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VIDEO: The Ultimate “Next on Mad Men” Preview Clip

It's really become a perverse ritual by now for all us Mad Men fans. Every Sunday we groove on a new episode, and just as we are about to click off with the satisfaction of having taken in an exquisitely rendered hour of television, it happens.

"On the next new episode of Mad Men…"

Our ears perk up like Pavolvian dogs. We can't help ourselves. We'll devour anything, no matter how tiny or inconsequential the morsel. And they know it.

So what do we get? A 30 second string of soundbites taken totally out of context.

"What happened?"

"I have to tell you something"

"Well that's something you don't see every day."

"Oh gosh!"

Sometimes it feels like the trained monkeys who make these montages are snickering at us through the clips: the newest one had lines like "They're like our slaves!" and "Some things never change."

By now we're all kind of in on the joke that the joke's on us. But why should the folks at AMC have all the fun tormenting us, when we could do just as good a job? So here's our version. It's juicier, has more random lines taken out of context, is more absurd and more bluntly withholding of useful content:

Embed or share this clip.

Compare this to the actual preview clip for next week's show and tell us which one you'd rather watch:

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

MAD MEN RECAP 5: FAR AWAY PLACES

"You always say I never take you anywhere."

There are episodes of Mad Men that I've had to watch over and over. There are secrets hidden in the way scenes are cut, the way shots are composed, the way words are repeated. Last night I saw something beautiful, and confusing, and challenging. There's no way I can do it justice after only one viewing, but I'll try.

Far Away Places was about a lot of things. It was about echoes: about memory, reliving, and things that recall other things. The echoes begin, but don't end, with the same day repeated—relived—three times. The episode was about time—it was filmed in a time-distorted way (the same day motif was not Rashomon, although I imagine someone will say it is; unlike that great film, Far Away Places took us to three different far away places). Jane says that time is just numbers on a clock, Don and Peggy both reference the time, and we see Don looking at his watch. At the LSD party, the Beach Boys sing “I Just Wasn't Made For These Times,” which sounds like a shot at Roger, worrying over his white hair, but Roger seems, suddenly, to be genuinely renewed. Maybe he is made for these times after all.

When I wrote about Signal 30, I suggested it was about identity and secret selves. Certainly, Far Away Places addresses that as well, but it's more about being known, rather than about being secret. Peggy's pitch is about being included, and feeling safe, but no one feels safe. Jane is sure that Roger is laughing at her, and Don is sure that Megan and her mother talk about him behind his back. Paranoia runs deep around here; Ginzo wants private conversations when he's in an open office and when he's standing in a public hall—like that'll happen, ever.

No one here feels truly known: Am I a Martian? An orphan? A covert sex goddess? (Hey, let's watch Peggy give another hand job—that'll never get old!) Perhaps we are all more than anyone imagines when they look at us.

Most importantly, it's about relationships. The three fights these three couples had are hard to describe because they swirled around the very heart of what it means to be in a relationship, to try to touch another soul, to know and be known, and inevitably, to fail, because even the most loving and connected couple is composed of two people who are separate individuals and will never fully know each other.

All that blather at the LSD party about truth and reality and neurosis and logic never really got to the point for Roger or Jane, but it is about truth: Jane wants Roger to like her, and to know her, and to really see her, to notice she's there. When Jane realizes that Roger never even heard her say they were going to drop acid, she knew exactly how invisible she was.

Roger, too, wants the truth, although he'd be the last person to admit it. But the truth, even the truth that he doesn't like his wife or want to be married to her, is liberating. Roger, of all people, has been freed.

Why this order, though? Why Peggy, then Roger, then Don? Ending with Roger might have created more of a sense of optimism, since the truth was told—or pessimism, since the relationship was over. (It's striking how much younger and prettier Jane looked in the post-LSD scenes, as if artifice and unhappiness aged her.) Maybe Roger's story is a kind of warning for Don: Tell the truth to one another before it's too late.

"Every time we fight it just diminishes us a little bit."

When Roger and Jane tell each other the truth, they are lying on their backs on the rug. When Don and Megan get to the end of their fight, they are in the same position. (Watch it again here–it's an amazing piece of physical acting.)

Throughout the episode, what we see is couples fighting over the intersection of work and life, unable to find a way to just be together, but needing one another for comfort. Roger and Jane don't fight about work; she's trying to bring him into her life. Don and Megan are struggling to find a balance. It's funny that she doesn't want to get pulled away from the Heinz team, just as Bert Cooper doesn't want Don to pull her away—it's like everyone is lining up and telling Don to just work already, while it's pretty clear that the message for Peggy is the opposite: don't work so much. Again, that's the message from Abe and from Bert, who tells Don quite pointedly that he's making a "little girl" do his work for him.

It's almost ridiculous to ask how Peggy's story parallels Don's; it's never been so clear that Peggy is Don, and yet simultaneously wants nothing more than to be Don. We see a close-up of her smoking, we see her berate a client about having feelings, we see her drinking, we see her leaving the office in the middle of the day to see a movie, we see her having illicit, unfaithful sex in the middle of the day and then washing up afterwards (remember Don washing his hands in disgust after a similar encounter with Bobbi Barrett?), we see her fall asleep on her office couch, and we see her being woken up by a secretary—Don's secretary, in fact. We've seen Don Draper do every single one of these things, and I look forward to analyzing certain scenes shot-by-shot, because I'm pretty sure that the compositions of some of them are identical (the hand waking Peggy, for example).

Peggy declares her fidelity to Don in the opening scene, when she's looking for the special candy he gave her as a good luck charm before the pitch—candy, we learned in Season 2, that Don associates with a memory of his father. Can Don be painted any more clearly as Peggy's father-figure?

While she's in the process of finding her "I am becoming Don" magic candy, she's having a fight with Abe that is clearly every fight Don ever had with Betty: You don't include me, all you do is work, I'm an afterthought. Peggy is so sure she's being abandoned at every moment that she doesn't know how to just have the fight: she just can't speak truthfully with Abe without being sure he's leaving her. Abe doesn't want to leave, he wants to connect. He wants what Jane finally got, but too late. And Peggy wants someone she can please: hence a hand job. She moved Stoner Guy's hand away from pleasing her. She wasn't seeking her own pleasure, she just wanted to know, at the end of the day, that someone was happy with her. If it wasn't her boyfriend and it wasn't her client, Stoner Guy (politely credited as "Man") would do.

Another way the three couples parallel each other? Each main character has a partner who declares his or her foreignness. Abe says "I'll say a brucha" (the Hebrew word for a blessing prayer). Roger recalls that Jane spoke Yiddish while she was tripping (he thought it was German). Megan and Don argue over the fact that Megan speaks French with her mother.

Finally, this episode is about parents, and about being an orphan: parents who are foreign, inaccessible, or both. Don talks to Marie (his mother-in-law). Megan thoughtlessly tells Don to call his mother. Ginzo is visited by his father, but then declares, "He’s not my real father." Roger sees Bert—a father-figure for him—in his money. Peggy wants Don's good luck candy, which is multi-generational; it's from his father, and it symbolizes him as a father to her. Don, trying to be a good father, forgets Gene, who he claims will never even know that he was slighted (like Don never knew his mother, like Ginzo never knew his mother).

Parenting is somehow identified as foreign: Megan's mother is French, Jane's father speaks Yiddish, Ginzo's father has a thick accent. Ginzo was born in a place of death, a Concentration Camp, which so disturbs Peggy that she needs Abe (reaching for comfort and safety, like her college kids by the campfire eating beans).

Some additional thoughts:

Don did talk to his mother—last week, when he visited a whorehouse.
Was the advertisement of the guy with gray/black hair a real one? I bet it'll be all over the Internet by the time I get up in the morning.
Quote of the week again goes to Roger: "Well, Doctor Leary, I find your product boring."
I love that Mad Men is a show that doesn't force Contractually Obligated Scenes with characters who aren't integral to each week's episode. This week we had no Harry, no Betty or Henry, no Lane or Joan, because none of them were necessary for the story Far Away Places had to tell.
LSD was legal to possess in the United States until 1968. California was the first state to make it illegal, in October of 1966.

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Watch Mad Men Moments, a series of videos on Mad Men, produced by Indiewire Press Play.

GIRLS RECAP 2: VAGINA PANIC

http://www.hbo.com/bin/hboPlayerV2.swf?vid=1250877

"Vagina Panic" is an attention-getting episode title—but nobody's really panicking in the second episode of Girls except Hannah, whose takeaway from a childhood viewing of Forrest Gump is an obsessive fear of contracting AIDS from "stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms." "Vagina Denial" might cover the subject a bit better.

