Your Friends & Neighbors: Definitely Worth Getting to Know

Just saw the finale -- the 9th episode -- of the first season of Your Friends & Neighbors on Apple TV+.  I'm saying first season because Apple renewed it for a second season before the first season begun.  A smart move because Your Friends & Neighbors, billed as a comedy-drama, but more a drama with some comical touches about some of the ethical profundities of life -- at least life in the New York City area -- is a tour-de-force of a series in a multiplicity of ways.

Here are some of those (in general non-spoiler) ways:

1. It's easily Jon Hamm's best role and performance since Mad Men.  Indeed, Hamm is so natural and energized in the lead role -- Andrew Cooper aka Coop -- that it could be Coop could equal or even exceed Don Draper.  Time will tell.

2. The rest of the acting is top-notch.  Amanda Peet as Coop's former wife, Olivia Munn as his sometimes lover, even Corbin Bernsen as, well, Coop's despicable boss, a minor role, are all memorable. So are Isabel Gravitt and Donovan Colan as Coop's kids.

3. The essence of the plot:  Coop is fired from his high-stakes financially wheeling-and-dealing job.  He takes up stealing -- literally stealing -- from his neighbors to stay afloat.  As a result of which, he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking guilty for a murder he didn't commit.  Along the way, we meet bevy of compelling characters including his fence; an unlikely but effective partner-in-crime; and a sister with a pretty good voice and some impressive songs (Lena Hall plays Coop's sister, and actually wrote and sings an original song as well as singing the covers -- a nice touch).

I have no idea if the depiction of this upper crust in Your Friends & Neighbors is accurate (I live in the greater New York area, but as a professor I'm not really privy to what goes on in boardrooms and the like).  But that doesn't really matter.   Your Friends & Neighbors is not a documentary, not even a docu-drama.  It's a work of fiction, in which it splendidly succeeds.

The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side

Well, The Romanoffs 1.2, entitled The Royal We, takes a darker, nastier, murderous turn, with none of the comedy of the first episode (The Violet Hour), unless you find dwarfs acting as the royal family Romanoffs (Romanovs) on a cruise to celebrate the family, funny.

But the evil stuff was pretty compelling.  Michael Romanoff (exceptional acting by Corey Stoll) has no happiness in his life, including with his wife Shelly, though that's for no want of her trying.  He finds himself on a jury for a murder trial, obligating Shelly to go on the cruise she booked for the two of them on her own.   Michael seems to hit pay dirt on the jury.  A beautiful former ballet dancer, Michelle (excellent work Janet Montgomery), is on it, too.  He's instantly smitten.  He deliberately extends the deliberations by refusing to find the obviously guilty defendant guilty.  He soon contrives to meet with the dancer when the jury takes a break for the weekend - they're not sequestered - and manages to sleep with her after she more or less seduces him.  Meanwhile, in contrast, Shelly says no to handsome Ivan, in a corridor near the door of her room on the boat, after they kiss and he clearly indicates his intentions.

She returns to a powder keg of Michael wanting to see more of Michelle, and she demurring (she's married, too).  I won't tell you anymore lest I give too much away, but the intensity of what happens is reminiscent of both The Sopranos and Mad Men and Heather, the Totality in different ways.  Weiner is not only a master of societal foibles, but the ugliest, harrowing facets of human nature.

With two episodes of The Romanoffs now on the screen, we can see that they're as different as day and night.  What Weiner is really after in this new anthology is telling very different stories, with no connection to one another whatsoever, except for the Romanoff label. 

Which makes me wonder about the subsequent episodes even more, and want to see them.  I'll be back here next Friday with a review of #3.

See also: The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners  ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Meta Ghost Story... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled .... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Holds Everything: Writer on a Train

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners

I've been a fan of Matthew Weiner's since The Sopranos and Mad Men.  So has my wife.  I even read and rave-reviewed his 2017 novella Heather, The Totality.  So of course we were going to watch The Romanoffs, the new anthology series on Amazon Prime, now consisting of eight standalone 90-minute episodes connected by the sinew of each episode tells the story of a different character or characters who think they are descendants of the royal Russian family, all or most of whom were slain by the Bolsheviks in 1918.   The first two episodes were put up today, and the rest will be shown on a weekly basis.

All ninety minutes of The Violet Hour were excellent.  The story takes place in Paris, featuring Anushka (who claims she is a descendant), her American nephew Greg, his French girlfriend Sophie, and Anushka's caretaker Hajar, who was born in Paris and whose parents came from North Africa.  There's comedy, profundity, passion, and surprises all packaged in this tale of how Anushka is determined to see that her Romanoff bloodline survives into the next generation.

