mad men moment

Every character on 'Mad Men' has gone through a transformation, but the one Joan Harris has gone through has probably been the most subtle out of them all. On the surface, she looks like the same regal, strong office manager who is sexy to some and a officious mother-type to others. But underneath the surface, Joan has grown in any number of ways.

Being married to an underachieving jerk has made her rethink what she wants out of life. And the feminist revolution is leaving her adrift; she wants what women like Peggy have but seems to be too set in her ways to make that happen.

The biggest evidence that Joan has changed, though, came in last night's episode, where she finally tells Roger Sterling that she's had enough of their occasional relationship. And this time, she seems determined to keep that situation permanent.

There was something about Dr. Faye Miller that separated her from all of the other women that Don Draper had been with before, including Betty and his various side conquests over the years.

Sure, there were some obvious differences -- she's blonde but smart, she challenges Don on many levels, she doesn't take his crap -- but there was something about her that drew him to her that was hard to quantify.

Until last night's episode of 'Mad Men,' that is. With the world closing in on him, Don confides in Faye in such a surprising way that she starts to remind you of another blonde in his life, one that he lost not that long ago.

The women of the 'Mad Men' universe were center stage this week. Matt Weiner has never been shy to explore how the environment of the early 1960s impacted women, both negatively and positively, but this week we saw how the men of the show (Sundays at 10PM ET on AMC) depend on and interact with those women. But the story that seemed to intrigue me the most was that of the youngest woman in the show's universe.

We know that Sally Draper hasn't been getting along with her mother Betty. There are a lot of reasons: Betty's horrible as a mother and a person, this stranger Henry is ordering her around, Sally is being raised by the housekeeper, and the parent that she likes the best -- Don -- barely has time in his life to see her. But that's only what we know. We're only getting glimpses of what's been going on.

Judging by the lengths Sally took to get to New York to see Don -- and how much she fought Don when she had to go back to her mother -- things at home are probably much worse than what we're seeing.

One of the more interesting dynamics on 'Mad Men' (Sundays at 10PM ET on AMC) has always been the tense relationship between Joan and Peggy. They represent two types of women that illustrate the '60s revolution of feminism in a nutshell, and that's mostly what's causing the tension between them.

That dynamic came into play this week. Peggy took matters into her own hands when Joey the freelance artist got under Joan's skin one too many times. Joan didn't like that one bit; she thought she had the problem handled, and she told Peggy that. The scene of the two women talking in the elevator points out exactly why they will probably never get along, at least not while they're working in the same office.

As Mo Ryan detailed earlier this morning, last night's excellent episode of 'Mad Men' (Sundays at 10PM ET on AMC) showed viewers the full spectrum of the relationship between Peggy and Don. It's a special one, no doubt, one that's developed in interesting ways over the last four seasons.

At times, they've seemed to be boss and secretary or boss and copywriter, but at other times he seems to be the father figure she never had. Sometimes, though, Don acts like an older brother goading and pushing his little sister to achieve. There have even been fleeting moments of sexual tension between the two, but nothing that would or could ever be explored, especially by Don. He knows too much about her, and besides, in her he sees the younger go-getter version of himself.

Because of the ebb and flow of the night Peggy and Don spent together -- Peggy missing her birthday dinner and breaking up with her boyfriend, the confrontation over Glo-Coat, the Sterling tapes, the drunken fight between Duck and Don, Don finally having the nerve to call and find out about Anna -- it was tough to pick any one scene to highlight. But the final scene of the episode ties the night, and their relationship, together quite nicely.

Even though this week's 'Mad Men' (Sundays at 10PM ET on AMC) had a bit of a meandering manner to it -- outside Allison's righteous knickknack throw at Don, that is -- the last fifteen minutes brought up why dramas like this show and others of its ilk suck viewers in. You never know when an event that's going on in the show's present can dredge up an incident from the show's past. Emotions can still be raw, and when they bubble to the surface, the knowing viewer can nod along with the character, feeling what they felt.

That's what I felt when Peggy found out that Pete Campbell's wife Trudy (played by the always lovely Alison Brie) was pregnant. When she got the card that was passed around the office, the look on her face spoke volumes: Only she and Pete know that this is going to be Pete's second child, not his first, and she wonders what might have been if Pete stayed with her instead of staying with Trudy.

But the episode ended with a glance that made me think that Peggy's starting to move on from that, five long years later.

Every week, in addition to the weekly review for 'Mad Men,' I'm going to talk about a moment in the week's episode, one that either proved pivotal to the episode's plot or the season's arc, a moment that will be talked about for weeks, or just something I found interesting or funny about an episode.

The moment most people will talk about from Sunday night's season premiere, 'Public Relations,' is Betty going all Mommy Dearest on Sally at the Thanksgiving table of Henry's family. That was interesting, but only in that passing, "isn't she just awful?" sort of way.

No, the moment I'm thinking of came near the end of the episode, where Don finally figured out what he wanted the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce -- and, by extension, himself -- to be. And it took a couple of super-uptight clients to help him snap out of his funk.