similarly affecting.

“Stay where you are” is something your parents tell you to do when you’re little. It’s their guidance, if you should get lost in a crowded place where people are bustling around, going places. There is no way to know what Weiner was trying to have Ginsberg say, if anything, through his one communication, one simple order from Mars, but in an episode where all the adults were behaving like a bunch of kids running around in circles (Don and Megan, quite literally), I’m glad somebody said it.

A Clash Of Kings

BY JOANNA HAYES

King Joffrey took things to a whole new level of disturbing during this week's episode of "Game of Thrones." (Credit: HBO)

Much has been made of the violence and sex on “Game of Thrones,” and if it was possible for the writers to push the envelope even further, they succeeded in doing just that this week. Torture, twisted sexual violence, heads nailed on spikes, rat buckets and the graphic birth of a shadow monster are just a few of the things we were treated to on Sunday night during “Garden of Bones,” the first episode of Season 2 to be written by a woman.

The theme of this chapter was the lack of honor among these would-be kings, and in no king is this more obvious than Joffrey Baratheon. After last night’s episode, even Ned Starks’s spontaneous beheading seemed rational by comparison to the Joffrey we see now. His crossbow has become an extension of his arm. I felt a chill watching him as he held Sansa in its sight for far too long and commanded her clothes be ripped off in court. This scene is downright haunting after what follows, a highly disturbing scene of sexual violence in Joffrey’s bedroom that I hardly wish to recap here (all I can say is prostitutes have had it rough this season). It becomes clear that this is a teenage boy with no apparent sexual desires, who lusts only for violence and control. He did not want to see Sansa stripped naked for any pleasure other than the violence and degradation she would experience, exposed before the whole court. Does everyone finally sympathize with her?

Sansa’s brother Robb, ever the humanist, is the least obvious example of the dishonor among these kings (he is a Stark, after all). Like it was with his father, you really get the sense that Robb takes the title of lord and protector seriously. Many noblemen in this series forget that last part, but not Robb. If any one side commands true loyalty from their people, it is the Northmen, and for good reason.

On the battlefield, it seems that Robb is the only lord who sees the devastation and destruction inherent in war. It has always been with a heavy heart that he has claimed his victories. In the ninth episode of Season 1 (“Baelor”), after the historic defeat and capture of Jaime Lannister, Robb remarks privately to Theon, “I sent two thousand men to their graves today.” Theon replies, “The bards will sing songs of their sacrifice.” “Aye,” Robb says, “but the dead won’t hear them.” In the start of “Garden of Bones,” we see the same Robb in horrified awe over the destruction he has wrought. He even shows a clear sensitivity towards the maimed and wounded of his enemy camp, and resists Roose Bolton’s cool insistence on torturing prisoners.

Despite this, Robb shows a real naivety when he declares that he would win the war against the Lannisters and then retreat simply to be King of the North. Perhaps his mother could tell him a thing or two about what might happen in the power vacuum he’d leave behind, and the suffering he would perpetuate.

Though we have seen relatively little of Stannis, it is clear that he was at one time a man who was honorable almost to a fault. As Renly makes clear, the eldest Baratheon has been corrupted by the red priestess. In the end, Stannis’ only friend, Davos, quietly pleads with him to remember his honor as he moves against his own brother. “Surely there are other ways,” he says. “Cleaner ways.”

Stannis replies coolly, with not a shred of sympathy for his own blood. “Cleaner ways don’t end wars,” he says. We have only a brief, albeit grotesque view of Stannis’ dishonor come to life in the form of a menacing shadow delivered by a suddenly-pregnant Melisandre, and we’ll have to wait an agonizing week to see the effects of this sorcery. Truly, the night is dark and full of terrors.

Other thoughts from “Garden of Bones”:

– We had our first real shot of the derelict and soulless Harrenhal: a castle so cursed and wretched that it’s no wonder the kind of men that set up shop there. From what looks to be ruinous material found around the castle, a makeshift torture chair and now-infamous rat bucket device are rigged for the prisoner interrogation. “Where’s the Brotherhood?” they ask, over and over. Clearly, if the Mountain’s rapists and torturers are so concerned about it, this Brotherhood is something we could get behind.

– Did you recognize that really tall guy with the bat-wing helmet picking out prisoners? That was the new Mountain That Rides, Gregor Clegane. Admittedly, I had no idea who that character was during the show. It was only after that I remembered they recast the part, with Ian Whyte in place of Conan Stevens (who fought that memorable duel against his brother, the Hound, in Season 1). While I am no purist, this is one of the few of the showrunners’ divergent choices that I disapprove of. If the Mountain is anything, he is defined by his great size: not just in height, but also in muscle. He is supposed to be unnaturally strong, which makes his inhumane character all the more menacing. Time will tell if Whyte can pull that off.