The genre is so original it's hard to classify.  It has elements of Downton Abbey and Woody Allen.  It would have been a good standalone movie, and someone said somewhere that these episodes could be watched and considered as individual movies.  But the fact that Weiner has tied them all together by this unlikely thread makes them all the more appealing - or, at least, that's what I thought before watching the first episode and even more strongly now.

Weiner's decision not to show them all at once certainly supports the each episode is a movie structure.  As such, The Romanoffs could be considered the first deliberately anti-binge-watchable series on a streaming service.  I'm not sure how I feel about that - we're going to watch the second the episode as soon as I post this review.  I know we'd want to watch the third, if not right after the second, at least tomorrow night,

But The Violet Hour was so good we'll be happy to wait for that third, next week.

See also The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side  ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Meta Ghost Story ... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled ... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Hold Everything: Writer on a Train

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Affair 4.5: B'shert

A powerful, unusual, altogether brilliant episode 4.5 of The Affair tonight.  For starters, it had a half hour just about Vik.  But even more significant for the history and arc of the series, it had an episode of Cole, giving him back-to-back episodes this week and last.

Let's start with Cole.  The denouement of his half hour is that he realizes it's Alison he's always loved, still loves, and wants to be with again.  We the audience of course have always known this.  But the way Cole discovers this was a page right out of Mad Men, and what going to California meant to and did to Don Draper.

Amy Irving put in a great performance as Cole's father's (Gabriel's) lover.  Her Nan is quiet, soulful, wise, and beautiful.  I could live without the California mysticism verging on voodoo, but her story of love lost was a masterfully tragic gem.   She thought for years that her exorcism plan - a strategy to get Gabriel to get over her - had worked.   But she finds out the two were permanently b'shert - destined to always want and love each other.

Cole coming back to New York with a clear love and desire for Alison should shake things up there nicely.  Cole will now be on a collision course with Ben.  And I predict ... well, I predict Alison will get back with Cole.  But that's just a prediction.   Significantly - though I can't say exactly significant of what - this episode had no flashforward prelude with the search for the missing Alison.

But back to California, Vik's story was a wrenching, heart-in-your-throat episode in itself.  Helen doesn't want to raise a child alone, so she torpedos Vik's plan to get pregnant.  He winds up buying a Porsche - presumably to give to his father - that serves as the vehicle for sex with his next-door-neighbor in her house.  Will she end up bearing the grandchild Vik wants for his parents?  It's a sad story, whatever happens.

Sad but full of tinder - in the old and new senses - for subsequent episodes, for which I'll be back with reviews.

See also The Affair 4.1: Quakes and Propaganda ... The Affair 4.2: Meanwhile, Back on the Island ... The Affair 4.3: Dire Straits (Not the Band) in California ... The Affair 4.4: Ben

And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...The Affair 2.9: Nameless Hurricane ... The Affair 2.10: Meets In Treatment ... The Affair 2.11: Alison and Cole in Business ... The Affair Season 2 Finale: No One's Fault

And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison's Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest

the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy

Heather, the Totality: The Bombshell

As everyone knows who has read this blog or seen me talk at conferences about The Sopranos,  etc., I've long admired Matthew Weiner's work on both The Sopranos and Mad Men, and indeed consider it to be at the very apex of television.  I was thus more than pleased to get a slightly-advance copy of Weiner's first novel (due to be published November 7) late yesterday, and read it one-and-a-half sittings (a little in the wee hours of the morning, the rest just this afternoon).  It's only 134 short pages, but it's so compelling I'm sure I would have read all of it in that time, anyway, had it been twice as long.

It didn't need to be. Weiner's novel is exceptional, very much a slice of life in New York at this moment, and very different in style and pacing at the same time.  There's only one line of true dialogue, and it's a bombshell.  The descriptive passages are reminiscent of both Dickens and Salinger.  And the story rings true on all kinds of levels.

Not long ago, I got in my car in the parking lot of a supermarket, and noticed a guy looking at a woman who was walking by.  There was something in his eyes that, I don't know, was more sinister than just appreciation.  I stayed in my car a few minutes, until the woman got safely in her car and drove away.

This is the spark plug of Heather, the Totality.  A father (Mark) notices a construction worker looking at his 14-year old daughter (Heather) as she walks out of their building.  That scene happens 2/3s or more into the novel.  Before that, we learn a lot about Mark, Karen (Mark's wife and Heather's mother), Heather, and the construction worker, Bobby.  We learn enough about Bobby to know that Mark's concerns about what Bobby might do to his daughter are well-founded.

I'm not going to tell you the ending.  Give yourself a treat and get a copy of this novel, destined to be recognized as a new kind of story telling.