Hannah is, of course, still in denial about Adam's potential as a nurturing whatever-mate. We open with another awkward-because-it's-completely-on-point Hannah/Adam sex scene, in which our favorite graduate of Berlitz's porn-talk immersion course is jackhammering Hannah while carrying on about how she's a tween junkie in an alley carrying a Cabbage Patch lunchbox. Hannah plays along with "you're a dirty whore and I'm going to send you home to your parents covered in come"; and with Adam sort of clumsily choking her out with a cat-steps-on-your-face-at-6-AM maneuver; and with him ordering her to call him for permission to have an orgasm if she's touching herself at home. "You want me to call you?" she asks, touched; this is the part she chooses to hear, not the submissive role she's supposed to play for him . . . and does play, more or less. After Adam finishes, she sighs, "That was so good. I almost came," and instead of making sure she does come, he takes the comment as a compliment, and offers her a Gatorade.

It's utterly obvious to everyone but Hannah that Adam is not and will not become the guy she's telling herself he is, but kudos to the script for giving Adam's character a moment that explains why women tolerate that type for so long. During a grim convo that makes it clear Adam is 1) sleeping with other women and 2) not using condoms with them, he muses that Hannah's insistence on rubbers must be why it takes him forever to "nut" with her. Hannah's face collapses like a Vegas building demolition, but Adam catches his snap for once, saying she has "total freak-out face" and quickly reassuring her that he's "fine" with the sex they're having. And that's how Adams keep you on the hook, too—that one moment of acknowledgment, every few weeks, that you're doing a rockin' job as VP of Doormats.

Marnie's assessment of this situation is sugar-free. She informs Hannah that Adam isn't allowed to say the little-whore stuff to her: "He's not your boyfriend." Leaving aside the idea that apparently hooker-john role-play exists only in the privileged relationship space, the "not your boyfriend" nerve is the raw one.

Not that Marnie's interested in any truth-telling about her boyfriend, who she can't bring herself to look at during sex. That sex scene opens with Charlie suggesting that they stare into one another's eyes when they come; Marnie has her head turned away and eyes screwed shut. Her next move is to propose switching to doggie-style, so she's not even facing him, but it's still Charlie back there, and he seems to have confused "thrusting" with "continental drift." The next day, Marnie bitches at Charlie to . . . well, act more like Adam, to get pissed at her and not care what she thinks: "It's what men do." Then she mocks his testicles.

Hannah, eating a yogurt, observes that it's okay if Marnie is just bored. Marnie defensives, "That is a really simplistic explanation of what's going on." It's also . . . the actual explanation of what's going on, and Marnie should just break up with Charlie, but she doesn't want to be the kind of girl who breaks up with The Most Solicitous Man In New York, so she tells herself it's more complicated than that.

Jessa is also in denial, to a degree. She's moody during the first half of the episode, broodily smoking pot with her headphones on, then lashing out at Hannah and Shoshanna when they have the gall to defend a The Rules-ish self-help book about dating. (Hannah doesn't defend it so much as laughingly admit that she "hate-read" it at the airport, which is exactly what I did with the actual The Rules.) After bombasting that she's "offended by 'supposed-tos'" like those the author posits, Jessa bitches at Hannah for studying her face for "one of [her] novels," then announces that she wants kids someday, and she's going to be "amazing" at it. Of course you do, Hannah says, and of course you are—but Jessa's not done: "I want to have children with many different men of different races."

This United Jessa of Benetton declaration seemed random at first, and I didn't know how to react to it initially, other than to conclude that a character who considers her future offspring multi-racial-chic accessories should absolutely not have a baby right now. But I think that's the point—and it's touched on elsewhere in the episode, too, when Adam and Hannah discuss the abortion. Adam deems it "kind of a heavy fucking situation," but Hannah wonders if it really is: "I mean, I feel like people say that it's a huge deal, but how big a deal are these things actually."

Hannah then gets concerned that Adam thinks she's too flip about the issue, because of course it's a big deal—but the dialogue raises some interesting, sticky questions about how our culture and our narratives treat abortion. Specifically, I mean the tendency of many, many films and TV shows to classify an abortion as an incomparable trauma, as Marnie does in so many words; Hannah's raised eyebrows note, sans dialogue, that she can think of more traumatic situations—sexual assault, for example, or the death of a partner. And this is on the few occasions when the script goes through with it, versus having the character miscarry or otherwise sidestep the issue (see: Julia on Party of Five, et al.). Is that appropriate? Or do writers default to that position because it's the least likely to cause offense? Of course an abortion is a game-changer for some women, and not a positive one—but for others who avail themselves of that choice without regrets, I think there's a pressure to suffer, to grieve, to be seen as paying somehow.

The show is not necessarily equipped to answer these questions, and wisely doesn't try. Certainly Jessa isn't delving into them; she's dressed for the procedure in harem pants and complicated lace-up heels. She's also late for the procedure because she's in a bar, drinking White Russians, pontificating about the sinking of Venice (of course she is), and making out with a stranger who borrowed her cell phone—which is how she finds out she won't need the procedure in the first place, because her period is late too, but now it's here. Menses ex machina!

Everyone else has gathered at the clinic, though, to support Jessa and/or get tested for STDs. Marnie is incensed that Jessa is late, except she actually loves it, because she gets to feel a better, more responsible martyr than Jessa, which is what her whole relationship with Jessa is about. But when Hannah goes in for her appointment, Shoshanna can't maintain her denial any longer, confessing to Marnie that she's a virgin. Marnie is taken aback, but shrugs that it's no big deal and sex is "overrated" anyway. She assumes that Shoshanna has given BJs, right? "Yes! . . . No!" Maybe it's because we just saw Chris Eigeman in last week's ep, and he's a lead in Kicking and Screaming, but that put me in mind of the running gag with Otis in that movie. "Is that a pajama top, Otis?" "No! . . . Yes."

We end the episode with Hannah facing one fear head-on as she slides into the stirrups. This is Hannah, so she's babbling more or less uncontrollably to the GYN about how having HIV does in fact have its up sides: it's a great excuse to bail on your job hunt, say, or get really mad at the guy who gave it to you. (She should do that anyway, of course, but: you know. Denial.) Maybe she's not afraid of getting AIDS, she says; maybe she actually wants to get it. The GYN informs her that that's a ridonkulous thing to say, and disgorges a PSA's worth of stats about women's infection rates, and that response is no doubt the result of a network note to the effect of "please make it clear that we're not expected to think this is funny." (It put me in mind of the My So-Called Life pilot, and Angela Chase observing that Anne Frank was "lucky" because she was stuck in an attic with a boy she really liked.)

I didn't think we needed the prod, because the episode keeps coming back to a question about certain charged topics and conversations, namely: How much of what we do, of our reactions, is what we think we "should" do? It's in Adam's "little-whore stuff," which is cast as goofy rather than threatening. It's in Hannah’s wondering if abortion is always a really big deal every time, for everyone, and her frightened Googling about rogue semen. It's in Marnie’s not wanting to come off like a bitch, and coming off like an even bigger bitch as a result. And it's in that disastrous job interview Hannah goes on, when she starts out acing it on a vibing-with-the-interviewer level, then unfortunately feels comfortable enough to make a date-rape joke and shoots herself in the foot. She's supposed to feel that that isn't an "office-okay" topic or tone, because obviously it isn't—but why will she censor herself and her disappointment with Adam, then push the "humor" envelope in an interview? Why does what she "should" do, the idea of "being good," pertain more in this farkakte romantic relationship?

I don't know the answers; I don't think the show does either. But in spite of some kludgy, on-the-nose dialogue in spots this week, the episode successfully showed that issues and people are complicated, and don't resolve in 30 minutes. Or ever, sometimes.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded TelevisionWithoutPity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com.

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 4: GARDEN OF BONES

Garden Of Bones was perhaps my least favorite episode of Game Of Thrones, period. The show has been such a success that seeing it struggle so much is a surprise. It’s still competent and watchable, but Garden Of Bones was frayed at the edges.

The novel this season of Game Of Thrones is based on is called A Clash Of Kings, which makes the story clear: that of the civil war that followed Cersei’s coup and Ned’s execution. Despite the presence of multiple kings, none of them have “clashed” directly, either with blades or with words. Ever since the trailer showed bits and pieces of Stannis’ confrontation with Renly, I’ve been waiting for this scene, prepared to do an in-depth analysis of how it demonstrated the show’s themes surrounding power and legitimacy. Instead, what I got was an example of what’s wrong with Garden Of Bones, which could also make bigger problems for the show in the future.

Watch the scene here:

Two narrative questions arise immediately with the scene: why are Stannis and Renly fighting each other, and where are they fighting? Game Of Thrones’ issues with geography are highlighted here: we don’t know where Renly’s camp is, so we don’t know why this confrontation is meaningful. Shouldn’t Renly be surprised that his brother is attacking him, instead of the Lannisters? But there’s no buildup in either case—previous scenes from Renly’s camp are about the presence of Littlefinger, and it’s the first time in the episode we see Stannis at all. The stakes of this meeting are as high as any we’ve seen in the show, and instead, it’s confusing.

Clarity has been lost in the translation from the page to the screen. In the novel, location questions are clearly answered. Renly has the strength of two of the Seven Kingdoms, Stannis, one weak kingdom. So Stannis launches a surprise attack against Renly’s capital, which makes Renly stop his march against Joffrey in the capital. There are both strategic and character-based reasons for the confrontation. The location is unclear, which tends to be when Game Of Thrones is at its weakest. (This is worsened in the episode’s final scene, when Davos smuggles Melisandre . . . somewhere?)