– Arya as cup bearer for Tywin Lannister? That is a fairly significant departure from the text, but is likely due to the necessary economy of the show.

– Who noticed that The Hound is the first to cover Sansa up? Remember, this is the guy who refuses to be knighted because he feels unworthy of it.

– Margaery continues to be the character who has benefited the most from her on-screen adaptation. “My husband is my king, and my king is my husband.” The Renly-Margaery-Loras triple power play has become a force to reckon with.

– Littlefinger’s love for Catelyn is a strange one. He preys upon her maternal instincts by claiming that the Lannisters have both her girls to trade, if only she would release Jaime. Just as it seems she is strong enough to resist the temptation of the unequal trade, Littlefinger presents her with Ned’s remains. It’s a cruelly clever ploy: how much longer can she keep sacrificing her family to this war?

A Shadow On The Wall

BY JOANNA HAYES

Sunday's "Game of Thrones" continued to question one of the more pervasive storylines of the series: what is power? (Credit: HBO)

“What is Dead May Never Die,” the third episode of an already fantastic Season 2 of “Game of Thrones,” takes its title from a prayer of the Ironborn to their Drowned God. The Iron Islands fittingly play a prominent role in the heart of this episode, hosting some of its most efficient and effective scenes and delivering to us yet another king bidding for power in Westeros.

We are treated to a number of gorgeous, minimalist shots as we see Theon turn his back on his adoptive brother to be reborn into iron, salt water and wind (visually represented by a ritual baptism). In one wordless shot, we see Theon burn a letter he had written to Robb warning him of Balon Greyjoy’s plans for the Stark’s northern lands. This one scene does what the books never could. In one shot, we see the real conflict that Theon feels as he is pulled between his true family – the one he hardly knew – and his adoptive one. In the books, Theon protests his father’s plan in one chapter, but by the next time we visit him (several chapters later), he is actively involved in the Greyjoy attack. As much as Theon may be a sleazy scumbag, his ready turn-cloak never made much sense as it read in the books. This scene, filmed with take after take until perfection, is just that – perfection.

One of my favorite scenes comes courtesy of Varys and Tyrion. This scene is almost identical to the one found in the book, but Conleth Hill (Varys) and Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) have developed such an interesting chemistry on screen that the familiar dialogue snapped between them with a new spark. As they sit in Kings Landing, the Eunuch shares a riddle with the Imp, essentially asking who holds the key to power: a king, a priest, or a rich man? Eventually, Varys declares: “Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

This quote stood out to me when I read it and has stuck in my mind since. When I watched this scene, I felt as if I had scene it a dozen times before (perhaps that was just because HBO wisely chose to highlight this quote within its Season 2 promotional videos). Clearly, this conversation is loaded. It represents some of the major themes of this series. What is power? Who holds power? How do they keep it, and for how long? The characters all clearly have different perceptions on this (earlier this season, Cersei bluntly asserted “Power is power”), and that is exactly the point Varys is making: power is perception.

Arya Stark, stripped of all visible signals to her family, wealth, and even gender, is without power. However, without her former trappings of authority, she has evaded capture by the Gold Cloaks. Gendry loses the power inherent in his protective helmet, but this, too, ends up saving his life. Power is perception, and after her conversation with Yoren (one of my favorite scenes yet), Arya is beginning to see the power she may wield from the shadows. You can see it in her eyes at the end of the episode. With a new confidence, she lies about who owned the bull’s helmet (claiming that Lommy, who was already dead and fortuitously lying beside the thing, was the boy they were looking for), throwing the Gold Cloaks off Gendry’s scent and starting a new thread in Arya’s already fascinating storyline.

By now, we know that Littlefinger believes that knowledge is power. In this episode, we are treated to his indignation when his cunning is outdone by Tyrion, who positions himself as the most powerful man in the realm by sniffing out the small council’s mole. In a wonderfully condensed scene (in the book, it carries on for several pages), the brilliance of Tyrion’s plan is clear in the simplicity of the medium’s efficient structure. We’ve seen all three men wheel and deal since Season 1, but in this episode, none could match the power of the Imp. Tyrion’s power is made plain.

Power is perception to Margaery Tyrell, a newcomer this episode from the lands of Highgarden. On the page, her character is one of the few that falls flat. On screen, the writers have made her motivations clear and, in doing so, crafted an infinitely more intriguing character. From the start, it is clear that Margaery is as much a power player as the rest of the characters. In order to achieve her goal (to become queen, at least as it stands now), she knows that her husband Renly will need to battle the growing suspicions of his sexuality (or, at least, Margaery’s continued – supposed – virginity). She even goes so far as to suggest that her brother, Renly’s lover Loras, participate in helping the king get her with child  in order to secure the strategic alliance between the Baratheons and the Tyrells. This relationship is a crucial one if Renly hopes to take King’s Landing, because the Tyrells have men and resources in plenty supply.

Brienne, another new addition to the show (and one of my favorite characters of the book series) is perceived to be powerful so long as she is masked in a suit of armor. In a tournament of hand-to-hand combat among the knights in Renly’s camp, she is able to defeat even the storied knight and jouster, Ser Loras (who is also the head of Renly’s new “Rainbow guard.” Hello, who is Renly fooling?). When she removes her helm and requests that her reward be a place on the Kingsguard, most scoff at her. Loras is put off by the idea of a woman on the guard, and makes his feelings known to Renly. What was once a triumphant victory is now a joke. The perception of the mysterious knight’s power is lost when the mask comes off and the gender is revealed.

We are often reminded that women should not hold power in this alternate universe. Yet again and again, we as viewers are treated to the many ways in which these women are still able to wield influence. This, to me, is one of the most interesting aspects of this series. Westeros exists as an amalgamation of medieval Western Europe and, by all rights, women should be relatively powerless. They, like Tyrion, might not outwardly match the physical prerequisites of power. But, significantly, they can cast large shadows.

Too Beautiful To Bear

BY EMILY VIVIANI

Sunday's episode of "Mad Men," an instant classic, focused on Pete, who continues to evolve as a focal point of the series. (Credit: AMC)

Sometimes when I watch an episode of “Mad Men,” I feel like I can appreciate but never fully understand its greatness, because I’m a girl. I mean this is the least offensive way. There was just a lot of aggression and nuance in this Sunday’s episode, wrapped in a bunch of identity and pride baggage that seems to explode in a fistfight (which is kind of the feminine narrative equivalent of an eating disorder). Despite this, I thought the episode was near perfect.

The fifth episode of Season 5 (“Signal 30”) begins with the sound of a car crashing and ends with Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” In both the first and final scenes, we watch Pete Campbell sitting in the dark, in a crisp blue suit, in a little high school classroom. He’s in driver’s education class, since growing up a rich little boy in Manhattan, he’s never needed to drive himself anywhere. Most of the episode stems from Pete’s struggles with illusions of freedom, power and ownership, as they intersect within the space between his primal versus civilized self and pastoral versus cosmopolitan worlds. It’s very easy to hate Pete, and plenty of times I do, but the really tragic thing about his character is that he hates himself, and for all the wrong reasons.

Pete comes from an old New York family and old New York money. Ironically, he is the first character to discover Don’s secret past and identity. Pete develops a strange loyalty to Don, perhaps out of admiration for Don’s self-made success, the kind he was never given the opportunity to achieve. Growing up in the city where identity was handed to him at an early age, it’s clear that Pete, perhaps subconsciously, has always felt inferior to people who have earned their worth. Like Lane Pryce, who shares his pragmatism, he was brought up in a world of formality, hierarchy and logic. It’s almost understandable that he constantly measures his merit on a scale of pomp and circumstance, rather than simply experiencing life.

Unfortunately for Pete advertising (much like car crashes and symphonies) isn’t that logical or structured, and it’s becoming less and less formal. This is making him more and more angry (and miserable). To illustrate his aggravation, the episode’s plotline is quite appropriately unified (for a boy who can’t drive) by SCDP’s attempt and failure to bring in a car account (Jaguar). In this episode, the car – always the emblem of masculine freedom and success – is skewed as “pornographic.” This is a far cry from the messaging associated with the stylish Cadillac Don purchases for a picturesque family picnic in Season 2.

Running parallel to Pete’s bold and childish outcries for validation are Lane’s pathetic and painfully proper attempts to belong.  In this episode, Lane, who has always awkwardly rejected the rigidity of his British upbringing (his African-American playmate, his night out with Don, the New York paraphernalia strewn across his office, and that weird picture of Delores), recognizes an opportunity to be accepted. When his British acquaintance Edwin Baker (who happens to be the head of public relations for Jaguar) presents him with an opportunity to bring in business to SCDP, he sees his chance to become one of  “the (American) guys.”

In a wonderful scene, Roger coaches Lane on the art of bringing in accounts, which he compares to “being on a date,” or “friendship.” The dialogue perfectly showcases the key to Roger’s success as an account man, and what – despite the advantages he (like Pete) has been given – he is actually good at doing. In addition to being charismatic and witty (unlike Pete), Roger is egoless. He is truly trying to help Lane finesse his otherwise poindexterous persona.

Unlike Pete or Don (i.e. this episode’s “King” and “Superman”), Roger doesn’t thrive on feeling powerful, superior or unique. He likes being happy. Clients like him because he treats them as if they should be happy too, despite the common vulnerability he seamlessly fabricates to forge a connection. As Roger tells Don in the fourth episode of Season 1, “You know you shouldn’t compete with Pete Campbell.” When Don denies that he is, Roger clarifies, “Not on a personal level, but for the world,” for which Don has no rebuttal.

This brings me to our other egoless man of the hour: Ken Cosgrove. Kenny’s understated character is a combination of Don’s intense creative insight with Roger’s carefree likeability. Unlike the rest of the characters, Ken seems to have struck the perfect balance between the roles he plays as an account man, husband and writer. Careful to never derive all of his identity from just one, he appears to be content in all three. As Lane notes in Season 3, “Mr. Cosgrove has the rare gift of making [clients] feel as if they haven’t any needs at all.” At the end of Season 4, he draws boundaries between his work and home life, when he refuses to use his relationship with his wife Cynthia’s father to bring in an account. “Cynthia is my life,” he says. “My actual life.”

We’re introduced to Ken’s writing talent in the fourth episode of Season 1 when his “beautiful and sad” short story about a maple tree is published in The Atlantic and circulated around the office.  In that episode Roger commends his talent, saying in a meeting, “I think it shows tremendous fortitude and I’d like to see more of it around here – people finishing things.”

This week, at a Campbell dinner party all about names, Pete, Don, Trudy and Megan learn that Ken is still writing short stories (under pen name Ben Hargrove), but he’s swapped his countrified subject matter for robots and galaxies. The secret slips when Ken’s wife (whose name Don and Megan can’t remember) compares one of his stories, titled “The Punishment of X4,”  to the University of Texas killings by Charles Whitman (whose name Don does remember). We also learn the etymology of the Campbell’s new town name, Cos Cob, Connecticut, which originates from the surname of the founding family, Coe. Pete, who is no stranger to founding family names, jokes that the name is similar to the Algonquin word for briefcase. But back at the office, Roger scolds Ken for his writing hobby, in direct contrast to his response in Season 1. “I like to think we offer you more than security here,” Roger says. “From one unappreciated author to another, when this job is good, it offers everything. Believe me, I remember.”

The culmination of all this metaphorical allusion and symbolic tension (the drippy faucet explosion of the hour, if you will) comes when SCDP loses the account they thought they’d landed with Jaguar. Edwin, who it turns out prefers lobster bibs and brothels to beef and football, came home to his wife with chewing gum on his pubis. Lane is appalled at the humor Don, Roger and Pete find in the story and Pete reacts to his propriety by belittling his influence at the firm and mocking his heterosexuality. Lane challenges Pete to a fight in a hilarious scene, which begins with Don closing the boardroom curtains and ends with Pete on the ground with his second bloody nose of the season.

The ending brings us back to the Eden-like treatment of suburban life trickling throughout episode. Like God to Adam and Eve, Don warns Pete in the cab, “You don’t get a second chance at what you have.” It ends with city-boy Pete (aka Coe) unable to recognize the value of his existence, as country-bred Ken (aka Dave Algonquin) narrates with the opening lines of his next story: “Still, Coe thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry. It was killing him with its silence and loneliness, making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.”

She Wants To Be Caught

BY EMILY VIVIANI

This week's "Mad Men" episode brought closure to Joan, but left other characters - and viewers - with more questions to answer. (Credit: AMC)

I understood by 11 p.m. on Sunday why Matthew Weiner chose to title this week’s “Mad Men” episode “Mystery Date.” But I think a more appropriate title for the better part of the hour, at least for me, would have been: “Wait, what?”

The historical events that Weiner selects to unify episodes generally are poignant in contrast to the drama and artifice of the fabricated plotline. This week’s episode was oriented around Richard Speck’s murder of eight student nurses in Chicago, whom he brutally raped and killed in the summer of 1966.

The event was horrific, but unlike the presidential elections, civil rights movement or Vietnam War, it had little effect on the masses. Instead of using the news to illustrate change, it seems Weiner intended, in this episode, to use an isolated and sensational event to investigate fear, and all the violent, psychosexual stuff that comes along with it.

Don has always had affairs. Even his marriage to Megan began as an affair, when he was in a relationship with Faye Miller. (This makes all of Megan’s embarrassment blah blah during this episode a little tough to take.) Most of Don’s extramarital relationships were glamorized and somewhat justified through his penchant for escape.* They were illicit, yet intriguing.

But in Season 2, Don’s affair with Bobbie Barrett – which marked the beginning of the end for Don and Betty – was different. Don’s relationship with the strong, sexually aggressive Bobbie is the first time Don displays misogynistic tendencies (at least to the viewers). There is nothing romantic about their affair: it is crude, indulgent and, from a relational-development standpoint, inexplicable. It’s understandable that Don, now happily married to the understanding Megan, would no longer need to “escape.” But indulge (as he did with Bobbie)? That’s another story.

It probably isn’t a coincidence that Andrea – Don’s former freelance mistress whom we meet during an awkward elevator encounter – vaguely resembles Bobbie. Don feels guilty when Megan becomes upset after running into yet another of his former flames. “That kind of careless [sexual] appetite—you can’t blame it all on Betty,” Megan says.

This guilt is brought to a head when Don leaves work early with a pounding headache and aggravated cough. Back at his apartment, Don has a lucid fever dream in which Andrea comes to his apartment and seduces him. “It was just sex, it doesn’t mean anything,” she tells him. As she’s leaving, he tells her it was a one-time thing, but she tells him it will never be over, “because [he] is a sick, sick, [man].” At this, Don leaps up and strangles her to death, Speck-style, then pushes her corpse beneath the bed, one stiletto peeping out from beneath the frame.  This visceral dream, I would guess, is Don’s subconscious, metaphorically attempting to expunge the dirty, adulterous bits from his psyche.

This brings us to copywriting boy wonder Michael Ginsberg. In a telling opening scene, Ginsberg is disgusted when his copywriting co-workers ogle at the not-suitable-for-publication photographs of Speck’s mangled corpses, which Peggy’s friend from Life magazine brings to SCDP for show and tell. “Why are you laughing?” Ginsberg asks Megan as she garishly gawks over the dirty little thumbnails. “You’re excited by it,” he says. “Some girl thrust up like a cut of meat…You’re all a bunch of sick-os!”

However sick and sadistic, Ginsberg recognizes the potency of their attraction to morbidity, and like any good adman, he puts this observation to good use. In his pitch to Butler shoes, Ginsberg butters up the client with a playful pitch centered on the charm of feminine mystique (“You’ll never tell; They’ll never be able to.”) The client is sold, even going as far as to suggest that the girl casted be French. (Megan! Megan!)  But in closing handshakes, Ginsberg, inspired by his coworkers twisted delight, suggests a darker approach – Cinderella Noire.

In his first great creative monologue, Ginsberg illustrates a creepy interpretation of the shoe-centric fairytale, in which Cinderella is cast as “wounded prey.” He paints an image of her hobbling down cobblestone streets in the shadows of a castle, with the measured footsteps of her pursuer approaching behind her. “She knows she’s not safe, but she doesn’t care,” he says. “I guess we know in the end, she wants to be caught.”

Back at the Francis’ haunted mansion, Sally Draper is having trouble digesting all the discipline and tuna that babysitter for the week, Grandma Pauline, has been shoving down her throat. In fact, the only thing that Sally has no trouble swallowing is the Secanol that Pauline gives her after she’s frightened upon reading about the Speck murders. Pauline’s explanation to Sally: they were raped and murdered because their skirts were too short. Bring back Carla, please!

Perhaps the only silver lining in this dark thundercloud of an hour is the delicious vindication we feel for Joan at the end. This week, her husband, Army surgeon Greg Harris, has returned fromVietnam. To celebrate his return, Joan makes steak, attempts a cake, buys some new lingerie and ensures her mother is on hand to babysit newborn Kevin.

Greg, who we’ve hated since he raped Joan in Don’s office at the end of Season 2, tells Joan that unlike they had anticipated, he must return to Vietnam. When Joan discovers later in the episode that Greg has in fact volunteered to go back, because the Army makes him feel “needed” and like a “good man.” Joan tells him to go back and stay there. “I’m glad the Army makes you feel like a man, because I’m sick of trying to do it,” she says. “You’re not a good man. You never were.” The episode closes with an overhead shot of Joan lying in her bed looking at the ceiling and wearing pants as the the Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)” appropriately opens to the credits.

Like any good horror flick, this episode was strung together with several of “those things I wish I didn’t see” moments. As the series continues, it will be interesting to watch how the characters cope with these fears, since “murder” and pill-popping are really only temporary fixes. After all, everybody is bound to look under the bed at some point.

*Season 1: Don wanted to run away with Rachel Menken.

Season 2: Don runs away toLos Angelesand meets elusive Joy.

Season 3: Don plans to run away with Sally’s teacher, Suzanne.

Season 4: Divorced Don runs away from Dr. Faye Miller with Megan.

Time Is On Their Side

BY EMILY VIVIANI

Sunday's episode, "Tea Leaves," further defined the gap between the respective generations of Don Megan and Don. (Credit: AMC)

In last week’s season premiere, we were reintroduced to Joan Harris’ new life with a close-up of baby Kevin’s diaper rash. This week we are reintroduced to the former Mrs. Draper, with a similarly vulnerable tight shot: Betty can’t zip up her dress.

In Sunday’s episode (“Tea Leaves”), we learn what Betty Francis has been doing since Don and Megan’s marriage. The answer: not a whole lot. If marrying young Megan has made Don Draper – by contrast – appear older, then marrying old Henry has had a similar, but inverse effect on Betty. She’s more of a little girl than she ever was, and now, she’s eaten too many bonbons.

Betty’s clunky return to the series [a scene she plays slumped and covered in a gloomy bedroom with “a woman’s thing” (i.e. weight gain), thus left unable to fulfill her duties as trophy wife extraordinaire] is uncomfortably mirrored with a scene of Don breezily zipping up Megan’s new dress.  Megan bubbles over with je ne sais quoi, putting the finishing touches on her look before accompanying Don to a business dinner with Heinz (“He’s the only man I want to please more than you”). Meanwhile, Betty, cloaked in matronly exhaustion, asks her husband to forgive her on his way there.

The Francis marriage, which had initially been Betty’s naïve and bold attempt at a “fresh-start,” is looking as stale as the Bugles that Betty can’t stop eating. Their home, a big, dark and dusty mansion, is the ideal habitat for Season 3’s Victorian fainting couch. And while fat Betty is a heck of a lot more layered (no pun intended) than cinched-waist, chimney-smoking scary Betty, she’s also a lot more depressing. After being scolded for packing on pounds by Henry’s mother, Betty schedules a visit with the doctor in the hope of getting a prescription for diet pills. The doctor discovers a potentially cancerous tumor on her thyroid, which at the end of the episode we learn is benign.

Betty’s brief but startling brush with mortality enables the audience to ingest her often-vilified character with a level of sympathetic tolerance. Yes, she’s made mistakes, but she wants to be better. “I’m leaving behind such a mess,” she confides in a former acquaintance she bumps into at the hospital. She’s reduced to tears when a fortuneteller with impeccably unfortunate timing describes her as a “great soul.” This gloomy, introspective struggle – which we saw glimmers of through Greenwich Village Don from Season 4 – is contrasted by the frenetic and addictive energy of a new, up-and-coming generation.  While Betty is taking a bath, no doubt mulling over the tragedy of her impending doom, Megan is “being bathed in commercials.” How cute.

“You’re so square you’ve got corners,” Megan says to Don as he leaves for the Rolling Stones concert – on business. Backstage at the show, accompanied by a boisterous Harry, Don engages in conversation with a 14-year-old girl. He attempts, as usual, to isolate the marketable essence of the Stones, but the girl sluffs off his pragmatic dissection saying he is “like a psychiatrist,” probably one of the least-sexy ways Don has been described the entire series. The girl proceeds to playfully and poignantly remove his tie and put it around her neck.

At the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, things are shifting away from business as usual, leading to Roger asking “When is everything going to get back to normal?” The firm did in fact hire its first African American, a secretary named Dawn, for Don. Peggy is given the task of finding a fresh copywriter for Mohawk Airlines.  She’s intrigued by the portfolio of Michael Ginsberg (who is Jewish, further upping the diversity quotient). His provocative work is a far cry from Sally’s macaroni-noodle Valentine that served as inspiration for the Mohawk campaign in Season 2.

In his interview, Michael is awkward, unprofessional and candid – but entertaining! He dismisses Peggy’s authority and appears to be solely interested in meeting with Don. “Is Don a real person?” he asks. His tunneled insistence to meet the creative wizard behind SCDP sort of eerily mimicked the 14-year-old’s eagerness to become Brian Jones’ Lady Jane. Unlike the old consumer, with whom transactions centered around polite persuasion and a pretty little song and dance, this new generation of consumer appears to know what they want and take it – no manners required.

“I insulted you cause, I’m honest,” Michael said to Peggy in his interview. “I apologized cause, I’m brave.” This sort of twisted, self-indulgent justification, skewing himself as transcendent, rather than just rude, is clever and different. Peggy, despite being her “But-you-never-say-thank-you!” self, doesn’t hate it. He gets the job.

Overall, the entire episode (which also marked Jon Hamm’s directorial debut) felt a lot like the opening credits – the silhouette of a crisply pressed generation, falling.  Yes, it’s disrespectful, when Pete publicly extinguishes Roger’s glow of importance at a firm-wide meeting to welcome Mohawk. But no one really cares. At the end of the day, suits are uncomfortable, antiques are predictable, manners are fake, and as Megan concurred at dinner with Heinz, all that business about business, is boring.

Return To Madness

BY EMILY VIVIANI

After nearly 18 months, "Mad Men" returned on Sunday night. (Credit: AMC)

Episode 501/502 – “A Little Kiss – In the pilot episode of “Mad Men,” Don Draper told the world that advertising is based on one thing: happiness.  In the opener to Season 5, which aired on AMC Sunday night, Don is caught drinking his own Kool-Aid.

Up until this point in the series, the creative genius that is Don has always derived worth from his ability to manipulate the consumer, with his glossy good looks and wounded orphan soul. In Season 5, the mystery man we know and love is on a honeymoon.

In the first half of the premiere, we’re brought up to speed on Don’s new life. Roughly eight months have passed in the “Mad Men” world (since Season 4 closed 17 months ago). In pure Roger Sterling fashion, Don is now married to his former secretary, 25-year-old smoky-eyed French(-Canadian) sex kitten, Megan. He swapped his poorly lit, introspective cave in Greenwich Village for a glass-walled, white-carpeted shag pad on what appears to be Manhattan’s Upper East Side. We also learn that Megan is now a junior copywriter at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, where her job is mainly to open her blouse for Don and write coupons for beans.

At work, Peggy is the only character wary of Don’s laissez-faire attitude and goofy smile. In a scene where she pitches a daring, artful bean ballet (“The Art of Supper”) to Heinz, she is stunned when Don fails to affirm the genius of the pitch when the client expresses doubt. Without fight or fanfare, Don recoils the idea and assures the client that the creative team will get it right next time. “I don’t recognize that man,” Peggy said.

At this point in the episode, Don’s character teeters between nauseating and boring, so thank god Megan, with all her “I Dream of Jeannie” naïveté, decides to steal his Rolodex and plan a 40th birthday surprise party. The party, which Peggy gently advises against, serves as the centerpiece for the episode, and thankfully for us showcases just how twisted the happy couple’s blissful existence is bound to become.

As Jon Hamm said in a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Season 5 in several ways feels like Season 1, with all its aesthetic splendor and ominous stability. But if Season 1 was about the past, with Don’s unforgettable deconstruction of nostalgia for Kodak in the season closer (“The Wheel”), it feels very much like Season 5 will focus on the future. Toward the conclusion of Season 4, there was a subtle shift toward new and different, a push back to Don’s expertise, old and romantic. Perhaps we see this most clearly in the finale when Don pushes nostalgia on a skeptic American Cancer Society. Bobby put it bluntly in his argument for visiting Tomorrowland. “I don’t want to ride an elephant,” he tells his father. “I want to fly a jet!”

Don, who has always understood the art of selling the American dream, is unsure of how to handle new and different, but recognizes it in young Megan. She is foreign, tolerant, kind and confident in her vulnerability. She doesn’t smirk – she smiles. This is all new and different, and Don, like a client in his boardroom, falls under the spell of her “glittering allure.” At Don’s surprise party in Sunday’s premiere, we get to see just how new and different Megan is, with her African-American, homosexual, tea-leaf smoking friends and a sexy-time dance to a coquettish French pop song, a birthday gift for Don. This is all a bit much for him. Lane later noted that it looked as if Don’s soul had left his body.

The line brought me back to a conversation Don had with Peggy at the close of Season 3. “There are people out there who buy things,” he said. “People like you and me. And something happened, something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do.” Don most likely recognized sitting center stage, watching Megan dance for him, how far he was from Dick Whitman’s polite modesty and Betty’s green bean casserole. As he said last season: “We’re flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.”

While Don maintains face at the party, he quietly scolds Megan afterward for throwing away money on embarrassing him. She is crushed, I think. One of the most compelling aspects of the dynamic between Don and Megan is that it’s unclear at this point how much she understands the role she is playing for him, and how much she is in fact playing. We learn in party conversation that Megan herself is a wonderful actress and always got the best tips as a waitress by pouring on her accent. How much of their marriage is an extension of that?

Later in the episode, she brilliantly realigns the equilibrium of their relationship – Don consumer, Megan product – by stripping down and crawling around the apartment, “cleaning up.” She tells Don he can only watch, cause he doesn’t get to have this – meaning her – since he doesn’t like presents, he doesn’t like nice things, and he’s old. In the end, surprise, surprise, he gets to have that.

Running alongside the Don and Megan “Loveboat,” there are several other plot lines introduced to the mix, all of which travel along the “out with the old, in with the new” current that the season seems to be cruising along. Joan, who recently gave birth to Roger’s baby, is anxious to get back to the office. Roger is struggling to make his job look easy, in an environment where actual work and ugly secretaries are replacing whiskey and charm. Pete moved to the suburbs and finally wore an outfit that clashed with Trudy’s (the plaid sport coat-Pucci dress disaster at Megan’s party), no doubt a preppy foreboding of trouble in paradise. At the office, Pete is also eager to gain credit for the accounts he has been steadily bringing in and is frustrated when Roger undermines his attempt to commandeer a larger office (and all that implies) by paying off a suddenly-skinny Harry Crane. (“Why do you carry so much cash?!”)

Overall, the season 5 premiere was freshly packaged, brightly colored and perfectly mod. There were some sort of hilarious, haphazard scenes: Pete’s nosebleed, Don’s gift from his new secretary (a plant) and Harry in that jacket. But Matthew Weiner weighted the episode at beginning and end with poignant vignettes of the civil rights movement, and how SCDP involved itself quite unintentionally by poking fun at Young & Rubicam with a phony want ad in the New York Times. It’s true that things still appear to be all zoobie zoobie zoo at SCDP, but it’s 1966, times are changing, and Roger said it best: “The only thing worse than not getting what you want, is someone else getting it.”

Where Are They Now? “Boy Meets World”

BY JORDAN O’DONNELL

I miss the 90s.

“Where Are They Now?” tracks the current status of actors from some of the most iconic films and television shows of the 1990s and early 2000s. All information is gathered solely from Wikipedia, IMDB and Google News. So if you saw an off-Broadway futuristic version of “Othello” where the actor portrayed the title character and Iago was a robot, it will most likely be excluded.

“Boy Meets World” aired from 1993-2002 on ABC as part of its stellar TGIF lineup. For a young child who had not yet discovered fun Friday night activities like walking around the mall, seeing a movie you have already seen, or going to high school football games (if you live in Texas), TGIF was the highlight of the weekend. The show chronicled the trials of a young boy growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, Cory Matthews, as well as his family, his neighbor who happened to be his teacher/principal/college professor, his best friend Shawn who lived in a trailer park, his girlfriend Topanga who made a seamless transition from weird flower child to a hot and popular girl, and other friends. Oh, and Minkus. But a decade after the show ended, where are the actors now?

Ben Savage (Cory Matthews): Since 2008, Savage (the younger brother of former “Wonder Years” star Fred Savage), has been in an episode of “Bones,” an episode of “Without a Trace” and an episode of “Chuck,” in addition to some things I have never heard of. So he’s chillin’. Fun fact, though: Savage interned for former Senator Arlen Specter in 2003, while attending Stanford University. I wonder how he got that gig.

Rider Strong (Shawn Hunter): Nothing notable, although he did direct a short film in support of Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008 for MoveOn.org, and also narrated an audiobook about Obama. How come he wasn’t considered for the gig Kal Penn got in the White House?

Danielle Fishel (Topanga Lawrence): Fishel was in a couple of those awful (I assume) direct-to-DVD National Lampoon movies. She also hosted “The Dish,” a spin/rip-off of “The Soup,” from 2008-2011.

Will Friedle (Eric Matthews): He has mostly done voice work on TV shows and in video games since “Boy Meets World” ended. So next time you’re playing “GTA” and you hear a familiar voice, it’s probably Cory’s goofy big brother.

William Daniels (Mr. Fenny): Did you know Mr. Feeny (I only refer to him as this) was the voice of KITT in the original “Night Rider”? He won two Emmys on “St. Elsewhere.” He played Dustin Hoffman’s father in “The Graduate.” What he has done since “Boy Meets World” is irrelevant.

Antony Tyler Quinn (Mr. Turner): Everyone’s favorite leather jacket-wearing, motorcycle-riding English teacher has been in episodes of “House,” “The Mentalist,” “Cold Case” and “Ghost Whisperer.” Still riding that motorcycle, I’m sure.

Lee Norris (Minkus): Apparently Minkus was on “One Tree Hill” for nine years. I never watched that show because I only watched “The O.C.,” and when it was cancelled, I was too hurt to find a new mindless teenage dramedy. Well, except for “Entourage.”

Here are some quick hits on famous or semi-famous actors who were on “Boy Meets World” at one time or another:

• Ethan Suplee, from “My Name Is Earl” and “American History X,” played school rebel Harley Kiner’s enforcer, Frankie. His pipsqueak sidekick, Joey, was played by Blake Sennett, the lead singer of Rilo Kiley.

• Topanga’s father was played by Peter Tork of The Monkees and Michael McKeon of Spinal Tap. Her mother was once played by Marcia Cross of “Desperate Housewives.”

• James Marsden, better known as Cyclops in the “X-Men” movies, Liz Lemon’s current boyfriend on 30 Rock and that guy in some chick flicks, played Eric’s best friend.

• Adam Scott of “Parks and Recreation” and “Party Down” played the ringleader of Frankie and Joey once Harley Kiner left.

• Linda Cardellini of “Freaks and Geeks” played a girl that once broke up Cory and Topanga. But nothing could keep that love apart.

• Professional wrestler Vader played Frankie’s father, a professional wrestler, in what was definitely a real stretch.

NEXT TIME: Family Matters