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Masters of Sex 4.3: Hugh Hefner and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Masters of Sex is back in good form in its 4th season, with an episode - 4.3 - that featured not only Hugh Hefner but Sammy Davis, Jr. in the intro.

Hugh Hefner and the scenes at his mansion have been the best parts of this new season so far.  First, the guy who plays him - John Gleeson Connolly - looks and sounds almost 100% like the Hef we remember.   But his role in this Masters of Sex story is great, encouraging Masters and Johnson to be a couple.   At this point, the coupling is professional.   But Hef and we know that there is much more in store - not to mention what we've seen with our own eyes in previous seasons - and Hugh Hefner is therefore playing the role of the matchmaker, the guardian angel, of what we and history know to be right.

Sammy Davis, Jr. has played no major or even minor role in the overall story so far, but he was a treat to see and hear in Sunday's episode, in an appearance made al the more enjoyable because Sammy was played by The Wire's inimitable Andre Royo.

Meanwhile, the overall rest of the story so far is appealing, and slowly gathering a full head of steam. Mad Men's Rich Sommer (whom I interviewed on my podcast years ago when Mad Men was young) was good to see as a husband with a problem in earlier episodes this season. But the most explosive development so far came from another couple and the wife on Sunday who wanted her husband to be a little more rough in their love-making.  He gives every indication that that's just not in him - until he erupts in violence that brings Masters and his assistant running into the room to stop the action.

The assistants threads - Masters and Johnson each have one, as per their agreement - has possibilities, but their being married, secretly at first, now revealed, is a bit contrived.   But that's ok, as long as the Masters and Johnson story progresses on its rocky road, which I'm eager to see.


See also Thomas Maier: Masters of Sex and Biography Come to Life ...Masters of Sex 3.1: Galley Slaves ... Masters of Sex 3.2: The Shah, the Baby, and the Book ... Masters of Sex 3.3: The Bookstore ... Masters of Sex 3.7: Going Ape ... Masters of Sex 3.9: Calling Hugh Hefner ... Masters of Sex Season 3 Finale: Cliffhanger

#SFWApro

McLuhan in An Age of Social Media

Just written last Thursday - already #1 on
Amazon Computers and Technology Top 100

last updated 22 November 2016



This essay can be considered a new chapter in my book Digital McLuhan, published in 1999, or before the advent of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the social media of our age. Marshall McLuhan's ideas, including hot and cool, the medium is the message, and the tetrad, are applied to help us understand selfies, tweeting, iconic television shows such as The Sopranos and Mad Men, the Arab Spring, the U.S. Presidential election of 2016, and the Kindle revolution itself.

Mad Men: The End of an Era and the Ultimate Cool

I've been saying lately that we're in the third golden age of television, epitomized by House of Cards streaming all at once on Netflix.  Mad Men was one of the stalwarts of the second golden age - the revolution of cable over network and the first golden age of television in the 1950s.  Mad Men debuted just a month after the conclusion of The Sopranos, which initiated the second golden age.  And tonight Mad Men concluded in its turn, as well.  It was advertised as the end of an era, and it was - the end of cable television as the undisputed creative edge of television drama.

As for the stories themselves in this final episode, there was a lot that was good in them, even satisfying in some cases.  The best of this was Peggy finding happiness and true love at last with Stan.   Pete's ending is happy, too, and so is Roger's.

Joan's is bitter sweet,   In order to pursue her creative, professional self, she has to give up the man she loves.   The lesson there is that in the society of the early 1970s, at least, it was difficult for a woman, in contrast to a man, to have both.  Mad Men has been brilliant in showing the struggles of professional women in that era.  Presumably our world has improved at least a little in that regard since then.

And Don?  His ending is the most frustrating - for the audience as well as him.  He perhaps has finally shed the illusion that he built around himself, but what's left?  I always thought that Don Draper was the most real part of Dick Whitman, and now Don has neither.

Or maybe not.   Who did the Coke commercial we see at the very end?   Peggy and Stan would be the logical people, since we saw Peggy talking to Don on the phone about his doing it, which means it was certainly on her mind.   But could Don have gone back to New York and done it himself?   Or, was Peggy, Don's greatest student, finally putting into best practice what she learned from the master?  Or, in perhaps the happiest ending that went unseen, maybe the three worked on it together.

My wife correctly points out that Don has a motive to go back to New York - to be with his kids - and the Coke commercial could easily have been inspired by that Esalen or whatever hippy therapy group that was.  This would constitute an epic conquering and co-option of the flower-power counter-culture by the brazen commercialism of advertising via the reconstituted Don.  On the other hand, Don sitting there with that beatific smile on his face is a very long distance from Manhattan.