Once the characters start speaking, the confrontation becomes more he-said-she-said than tense and meaningful. Stannis makes small talk with Catelyn, she responds. Renly teases Stannis, he responds. More teasing, and Melisandre responds. It sounds a little bit like a radio play, where the actors record their lines in a studio at different times. This may be an intentional choice by the director: the Baratheon brothers have never gone to war with one another, so perhaps Game Of Thrones is portraying their internal struggle as externally stilted.

And it rings falsely. The worst offender is Cat Stark, whose “Listen to yourselves. If you were sons of mine I would knock your heads together until you remembered that you were brothers” is monumentally misguided (though the line is from the novel, it’s taken almost entirely out of context here). So far this season, Catelyn has been the voice of reason, telling Robb that sending Theon to Pyke was a bad idea, and recognizing Renly’s “summer knights” last week. Here she comes across as peevish and undiplomatic, ruining whatever tiny chance this meeting had at being good for the realm.

Stephen Dillane’s performance as Stannis also leaves something to be desired. He’s supposed to be rigid, so certain of his claim to the throne that he doesn’t comprehend anything else. But what comes across is confusion and boredom. He tells Renly, “You think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?” and tilts his head like a cat. There’s no anger here, nor really anywhere in the entire scene, which would help it make more sense.

Some drama is salvaged at the end, after Stannis delivers an ultimatum. Melisandre turns to Renly and says, “Look to your sins, Lord Renly. The night is dark and full of terrors.” This is the first thing that gives any of the four characters speaking in the scene any pause, as Renly finally realizes the implications of the civil war he’s engaging in.

This scene isn’t the only weak one in Garden Of Bones. Robb Stark returns to our screen, winning a battle and then dealing with the aftermath. First he meets with one of his bannermen, a flaying-happy Lord Roose Bolton, then he meets a woman aiding the injured. I suppose we’re supposed to see some romantic chemistry here, but it comes across as just one more thing to keep track of.

Littlefinger’s visit to King Renly’s camp was dull as well. Why he’s there is never made clear—is he upset at Tyrion’s withdrawn promise of a new lordship? And how long did it take him to get to the camp? Is Renly so close to the capital? His scene with Margaery Tyrell frustrates as well. He bothers her about Renly’s sexuality, but this is such an ill-kept secret that Lannister soldiers were joking about it at the start of the episode. And there’s no real conclusion to the episode, simply Melisandre giving “birth” to something supernatural. It’s ominous, but detached from the story. Garden Of Bones has no narrative arc.

The other half of the episode does far better. Dany’s introduction to the city of Qarth, “the greatest city that ever was and ever will be,” gives it an immediate sense of place. Tyrion’s attempts to combat the worst impulses of Cersei and Joffrey are as entertaining and tense as ever, and he gets the line of the night with, “That was a threat. See the difference!” And Arya’s introduction to the Lannister stronghold of Harrenhal is ominous enough before she gets invited to be Lord Tywin Lannister’s cup-bearer. Garden Of Bones lays the groundwork for dramatic things to happen later with Robb Stark, Danaerys discovering Qarth, and Arya in the belly of the Lannister beast, but it’s worrying that the episode botches the most important scene of the season .

Adaptation:

Littlefinger’s presence in Renly’s camp at this point is a huge deviation from the novels, possibly the biggest of the series to date. It’s also an entirely negative deviation. The scene with Margaery was unpleasant. It’s his explicit offer to Cat from Tyrion that changes things the most, although most of that will take place in the future.

On the brighter side, I’m all for Arya interacting with Tywin Lannister, something that didn’t happen in A Clash Of Kings. And the depiction of Joffrey’s sociopathy, forcing prostitutes hired by Tyrion to beat each other for his pleasure, was different from the page in a way that was fairly necessary, since it had been shown previously via memory.

Still, I can’t help but compare the Stannis/Renly confrontation and shake my head at the missed opportunity. In the book, Renly eats a peach in the middle of it, adding an air of symbolic ambiguity that haunts Stannis afterward. There’s no peach on-screen, even though it probably would be better visually. And poor Cat looking like an idiot compared to lines like this:

“This is folly,” Catelyn said sharply. “Lord Tywin sits at Harrenhal with twenty thousand swords. The remnants of the Kingslayer’s army have regrouped at the Golden Tooth, another Lannister host gathers beneath the shadow of Casterly Rock, and Cersei and her son hold King’s Landing and your precious Iron Throne. You each name yourself king, yet the kingdom bleeds, and no one lifts a sword to defend it but my son.”

Where was this depth on the screen?

http://www.hbo.com/bin/hboPlayerV2.swf?vid=1249940

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance pop culture critic currently living in the Bay Area. He is a staff writer at The A.V. Club, covering television and literature. He also writes about video games for several different publications, including Joystiq and Paste Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser for unimportant musings on media and extremely important kitten photographs.

MAD MEN RECAP 4: SIGNAL 30

MAD MEN RECAP FOUR: SIGNAL 30

“I’m through with all that fantasy stuff.”

In Signal 30, everyone is struggling with their identity, with fantasies about who they are and how that might conflict with reality. People are pathetic or they are Superman, they are heroes or failures in their own minds, and they struggle mightily when the world disproves their theories about themselves.

This wasn't a great episode, but it's a breather after the intensity of Mystery Date, and there's plenty of symbolic material to dig into. I'm a little disappointed because the fifth episodes are generally among each season's best, and I don't think Signal 30 can really stand up to 5G, The New Girl, or Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency.* Nonetheless, let's dive into the juicy bits: There are plenty.

We all know "Don Draper" is a false identity for Dick Whitman. This season we've seen Don's growing disinterest in hiding himself. He is willing to share with the Campbells and Cosgroves the fact that he grew up on a farm—something he wouldn't have dreamed of doing back in 1960. Yet, his dual identity is alluded to twice in Signal 30, first, when he winces at the shared last name of Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower killer whose August 1, 1966 shooting spree took eighteen lives. The second time is when the sink explodes: Don whips off his shirt and starts fixing the sink as one of the women says, "Look, it's Superman!"

The point of the episode, though, isn't Dick Whitman and Don's secret past, but the second identity we all have—walking through life as Clark Kent and imagining we're Superman. Over various meals, everyone has a chance to discuss their fantasy selves—writer, actress . . . even hog farmer.

Lane imagines he's an account man. Ken has an established "secret identity" as Ben Hargrove; when outed, he goes back into hiding as Dave Algonquin (no wonder Salvatore had a crush on him, Ken is all about being adeptly in the closet). Roger had an identity as a master account man, and Pete has, bit by bit, taken that away from him.

Ah, Pete. We really have to talk about Pete, but allow me to dwell on Roger for a moment. Check out this video of Roger explaining to Lane how to schmooze a client. This is literally the first time this season, maybe the first time in two seasons, when we've seen that Roger actually has skill and value:

In Season 4's Waldorf Stories, Roger, in a "morose" mood, complains that there are no Clio awards for what he does, and Joan asks what that is exactly (well, she doesn't so much ask as slap him across the face with the question). We've built an understanding of Roger as spoiled and incompetent for five seasons now, but it turns out he does do something, and he does it well: He knows how to turn clients into friends, how to get them to be allies in the cause of winning their own account. In a way, "account man" is the ultimate secret identity: Roger has the gift of turning himself into whatever the client needs him to be in that moment.

I've had it up to here with Roger's whining and self-pity, but this week was different: He not only showed competence, but wistfulness. When he calls himself "Professor Emeritus of Accounts," and when he tells Ken he "remembers" that the account job can be satisfying, he is being realistic about the pasture to which he's been relegated, even while he longs for more. This week, I kind of don't blame him for poaching Pete's meetings in A Little Kiss, especially since Pete has been such a shit.

Okay, let's get to it. Pete is a shit.

Wait, you wanted more?

Fine. To my eyes, Pete was the villain of Season 1, but he gradually redeemed himself, being on the right side of a lot of issues, becoming a much better husband to Trudy, developing tenderness towards fatherhood, and being exactly the right kind of prick in negotiations with his father-in-law. (That last instance may not seem exactly heroic, but he was right, dammit, and Tom Vogel needed putting in his place.) Now, he's back to being a thorn in everyone's side.

This week's Pete debacle has been foreshadowed out the whazoo. Let's start with the very first episode, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, when Don tells Pete in the cruelest possible terms that he'll never get very far in business because no one likes him. Then there was Pete punching himself in the nose in A Little Kiss, walking straight into his pillar, and then Roger offering to "take it outside" with Pete in the same episode. So, yes, the bizarre and strangely awesome fight (check out the video if you can't get enough) was set up well in advance.

Pete is just a boiling pool of dissatisfaction. His wife wears curlers to bed! And she's not a teenage girl! And the faucet drips! And he hates the suburbs! It all seems really petty when laid out like that, because it is petty. What we've seen, over and over this season, is that nothing can make Pete happy. He's even nasty when a car account comes in the door (and remember, Ken told him quite recently that a car was the prize they were all hoping for). He's just spewing misery everywhere.

In A Little Kiss, Trudy told Pete, "Dissatisfaction is a symptom of ambition," but Pete is happy when he's ambitious. It's now, that he has what he thought he wanted, that he's miserable. In the past, we've seen Pete longing for Peggy while married to Trudy, we've seen him vying for recognition, competing with Ken, fighting with his father-in-law, and he just got happier and more pleasant to be around. But now that he's a partner in a growing company, with a nice house and a gorgeous daughter, he's a sour, frowning, pimple of a guy who is determined to belittle everyone within earshot. He's nasty to Roger, rude to Lane, and deserved the punch in the face.

How galling it must be to be the Pete Campbell version of Clark Kent and have Don Draper put on the cape, fix the sink, and get the women hot. How galling to have Don Draper, of all people, throw your adultery in your face by abstaining. How absolutely humiliating to be unable to successfully land a teenage girl because you're not "Handsome" enough (and the casting of that teenage boy was no coincidence: He's a young Don Draper in every particular). Finally, Pete's only pleasure—insulting his supposed "friends"—backfires on him when Lane fights back.

In the cab, Pete bitterly says to Don, "I have everything," and Don agrees. But after the fight, Pete is near tears as he says to Don, "I have nothing." I don't believe there's anything that Pete can have that will make him feel good, because what he wants is to be Superman, to be "king." What he imagines he wants is to be Don Draper. Let's keep going with that: What Lane imagines he wants is Joan, or to be an account man, or both. What Roger imagines he wants is to be Roger about five years ago. What Ken imagines he wants is to be Ben Hargrove or Dave Algonquin, and since he is, Ken (as usual) is the only one who ends up happy.

What Don imagines he wants is exactly what he has. It makes the entire audience sit on the edge of our seats, though, because we all know how good he is at screwing things up for himself. Placing him in the context of this episode practically demands that we wonder when the other shoe will drop.

Some additional thoughts:

Notice we didn't see Harry this episode? He'd be redundant: Like Pete, he just wants youth. Notice also that Trudy is wearing a very old-fashioned dress for the party—that poofy skirt is so over in 1966; she's no longer fashionable.
Ken and Peggy have a pact—if either leaves, they take the other. Interesting. I've always loved their friendship, but I'm surprised Peggy has an ear to the ground.
Signal 30 is the name of the gruesome driver's ed film that Pete is watching as the episode opens. This episode is filled with wrecks, from Pete's bloody nose to Roger's career.
Quote of the week: “He was caught with chewing gum on his pubis.” Ha!
Megan exercises a lot of control over Don, and we see more and more of that each week. This week, she refuses to do the dirty work of turning down Trudy's invitation, then she makes him change into a sport coat that she bought him (and WOW, what a sport coat it is).

* Oops, that was episode 3.06. The fifth episode of Season 3 was The Fog.

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Watch Mad Men Moments, a series of videos on Mad Men, produced by Indiewire Press Play.

GIRLS RECAP 1: PILOT: ONE FINAL PUSH

I liked creator/star Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, but Jesus H. with the royal-wedding-level coverage of the lead-up to the Girls premiere: how it's totally not like Sex & the City at all, except when it is, and only portrays the quark-width Caucasian-Ovarian-Oberlinian-American slice of the New York City experience, except when it's jumping into the universal. It's brilliant, and it's tl:dr, and Dunham has done every interview from here to the auto circular, and enough already, so thank God it's finally underway. Short verzh: yeah, it's niche and occasionally obnoxious. It's also super-watchable and good (in that "extractions portion of a facial" way at times, but still). Give it a chance. Now let's get to it.

Fade up on Hannah (Dunham) shoveling pasta into her mouth at a fancy restaurant. Cut to her parents on the other side of the table, her father (Peter Scolari) also chowing like he rows heavyweight crew, her mother (Becky Ann Baker) watching them with amusement. Girls got me on board two seconds in with that casting; I can't swear the meta-commentary is intended, but Baker is likely best known as the benign, clueless mom from exec producer Judd Apatow's alienated-youth dramedy Freaks & Geeks, while Scolari starred in the pioneer gender-fuck sitcom Bosom Buddies, which traced the increasingly blurry edges of what it means to be fema— HA HA HA, no, it didn't do that at all. BB is best and rightly known today as "that thing Tom Hanks did to pay rent," but the concept, of course, is that Hanks's and Scolari's characters would do whatever they had to do to make rent in big bad Gotham—including dress up like ladies for a spot in a women's residence hotel.

This is about to become relevant. Hannah brings her parents up to date on work—it's going well, and her boss has agreed to look at her book "when it's done." It's a series of essays; she's only finished four, but the larger work is a memoir, so she has to "live them first." Ahhhh yes, the old "hard work is no substitute for experience" mistake so many writers make at that age, usually halfway down the fourth pint, and Hannah's fakely chuckly tone suggests she's spun that line dozens of times. At a prompt from Mom, Dad hems and haws from "you're doing so great at work" to "it may be time for one final push," and eventually to the bomb they've come to drop, where he hands off to Mom: "We're not going to be supporting you any longer." "See, I wasn't gonna phrase it like that," Dad mutters, stricken. Hannah promptly objects: her "job" is an internship and may never turn into a paying gig. Mom counters: Hannah graduated from college two years ago; she and Dad are professors; they "can't keep bankrolling your groovy lifestyle." Hannah's counter-counter re: the shitty economy and how she could be a drug addict—"Do you realize how lucky you are?"—doesn't play with Mom, despite a super-anxious Dad undercutting her in the conversation. Neither does Hannah's snotty monologue about insidious pill addiction, or the next one about how close she is to the life they want for her. "No. More. Money," Mom snaps, adding that they can discuss the details tomorrow. Hannah doesn't want to see them tomorrow: "I have work, and then I have a dinner thing, and then I am busy, trying to become who I am." The line clanks, but Dunham's rendition of Hannah's misery as she stares into her plate, stuck pre-check at a table with people she feels betrayed by and trying not to cry in front of them, almost saves it.

Title card.

Hannah's bed, where she's spooning with roommate/BFF Marnie (Allison Williams). Marnie is wearing a bite guard and grinding her teeth. Someone's cell rings, and the girls groggily rifle through the covers looking for it.  

Cab. Jessa (Jemima Kirke of Tiny Furniture) is snoozing on a pile of Louis Vuitton luggage. "Miss. We are here." Jessa looks out at a Chinatown storefront. "Already? "  

Hannah/Marniehaus. Marnie's boyfriend Charlie (Christopher Abbott of Martha Marcy Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch) is pouring coffee in the kitchen. Marnie asks why he didn't wake her—she didn't mean to sleep with Hannah—but he says they looked too angelic to disturb. "Victoria's Secret Angel," Hannah says, hiking a thumb at Marnie, "fat-lady angel." Pro-forma protests from Marnie and Charlie; Hannah whatevers, "Please avert your eyes," while absconding from the kitchen with a cupcake for breakfast. Atta girl. Marnie hands Charlie her bite guard in exchange for a cup of coffee. Charlie asks if they fell asleep "to Mary Tyler Moore again"; Marnie admits it, but seems like she's lying. "Comin' atcha; here it comes," Charlie croons, leaning very slowly and gently in for a kiss on the cheek. Marnie barely moves, her smile slowly melting off.

Bathroom. Marnie shaves her legs on the edge of the tub; Hannah sits in the tub, eating her cupcake. Badinage about whether Marnie's going to take her towel off, and she jokes that she only shows her boobs to people she's having sex with. Hannah real-talks, "You literally slept in my bed to avoid him," and Marnie cringes, then says she's "turned a corner," and Charlie's touch now feels like "a weird uncle." Marnie thinks she needs to end it; Hannah believes that that will make Charlie either "stand outside [their] window with a boom box," or kill himself. Charlie then bursts in, is all awkward about seeing Hannah naked, and is way too nice about saying goodbye and offering to get wine for later. Marnie cringes again. Hannah asks what it's like to be loved that much. Marnie can't feel it anymore, and then she nails it with this line: "It makes me feel like such a bitch, because I feel him being so nice to me and yet it makes me so angry." Yep. Exactly. Gives you hand massages; actually likes Tori Amos, possibly more than you do; you feel like screaming all the time. Flawless, "makes no sense"/"makes all the sense" encapsulation of the frustrations of dating that particular type of guy—who, as Hannah then notes, "has a vagina."

Jessa hauls her crap up a flight of stairs to a red door, out of which bursts her pink-sweatsuited cousin, Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet, Mad Men's Joyce Ramsay), with a very intense "bonjour, roomie." Jessa parries with a "ça va?" but Shoshanna kind of doesn't even hear her, murmuring about Jessa's chic hat, how she's the only one of her girlfriends to have a British cousin, Jessa's skin is so beautiful, etc. Jessa's all, "So, about putting my bags down?"

Walking to work. Marnie orders Hannah to ask to get paid at her job; if Hannah can't make her half of the rent, Charlie will have to move in. "You're dumping Charlie," Hannah reminds her. "I didn't say that," Marnie snorts. Hannah then relates that she texted Adam "about tonight" but he didn't text back. Marnie tells her impatiently that Adam "never, ever" texts her back, so Hannah bargains that maybe she should call him: "Didn't you say texting is like the lowest form of communication on the pillar of chat?" "The totem of chat," Marnie corrects her, and Facebook is the lowest, "followed by Gchat, then texting, then email, then phone; face-to-face is of course ideal, but it's not of this time." Agreed on the merits, but the "it's not of this time" takes me out of the episode a little bit; the "totem" is clearly a pet harangue of Dunham's, and sticks out as such. Hannah asks how she's supposed to get Adam face-to-face if he won't text her back. Well, you accept that he's a horse's ass and don't bother, but we'll get back to that. Repeatedly, because that's how that goes.

In a deli, exposition on Jessa; Hannah thinks Jessa will appreciate the welcome-home dinner, but Marnie is pre-annoyed by Jessa's inevitable tardiness and out-hip-wardrobing of the rest of them, plus Hannah goes on benders when Jessa's in town, and then Jessa leaves and Marnie has to deal with the fallout. Jessa also apparently sleeps with other people's boyfriends. Not Marnie's, Hannah points out. Only because he was in Prague that semester, Marnie points out in return.

Shoshanna's. Shoshanna rambles about her rent, and then we get the specific callout to Sex & the City via the S&TC movie poster Shoshanna has on her wall. Jessa never saw the film and didn't know it was a show; nor is she on Facebook. Shoshanna's response to this is a dreamy "You're so fucking classy." Hee. Shoshanna proceeds to analyze Jessa and herself re: which S&TC character each of them represents. We also learn that, before France, Jessa was in Amsterdam, and before that in Bali, where she was "shucking pearls." Oh. [eye-roll]  

Hannah's internship. She gathers up her eggs and walks the three feet over to her boss's desk. Alistair is played by Chris Eigeman (of, among other things, the non-Will-Farrell Kicking and Screaming), and I get very psyched about this, then disappointed when Hannah's announcement that she needs to start drawing a paycheck is more or less met with, "Well, you don't know Photoshop, and I get 50 internship requests a day, so . . . good luck at your next job, Sassy," which means he's not a recurring character. And Alistair totally isn't going to read her book, either, because it would go in the slush pile . . . and Hannah is the slush-pile reader. Well, "was." As she's leaving, the other intern who recently got a paid gig asks her to pick up a Luna Bar, a Smart Water, and a Vitamin Water. Love that—the joke's a little too cheap until that detail about both kinds of water.

Hannah uses the bad news as an excuse to call Adam (Adam Driver), lying that she happens to be in his neighborhood. He answers the door shirtless. She's angling for sympathy by relating that she got fired, but he's doing that thing guys sometimes do, where they're giving you solutions when you just want to bitch for a while and then be told you're pretty. Adam's an actor, apparently, but shrugs that he's "doing this woodworking thing right now—it's just more honest," and as a Brooklyn resident who works with young musicians, I have heard many variations on that line uttered in seriousness, and it did have the desired effect of making me think he's an asshole. But it's a bit played and a bit "inside," and the script does go to that well pretty often. It's very effective here overall, though, in creating a quick but deep sketch of Adam as that particular breed of douchecanoe—thinks working with his hands makes him better than other people, seeming so evolved and sophisticated in his "simple needs" when he's actually just arrogant and tactless.

Hannah invites herself to sit down and confesses that, prior to yesterday, she'd gotten all her money from her parents. Adam remarks that he wouldn't take anything from his parents, "they're buffoons," but of course he's fine with taking eight hundo a month from his grandmother (who is, presumably, not a buffoon, but rather "retro"). After some more unconsidered rhetoric about not having to be anyone's slave, they start making out, and he pulls a move he obviously thinks is super-hot, biting Hannah's lower lip and stretching it like four inches off her face; Hannah's expression in response is equal parts "henh?" and "I guess I have to pretend I like this so that he'll like me back." And that is how guys can keep getting away with doing and saying goofy shit they saw in pornos: because girls who really like them will play along and not mention how Smurfy it is, and hope they get boyfriends for their trouble. And they never do. You, reading this: he's not different. He'll keep not caring about you until you get fed up (or he turns 30). Then he'll marry a 21-year-old who doesn't need a bra or call him on his shit. Save yourself months of energy and neg him now.

Adam flips Hannah onto her back on the couch. "I like you so much; I don't know where you disappear to," Hannah says, and it sounded great in her head, but naturally he doesn't connect with the attempt at lyricism: "What are you talking about, I'm right here." But Hannah has a wicked case of nervous/psyched pre-sex logorrhea, blathering about how it's still light out and the special-skills section on her résumé. Adam grunts while yanking her boots off that he hasn't applied for a job in a really long time (of course he hasn't), then says he has something she can put down as a special skill (of course he does), but he'll have to see if she "fulfills all the requirements," which apparently is going to involve her letting him put it in her butt. He's also trying to porn-talk her all, "I know what you modern career women really want," and Hannah's all, "O . . . kay?" He tells her to get on her stomach and grab her legs; he's going to get some lube, and when he gets back, he wants everything off her bottom half. He will "consider" getting a condom also. . . . Yep, totally had a folie a duh with this exact type of asshat back in the day.

It just goes on like this, Hannah asking too many times if she's doing it right, Hannah overanalyzing her overreaction to his almost putting it in her poop chute, Adam dickily saying "let's play the quiet game," yours truly both laughing in recognition and muttering at her to kick him in the slats and leave.

In the kitchen before the dinner party. Charlie shyly proposes just getting freaky right there in the kitchen; Marnie seems into it, in theory, and Charlie asks what would turn her on the most. She asks what would turn him on the most. Predictably, turning her on is what would turn him on. She's starting to stumble through a "what if you acted like a stranger" scenario—i.e., stop being an Ani DiFranco fan and pop some fuckin' buttons already—but the buzzer rings. He mentions that he invited his friend Ray, but even though Marnie wants Charlie to do things of his own volition and not check in with her constantly, she's immediately pissed that he didn't ask her first.

Adam's, postcoital. Adam is asking about Hannah's tattoos. He kind of shoves her to and fro to look at them like she's a piece of furniture. They're mostly illustrations from children's books, which Adam isn't impressed with; when he asks why she got them, she explains that it was "this riot-grrl idea" of taking control of her shape after she'd gained a lot of weight, and he isn't impressed with that either. He gained a lot of weight in high school but he "didn't go drawing all over [himself]," he snots, adding that she's "not that fat anymore" so she should have them lasered off. Hannah finds this cute instead of tone-deaf at best, and I'm pretty sure it's not a post-orgasm haze, because: that guy. When she realizes she's late for the Jessa dinner, there's an awkward leave-taking where she's trying to prompt Adam with "this was really nice," it was just what she needed, and so on. No bet. "So I'll see you soon?" she says hopefully. "Yeah, just text me." Yeah. That.

Dinner thing. Ray (Alex Karpovsky) is hilariously expounding on his "rules," which include no women under 25 and no women who have "been penetrated by a drummer." I also have A Rule About Drummers (to wit: "no") and it's amazing to hear that a man has the same rule, even if it's 1) by transference and 2) a fictional man. He's also raving about his girlfriend's lashes, and they play-fight, and Marnie and Charlie, seated at opposite ends of the table from each other, look unhappy and uncomfortable. Marnie complains that Hannah didn't show up; Charlie wonders if they should call someone, but Marnie's like, no, I know exactly where she is: "She's having gross sex with that animal." Ray cracks that Charlie would like to at least hear about some sex. Marnie is busted, and not happy about it.

Jessa finally shows up. Cut to her spreading a peacock fan of pretention before the assembled: Francophilia, calling herself a "live-in educator," on and on. Ray, my new favorite character, wonders if her account of her travels isn't actually "the plot to The Sound of Music." Hannah arrives, full of apologies; big hugs with Jessa; Jessa sniffs Hannah and announces to the room that "she smells like sex." Cut to Hannah in group therapy with the room about her financial situation. Jessa promises to get her a job "worthy of her talents," but Hannah will run out of money in a week. She sighs that she'll have to work at McDonald's, and Ray launches into another one of the script's semi-unfortunate pet-subject dorm-dialectics monologues, this one about how McDonald's isn't that bad: they feed millions every day, they make a consistently taste and affordable product, and all Ray's college education got him was 50K in student loans. Ray's stir-'n'-rant on McNuggets in Nigeria is below:

Well, that's not all; he also garnered some practical knowledge re: brewing opium pods as a tea. He assures everyone it's legal, but Charlie has to ask Marnie sotto voce if it's okay for him to try it. Jessa blares that she hates opium, and every time she does coke she shits her pants, but Hannah is intrigued by the tea. "What does it taste like?" "Twigs," she's told. Marnie doesn't think it's a great idea, as Hannah is "super-sensitive to drugs," but Hannah's not hearing it. She also didn't hear "twigs" correctly — she thought Ray said "Twix" and gets a nasty surprise when she sips it, but chugs the rest.

Bedroom. Marnie moms that Hannah can't disappear like that, and advises her to ask her parents to support her for a little longer, until she finds a job. Enter Jessa to ask if Charlie has a girlfriend. "Yes," Marnie snaps. Jessa doesn't understand why Hannah can't "just tell them you're an artist." "Just . . . tell them you'll get a job, that's much more convincing," Marnie says. Jessa: But Flaubert! Marnie: Please don't "help." Jessa: Rappers who sold their tapes in the street! Hannah: I need to go. Marnie: You're high. Hannah: Love you both, mean it, "when I look at both of you a Coldplay song plays in my heart," but I'm outtie. She leaves.   Hannah goes to her parents' hotel. "Mom? Papa?" Dad: "Did she just call me 'Papa'?" An out-of-breath Hannah has brought them her book to read (it's like ten printed pages). She hands it over and asks if they're "boiling" in there, and her mom's like, great, we'll . . . read it on the plane, and Hannah says they have to read it now, and starts doing that thing drunk people do where they focus very hard on one point so the room doesn't start spinning.

Bathroom. Marnie comes in while Jessa's peeing, and let me take a second to mention that I love the show's approach to personal-space boundaries between the female characters — namely that they're really porous, where they exist at all. I went to all-girls' school until college, and to see that sense of being almost littermates with your female friends, kind of living in a puppy pile with them, stepping on each other's faces, sleeping in each other's armpits, and having almost no locked-door activities or smells or whatever, is really interesting. The puppy pile isn't a universal, and I do have close friends who flee the room when I'm changing because OMG BOOBS PRIVATE, but I also had a high-school friend who wrote up most of her junior-year bio labs using my ass as a desk because it was "so nice and flat."

So anyway, the show. Marnie is not having it with Jessa's speech to Hannah. Jessa thought Hannah "seemed ready," and Marnie points out again that Hannah had just gotten high. Jessa: "I'd like you to see a real high person." She tells Marnie she shouldn't mother Hannah; Marnie edits that to say she's "literally preventing a disaster from happening," while maternally and unconsciously handing Jessa toilet paper. "Have you even read her novel?" Jessa asks, wiping, and Marnie's thrilled to correct her that it's a memoir, and of course she's read it, Hannah is her best friend. Jessa is all over that in a mocking tone; Marnie shoots back that Jessa doesn't stay in one place long enough to commit to best friendship, then cuts off Jessa's condescending response to bitch at her for showing up to her own dinner party two hours late, and then there's the predictable "who eats at seven o'clock"/"this isn't Barcelona, sorry" back-and-forth. Marnie is pissed that Jessa acts like she's uptight, because that makes her uptight, and oh my God how many times have I had a version of that discussion with chronically late friends. I mean, I am legit uptight, but still. Don't aggravate the sitch by not owning a watch, God. Jessa Godwin's-Laws the criticism by announcing that she's pregnant. "On purpose?" Marnie asks. "What do you think?" Jessa mutters. So, I guess not. Charlie comes in and tells them they're both "so beautiful." Marnie shoos him out. Jessa: "That's a high person." Rimshot!

Hotel. Hannah's parents, put on the spot, enthuse that it's "very funny stuff." Hannah makes her pitch: "to finish this book," eleven hundred a month for the next two years. Her mother deems that insane, and Hannah interprets "insane" as referring to trying to live in NYC on $1100 a month. "Why don't you get a job, and start a blog—you are so spoiled!" Mom shouts. Hee! Starting a blog fixes everything, totes. "Yeah, well whose fault is that, Mom?" "Your father's!" "Papa" is freaking out with the fighting, but Hannah swoons to the floor before they can basically cut her off a second time. She explains the opium-pod tea, and Dad is yelling about ordering coffee, and Mom is yelling that he's getting played, Dad hates watching Hannah struggle, Mom works hard and wants to sit "by a fucking lake." Hannah: Flaubert, garret, "don't look at me."  The next morning. Hannah wakes up alone in their bed. She calls out for them, then immediately grabs the phone to get room service, which makes me side with her parents—and they're one step ahead of her, checking out and closing their account so she can't charge anything. She gathers her things, and finds two envelopes on the desk: one addressed to her, which contains $20, and the other addressed to Housekeeping, ditto. (Also left on the desk, which I found very sad: the pages of Hannah's memoir.) She snags both twenties and leaves. Down on the sidewalk, a panhandler tells her to smile—a city peeve that's a little on-the-nose here—and we pan up over Hannah disappearing into the midtown hugger-mugger as an even more on-the-nose music cue sings, "Everyone's got a mother and a father / everyone's sure they'll go far."

So that's our pilot — a strong outing that doesn't get bogged down in the usual "hey, this is how everyone knows each other and feels about things" dialogue dumps, and dispensed with the S&TC comparisons ASAP. I'm looking forward to seeing how Hannah deals with her financial and Adam situations; how Marnie deals (or doesn't) with the Charlie situation; and how everyone else deals with Shoshanna, a nationally-ranked up-talker whose character is even more fascinating once you notice how many of Lindsay Crouse's facial features she passed to Zosia Mamet intact. …Dang, now I want to see Shoshanna in a subplot about a card-game short con like House of Games. Just me, then? Okay.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com.

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 3: WHAT IS DEAD MAY NEVER DIE

Back when Game Of Thrones debuted a year ago, one of the stranger criticisms was that it was made about men, for men. Perhaps in those first few episodes, when it looked like the story of Ned Stark, Viserys Targaryen, Khal Drogo, King Robert, and Jaime Lannister, you could make that argument. Of course, those of us who had read the book knew that it wasn’t about them, not really. Indeed, the characters with the most agency in the first season are women: Danaerys, Cersei, and Catelyn, whose capture of Tyrion triggered the violent confrontation between Lannister and Stark.

In fact, Game Of Thrones deliberately subverts the patriarchal system its characters are stuck in, with a set of strong female characters. In “What Is Dead May Never Die," we meet Brienne Of Tarth, a new member of Renly’s Kingsguard, and Renly’s new wife, Margaery Tyrell. They’ve been joined by Melisandre, the Red Priestess, and Yara Greyjoy. Combine that with the surviving strong women, and the increasingly excellent Arya Stark, and the idea that Game Of Thrones is anti-woman becomes increasingly ridiculous.

Its setting, however, is anti-woman. Westeros is literally built on patriarchy, thanks to its use of agnatic-cognatic primogeniture, in which the oldest male inherits everything, but a female can inherit if no male is in the line—Danaerys Targaryen is the most obvious example here. Therefore these women are officially powerless. But power, as Varys says, resides where men believe it resides, making it entirely possible for women to hold power.

Brienne of Tarth, for instance, introduced as the winner of King Renly’s tournament melee, appropriates the symbols of masculine power—a sword, armor, and so on. Cat tries to call her a “Lady” but Brienne objects, and there’s no feminine form of “Ser.” She appears to be a knight, and has the skills to be a knight, defeating Ser Loras one-on-one (Loras, if you’ll recall, would have won the Hand’s Tourney in the first season). But despite her clear ability, she’ll never be fully accepted, as Loras makes clear when he pushes Renly away for reminding him of his defeat. Brienne will always be fighting on two fronts: one for victory, another for acceptance.This episode did a fine job of introducing her character without making her the entire focus.

If she’d been born ten years earlier, Arya Stark might have been just like Brienne. A younger daughter of a lord, and one far more gifted in martial arts than marital ones. But the patriarchal system sees daughters as wives for alliances, or when things go wrong, as hostages for good behavior. Arya never wanted the former, and used her physical skills to escape from the latter. But that didn’t save her. She’s on the run with a ragtag bunch of Night’s Watch recruits, and the memory of her father’s execution haunts her. When she and the Watch recruiter, Yoren, discuss their dreams of revenge, Yoren talks to her as an equal, albeit a much younger one. But that brief moment of bonding is interrupted by a Lannister attack, leaving Yoren dead and Arya captured:

Princess Myrcella, Joffrey’s rarely-seen younger sister, is a tool of the patriarchy. Beset by enemies in the capital, Tyrion seeks to use her to form an alliance—and use that alliance to figure out who, on the council, is a traitor. He proposes wedding Myrcella to, in order, the neutral and remote House Martell of Dorne (which we’ve never seen), Theon Greyjoy, to sow discontent with the northerners, and Robin Arryn. Myrcella is just a pawn, both for the alliance and for Maester Pycelle to demonstrate that he is the queen’s mole in the Small Council.

Queen Cersei, the biggest villain of the series, takes on new depth when viewed through this lens.Cersei struggles against the sexism of the patriarchal system of the Seven Kingdoms, yes, but she also wants to maintain its power for entirely selfish reasons when she’s on top. She wants to rule like a king (saying that she should be the one “to wear the armor” in the first season), and also be free to keep and protect her children, like Myrcella. Viewed in this fashion, Cersei is less a stereotypical villain than a complex, ambitious, short-sighted woman. Lena Headey was my least favorite actor in the first season, relying far too much on scrunching her face/tilting her up in order to demonstrate every emotion, but given the chance to go bigger with her acting, yelling at and shoving Tyrion, she does well.

But the star turn in the episode comes from Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell. Margaery is, like Myrcella, a pawn in an alliance by marriage between Renly Baratheon and her father, Mace Tyrell, Lord of The Reach (with Dorne, the other of the Seven Kingdoms we’ve seen nothing of). Margaery knows the rules of the game: she exists to make an alliance with the strongest of the kings in the civil war, and that’s an alliance that will only be settled once Renly impregnates her.

This leads to my favorite scene in the episode, where Margaery attempt to seduce the gay King Renly:

He’s unable to perform, so she offers to bring her brother Loras, Renly’s lover, in to help. It’s a statement that could be uncomfortable, much like Theon and Yara’s interlude last week, but Dormer makes the audaciousness of it seem innocent, and makes her ambition seem perfectly reasonable. “Whatever you need to do. You are a king.”

The sprawling cast of characters is one of Game Of Thrones’ biggest potential weaknesses. Keeping track of events in four or five different locations proved one of the bigger barriers to entry for new viewers. Introducing Renly’s court could have been another problem. But, as with the Greyjoys in Pyke, and Stannis’ court at Dragonstone, the important characters are introduced with confidence and style.

Adaptation:

Margaery’s portrayal in the show is, in a single scene, deeper than her portrayal in the books, where she’s primarily a cipher. I expected this to happen given how much weight her casting was given in the show’s media between seasons, but it turned out even better than I expected. Yet again, the show does some of its best work when it diverges from the text on the page. Both the Margaery/Renly scene and the Arya/Yoren scene were new.

I’m less certain about accelerating Shae’s storyline to make her Sansa’s maid. The bigger issue is that their dynamic immediately makes Sansa look bad for talking down to her help, even as we should be building sympathy for the Stark hostage. Likewise, Yara/Asha continues to feel more like an extension of Balon Greyjoy than her own character, as she was in the novel.

Finally, no sign of Dany or Robb this week, which may be surprising to viewers, but won’t be to readers. I understand some things have been added or shifted around in order to give these characters more to do this season than they had in the books. Since most of the show’s changes to the text have been more beneficial than detrimental, I’m looking forward to these alterations.

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance writer currently living in the Bay Area, who also writes for The A.V. Club and has been published at Salon, Gamasutra, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser.

VIDEO: AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD re-imagined as 1970s sitcom kitsch

Editor's Note: This supposed "alternate intro" for AMC's The Walking Dead is a great example of how a mash-up can become a kind of stealth criticism. The biggest rap against the cable network's smash hit zombie series is that it's too much of a talky whitebread soap opera. In a Salon takedown, I said that the series practiced a "Hamburger helper approach to drama, padding out meager amounts of dramatic meat with bags of bland dramatic stuffing." The "stuffing" is all the scenes of characters running out episode clocks in sub-Oprah confessions and tedious arguments about their goals and motivations.

Editor Timmy Lunsford sends up the show's shortcomings in an imaginary retro-1970s credits sequence, complete with sugary-inspirational theme music (actually the theme from Growing Pains); gratuitous irises and dissolves and lens flare effects; shots of characters silently displaying different sides of their (actually nonexistent) personalities, and period-correct fonts whooshing across the screen. The credits for "Homeless Zombie" (getting shot through the eye with an arrow) and "Well Zombie" (being ripped in half) are the crowning touches; I like to imagine both ghouls actually reappearing each week and always dying the same deaths, rather like Rex Hamilton in another great TV credits parody sequence, the one that opened Police Squad! (In Color). — Matt Zoller Seitz

MAD MEN RECAP 3: MYSTERY DATE

Hiding under the bed doesn't help.

The dirty, violent, erotically-charged, drug-fueled, violent, violent, violent world is encroaching, and none of us can hide from it. Not Sally, not Pauline with her knife, not Don in his fever, not Dawn on Don's couch.

This episode was shocking, disturbing, and brilliant. Neither director Matt Shakman nor co-writer Victor Levin has worked on Mad Men before, so let's say welcome aboard, fellas, because damn, you're good.

In three crucial moments of Mystery Date, female bodies are under a piece of furniture. First, the Richard Speck murders are discussed at the office: The episode takes place on Friday, July 15, 1966, and the following morning. The murders occurred on July 14, and Speck was arrested on the 17^th, so during the days depicted, the horrific mass murderer was nameless and at large. Stan gruesomely recounts how the lone survivor of Speck's killing spree hid under the bed. Next, in the most shocking scene we've ever seen on Mad Men, Don hides Andrea's body under the bed, her foot luridly sticking out. Finally, Sally hides under the couch overnight after Pauline has made her feel worse rather than better.

I suspect the scene we all want to talk about is Don and Andrea, but let's look first at Pauline and Sally. The swirling mass of chaos that is 1966 is affecting all the characters. Divorce, Vietnam, racial tension, sexual anxiety, promiscuity, rape, violence, drugs, the generation gap: they're all here. Once Sally has managed to frighten herself by reading the newspaper (not a forbidden piece of fiction, mind you, it's the newspaper that's unsuitable for the young) and gone to Pauline for comfort, Pauline blasts Sally with such a megaton of crap that I wanted to hide under the couch, too. Parents kick you for no reason, but that's a good lesson. A twelve year-old girl (Pauline is sure) already knows, not only what sex is, but what rape is. It's bad but it's sexy, and Pauline tells it like a camp counselor with a flashlight under her chin. Here, let me show you my big knife. Here, let me give you a Seconal. Holy crap. That one scene encapsulates, in its emotional tone and in the notes it hits, almost everything that happens in every other scene.

The episodic stuff this week was enormously eventful. Joanie kicks her scumbag husband out, Peggy extorts Roger, and DON . . . yet none of what we're seeing is entirely about the characters. This is a mood piece, and the mood is grim. Even the humor (and there are plenty of laughs) is grim: Stan with pantyhose over his head is funny, but then you can't help thinking he looks like a serial killer, especially given that's his "outfit" when Joyce (luv ya, Joyce) comes in with the unprintable student nurse photos.

So, did you know, when Don strangled Andrea, that it was a dream? I was reminded of 5G. We wondered, five years ago, if Don could possibly be planning to kill Adam. It was a new enough show that it was easy to be uncertain. Five years down the road, it's harder to imagine this can possibly be a direction the show will take, but we can't be sure. That scene was filmed with a feverish intensity that left you believing. At the end, Don leaving the foot sticking out seemed impossibly sloppy, and only then was I 100% convinced it was a dream or a hallucination.

Two dreams in two weeks. We're living in unreal times.

The violence permeates everything. Peggy, whom I'm sure has worked late and alone many times, is suddenly scared when she hears a noise. Finding Dawn, she sees someone (on another couch, by the by) even more constrained by the violence outside than herself. Dawn can't go home. Cabs won't go into her neighborhood, and her brother won't "let" her ride the subway. (Fancy that; her brother is still in his teens, but as the man of the house, he gets to make decisions for Dawn.)

See, I've worked in the city and been afraid to leave the office alone. Hell, I've felt that way working in the suburbs. That women's lives are restricted by the threat of rape and violence is not a "period detail." It's a reality that women live with every day, and that men often don't notice. So often, I've been in offices, making little pacts with other women to walk one another out, while the men assume we're overreacting, or don't pay attention. We women are bounded about by violence and the threat of violence, sexualized violence made light of, as if it's erotic, as if it's exciting, as if it's a dirty fever-dream like semi-willing sex with a former lover you then strangle. But it's none of that. It's real and confining and we tiptoe around it. Every. Damn. Day. Like Peggy. Like Dawn.

It's interesting that it's a man—new guy Michael Ginsberg—who notices how horrible it is. He objects to the excitement over the murder photos, but he's not above a sales pitch based on the sexiness of being stalked in a dark alley. "Too dark," he says with mock sincerity, but he's thrilled to make the pitch, which results both in a sale (to the client) and a threat of violence (from Don). That's almost like saying, "He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss," (the closing song, by Goffin and King).

The other side of the darkness of this episode is choice. Choice is as much a theme here as hiding under the bed. You have to do one or the other, is the thing. You have to hide or you have to make your own choices, because there's no escaping the grim reality.

"I'm glad the Army makes you feel like a man, because I'm sick of trying to do it."

We're all glad to see Greg go, I'd wager. This is a much more satisfying resolution for Joan than having Greg killed in Vietnam, which many fans were expecting. It's vastly better to see Joan making a choice than having one made for her. "Greg dying is not a solution," she said in Hands and Knees. Kicking him out on his ear is. I wonder what comes next in the saga of Joan and Roger, now that she's going to be divorced. I have no predictions, except to say that she's learned not to be victimized by one man, and I doubt she'll let herself be victimized by another.

Don is choosing to be faithful to Megan, when he has a different opportunity. (I'm unclear if Andrea's first visit, when he sends her out by a service elevator, is also a hallucination. Is there really a back door in that apartment?) And when he suddenly, depressingly, seems to change his mind, it's portrayed as foul. Andrea says sex is meaningless, she calls Don dirty and sick, she embodies everything he hates about his own promiscuous past. And, like Sally hiding under the couch, he fears his own doom is inevitable. Don's impulse to kill the false Andrea is a suicidal impulse just as much as it's a murderous one: He hates himself for what he's done and for what he fears he may do. The violent impulse he directs towards his own hallucination is a violent impulse he directs towards himself. (Richard Speck was arrested when he was hospitalized for a suicide attempt right after committing masss murder.)

Don can choose to do better. He can choose to eradicate, by strangulation if necessary, his own infidelity. Joanie can choose to kick her rapist husband out (and it's no coincidence that in this episode, with Speck hovering over the proceedings, she finally makes reference to that horrific day). She can't make Greg a good person, or a good husband, but she can stop being wounded by him. Don can't make women from his past disappear, and he can't stop Megan from being jealous when that happens, but he can choose how he behaves going forward. Choice is the only weapon in dark times.

Peggy, too, makes a choice. Dawn knew what Peggy was looking at. Peggy knew she knew. The racist thought, 'I can't trust a black woman with my purse full of cash,' came to her entirely unbidden. ("Racist" is an adjective, not a noun. It describes the thought or action, it doesn't define the person.) This happened then, it happens now: well-meaning people suddenly find racist (or sexist or homophobic or what-have-you) thoughts leaping into their heads. The choice, the only choice, is in what you do about it. Peggy could have taken her purse. She chose not to. Dawn may never feel truly at ease with Peggy, but she saw Peggy choose.

Some additional thoughts:

* Roger now has exactly one account and he didn't manage to assign the work. I can't wait to see how this blows up. It's going to be spectacular.

* We barely glimpsed Betty, and my eyes may be deceiving me, but she seems slightly thinner this week. I predict a Mother's Little Helper subplot very soon.

* Quote of the week: "Hey Trotsky, you're in advertising."

* Ginzo feels like a nickname that'll stick.

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Watch Mad Men Moments, a series of videos on Mad Men, produced by Indiewire Press Play.

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 2: THE NIGHT LANDS

Episode 12 – Preview

Game Of Thrones uses geography to tie its stories together in a literal sense, but what keeps those stories interesting—or better, relevant—is its commitment to its themes. It’s different from most “quality television” in that its themes aren’t hammered home from the very beginning, as happened with Tony Soprano’s Gary Cooper monologue, or The Wire’s magnificent opening scene. Tony Soprano, in his first therapy session, lays out one of the key themes of The Sopranos: things were better in the old days, when men were men. The dice game gone wrong at the start of The Wire acts as a microcosm for the show’s depiction of Baltimore, where the recurring game self-destructs every week because they can’t turn a thief away.

In its pilot, Game Of Thrones didn’t include any similar scene. Instead it let its themes slowly emerge. This second season did have a moment like that in its premiere, when Cersei confronts Littlefinger, who declared that “Knowledge is power.” Cersei responded by demonstrating, with her guards, that “Power is power.” The advertising also included The second trailer for this season included a brief monologue Varys The Spider about how “Power resides where men think it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall.”

But “power” is vague. Taken on its own, the word could probably be called an important theme of any drama. Game Of Thrones focuses on three more specific aspects of power: how power is acquired, how power is distributed, and how power is maintained. Or: war, patriarchy, and honor.

For “The Night Lands,” honor is most important. The word itself is all over Tyrion’s part of the story, as he attempts to consolidate his power in King’s Landing. First, he discovers Varys meeting with his paramour Shae, which he treats as a threat. He tells Varys, “Ned Stark was a man of honor. I am not.” That comes to direct fruition when Tyrion confronts Janos Slynt, the commander of the Gold Cloaks, about both taking a bribe to betray Ned Stark as well as following the orders to kill all of King Robert’s bastards. When Slynt attempts to defend his honor, Tyrion replies: “I’m not questioning your honor. I’m denying its existence.”

In Game Of Thrones, honor is a mechanism for people—men, really—to understand their relationship to the people in power (the patriarchs generally, the feudal system and king specifically). Slynt, a two-faced murdering villain by any account, actually believes that he is an honorable man, having followed orders from the crown in both of the cases Tyrion cites. If everyone were honorable, then following the orders within the patriarchal system would keep a stable system. But there is some serious disagreement about the nature of honor, and the system in Game Of Thrones is clearly not stable.

Here are things from Slynt’s perspective: When Littlefinger went to bribe him to take the queen’s side against Ned Stark, he had the option to follow orders of one of the most important powers of the realm, or let Lannister and Stark war in the streets. In the first case, he gets rewarded with a lordship for his loyalty. In the second case, the queen becomes his enemy. It’s not a difficult choice. Then, he’s given an order by his king, to kill Robert’s bastards, again, for the stability of the realm—or lose his head. Honor means following the orders of the patriarch . . .

. . . or, alternately, it means doing the right thing. You could argue that Slynt’s behavior in the first season made the best of an impossible situation, keeping the Hand and the queen from outright war in King’s Landing. But no ethical system would call tearing babies from their mothers’ arms and stabbing them to death “honorable.”

These questions of honor are more subtle through the rest of “The Night Lands” but they’re still very much present. Up north, beyond the wall, Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly are learning more about Craster’s Keep. Sam saves a girl, Gilly, from Jon’s wolf, and discovers that she’s pregnant and scared. Sam wants to help her, against orders, but Jon, following Lord Mormont’s orders, says they can’t. In the end, following the code of personal honor, he ends up chasing Craster and a baby boy into the woods.

On Dragonstone, we see both Davos and Stannis in discussions of honor. Davos is expressing his, convincing the pirate Salladhor Saan to go legit for Stannis. Saan is played with swashbuckling relish by Lucian Msamati. Unlike other characters, he’s actually having fun. Saan wants to know why Davos would be so loyal to Stannis: “Man chops off your fingers and you fall in love with him.” Davos claims Stannis is an most honorable and just man, deserving of loyalty. But Stannis isn’t so honorable later. When discussing his lack of manpower in council, Lady Melisandre convinces him that she has a plan to give him manpower. She just needs his, ah, man power—to have sex with him, despite his married status. When she mentions that he doesn’t have a son, she brings up a patriarchal point which pushes him over to her side, against honor, as he takes her on his strategy table. This is a little bit over the top, though it does fit the “honor” theme of the episode.

In another area of Westeros, Theon Greyjoy returns to his homeland. His father Balon tells him he needs to pay “the iron price” for any jewelry he has, and when Theon says he paid for it in gold instead of from an enemy’s corpse, Balon tears it off of him. He is dishonorable on his homeland. The rules are different there, and he’s lost—a fact hammered home by the prank his sister Yara pulls on him, pretending they’re in a seduction. Theon is left with an apparent choice: the honor of his homeland or the honor of his foster family. This crossroads point works better than I would have expected, given Theon’s difficult characterization in the first season.

Here in our world, we have all kinds of different mechanisms for understanding and categorizing ethical choices. For example, Stannis believes Melisandre’s offer but must decide if the just ends—him taking his rightful crown—are worth the means of sleeping with a woman who is not his wife. Or there’s Tyrion, trying to do the right thing for the populace and maintain his position of power, a utilitarian dilemma. The characters don’t have any terms of this, of course, but it’s to the show’s credit that it manages to portray the concepts as meaningful to both the characters and the viewers. “The Night Lands” is almost all setup, but it’s clever and meaningful setup. The conflicts which define the show’s new, old, and suddenly important characters are clarified, and “The Night Lands” is tense and fast-paced despite its relative lack of event.

Adaptation:

We’re getting some increasingly big diversions from the show’s source material, A Clash Of Kings. The most common deviation, elimination of characters, shows up twice here: Aeron Damphair, Theon’s religious uncle, isn’t there to greet him on the docks, and Stannis doesn’t mention the daughter he has in the novels. There’s also one television-based change. Dany’s bloodrider, Rakharo, doesn’t get killed in the books, but apparently that actor got himself another show. It’s a pity, really, as Rakharo had been fairly well established in the first season as an Everyman Dothraki, making their culture sympathetic. Finally, there’s Bronn being given command of the Gold Cloaks, instead of the sympathetic knight in the novel, a change that’s somewhat surprising but makes sense—it gives Bronn more to do.

But Melisandre's active sexual corruption of Stannis is the biggest change, and it’s one I’m not fond of. Melisandre is my least favorite character in the books, and this reinforces that instead of fixing it. It makes a certain kind of logical sense given later events, but the seductress stereotype is just too much for me. There will be much more on this soon; I’m fascinated to see where the show goes with her. Other than Melisandre’s behavior, most of the changes make Game Of Thrones more viewer-friendly. Some may even make the story of A Clash Of Kings, a transitional novel in the series, a superior standalone story in Season Two of Game Of Thrones.

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance writer currently living in the Bay Area, who also writes for The A.V. Club, and has been published at Salon, Gamasutra, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser.