I’m so glad this is online. Behold,  Jon Hamm’s vocally impeccable James Mason impersonation, set within Saturday Night Live’s annual (I think? At least since Bill Hader joined the cast?) Vincent Price Halloween special. The first time I watched this, I laughed so hard I spit water all over my MacBook. Consider it my Halloween gift to you. Be good.

“Three episodes into this second season, Mad Men already has delineated the shadings between good and evil — between a sense of fairness and callousness — in a way far more profound than anything in The Dark Knight.”

That’s Steven Rosen, in a Cincinatti City Beat story in which he considers Don Draper, the protagonist of my beloved Mad Man, as “sort of dark knight himself,” and the “moral compass” of a world that may not have devolved into the violent chaos of Gotham, but underneath its outwardly controlled facade is melting into a soup of generational conflict and moral relativism.

Rosen cites the men of Mad Men’s various reactions to the 1962 crash of American Airlines’ Flight 2, the real-life event that inspires the fictional conflict driving Season 2’s second episode, as proof of his point:

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Screw it. I am herewith declaring Mad Men fair game for this movie blog, even though it is not technically a movie. It’s inspiring too much good bloggishness to ignore.

• Emily Nussbaum has gotten some grief for posting a spoilery clip in her Vulture post, but her short, salty take on maybe the biggest “They can’t do that!” scene of the series so far has been indelible. I’ll redact the spoiler: “But this scene, the one with Don Draper [redacted!] an odious she-manager into submission, sent a message. You think this is escapism, lifestyle fun, Entourage with better suits? Wrong-o.”
• Two different interpretations of the final scene. First, Andrew Johnson at The House Next Door: “[Betty is] unexpectedly happy. Like her husband, she’s just paid her freight by sucking up to the people who pay for her lifestyle–and, like Don, she just did so by managing expectations. The episode ends with something we rarely get from Mad Men–a scene in which Don and Betty feel like both a real couple and a real team.”
• And then, the one I’m more inclined to agree with, from Alan Sepinwall: “As Betty sits in that car at episode’s end, reflecting on another night of her husband using her as window dressing for a deal — or, in this case, worse: bait for the leering of a famous drunk — she can’t hide from it anymore. She plays to Don like she’s happy to be part of his life, but she’s crying because she realizes that, yes, she is profoundly sad, and has no idea how to go about improving this state of things.”
• Finally, a word from What Would Don Draper Do?: “The face in the mirror and the name I’ve claimed almost become one. But no matter how many times I answer or accept responsibiliy, just almost. I’d give anything to bridge almost - to fill myself out completely, leaving no empty spaces, not even the fingertips.”