Matthew Weiner, like David Chase before him, is a master of ambiguity. Instead of the sudden cut to black in The Sopranos, we get the Coke commercial - which, in terms of the most important things in life, is itself a blackness or a celebration of nothingness, just a stupid soft drink with caffein.  It's the real unreal thing, the ultimate McLuhanesque medium cool, a canvass that invites us to fill in the story.

But isn't that what Mad Men has always been most about, a celebration of illusions writ large, perpetrated by professionals and self-generated by consumers, in advertising and true life stories alike?  I don't know for sure, but I sure enjoyed the ride.

-> 20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) in 2007 at Light On Light Through

See also Mad Men 7.1: Vignettes and Playboy ... Mad Men 7.2:  Flowers and the Hung-Up Phone ... Mad Men 7.3: "Lunch with Rod Serling" ... Mad Men 7.4: Computer! ... Mad Men 7.5: Retrofit Paranoia ... Mad Men 7.6: The Dance ...  Mad Men Mid-Season 7 Finale: Telescope vs. Television ... Mad Men 7.8: Don, Rachel, and the Waitress ... Mad Men 7.9: Fast Ride ... Mad Men 7.10: "Fast Girl" ... Mad Men 7.11: The End of Sterling, Cooper, Draper. ... Mad Men 7.12: Poor Betty

And see also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy ...  Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine ... Mad Men 6.8: Dr. Feelgood and Grandma Ida ... Mad Men 6.9: Don and Betty ... Mad Men 6.10: Medium Cool ... Mad Men 6.11: Hand in the Cookie Jar and Guy de Maupassant ... Mad Men 6.12: Rosemary's Baby, Dick Cheney, and Sunkist ... Mad Men Season 6 Finale: Beyond California

And see also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

And see also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

Mad Men 7.13: Poor Betty

Betty with ice water flowing in her veins has in many ways been the least sympathetic character in Mad Men, which is saying a lot, as the show is awash in people who are in one way or another hard cases, but in this penultimate episode of the series, we can finally shed some tears for her.   She handles her impending death from lung cancer with grace and style, down to the letter and love she leaves for Sally, which was surprisingly and really moving.

A whole show devoted to this crucial story would have been nice - appropriately upsetting - but that's not and has never been the way of Mad Men.  So instead, we also see a lot of Don on the road, in another odyssey replete with barely understandable meaning.   But that in itself may have a peculiar charm, at least on some days, and we do get what I think is revelation from Don, that he killed his CO in Korea, but I'm not completely sure it's a revelation, because we may have been told some to even all of that before.  But like dreams and nightmares, the specifics of previous Mad Men are not easy to remember, especially over time, and I don't want to look it up, lest I spoil the spoilt dreams.

The conclusion of the Don segment was pretty good, though - he gives the kid with the black hair his car - there's the car, again - and the kid rides off, the new Don, to whatever fate may hold for him. And Don?  Who knows, who ever knows?  Maybe we'll find out next week - but maybe not.

This episode did make something of history for the series, however, with what looks like a flat-out happy ending for Pete and wife, implausibly brokered by Duck, but hey, I'll take it, gladly.  Happy endings are hard to come by in this life, and harder yet on the surreal story of life that is Mad Men.   So hard to come by, in fact, that I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Pete, because his happy ending may yet vanish in the mists, too.

We'll know more, and all that is left to know about this series, next week.  Or maybe not.  But I wouldn't miss that finale for the world, anyway.

-> 20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) in 2007 at Light On Light Through

See also Mad Men 7.1: Vignettes and Playboy ... Mad Men 7.2:  Flowers and the Hung-Up Phone ... Mad Men 7.3: "Lunch with Rod Serling" ... Mad Men 7.4: Computer! ... Mad Men 7.5: Retrofit Paranoia ... Mad Men 7.6: The Dance ...  Mad Men Mid-Season 7 Finale: Telescope vs. Television ... Mad Men 7.8: Don, Rachel, and the Waitress ... Mad Men 7.9: Fast Ride ... Mad Men 7.10: "Fast Girl" ... Mad Men 7.11: The End of Sterling, Cooper, Draper.

And see also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy ...  Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine ... Mad Men 6.8: Dr. Feelgood and Grandma Ida ... Mad Men 6.9: Don and Betty ... Mad Men 6.10: Medium Cool ... Mad Men 6.11: Hand in the Cookie Jar and Guy de Maupassant ... Mad Men 6.12: Rosemary's Baby, Dick Cheney, and Sunkist ... Mad Men Season 6 Finale: Beyond California

And see also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

And see also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes