With the Cuban Missile Crisis looming in the background, Sterling-Cooper's merger looms in the foreground. Betty learns she's pregnant, Don comes back home to an ambivalent Betty and a failed power grab by Duck.
-We'll be seeing a lot more of Father Gill next season, I think. I like how the writers have made him a staunch hard-liner in terms of addressing his parish, without making him out to be a hypocrite (He doesn't come onto Peggy) or an asshole. He's a rare character in
televison, the idealist who pushes his values as far as he can in the real world without coming across as naive or cruel. Any conflict that he's involved with in season 3 will examine the point at which Gill has to re-evaluate his effectiveness as a priest.
-I'm torn between Betty's dalliance with the random guy in the bar. Half of me says, "You go, girl!" and the other half is disappointed. (but not surprised.) She can't take a moral high ground against Don's cheating anymore, and with the upcoming pregnancy, she won't be inclined to stray, for at least a long while.
-The showdown between Duck and Don during the merger is like watching the coyote try to catch the road runner. Duck was so sure he could put Don on a short leash, the waves of humiliation he felt after learning Don 'Doesn't have a contract' glowed red off him. Looks like there's a new replacement for 'Office Drunk' with the abscence of Freddy Rumsen...
-"This doesn't affect the merger, does it?" quips Roger after Duck's humiliation. Oh, Roger! Always with the one-liners...
Part of the pleasure of watching "Mad Men" for me is seeing how the story unfolds on a tightrope. As I've said before, we've got likeable characters doing unlikeable things, which makes it hard to really empathise with most of them. Glimpses into Duck's home life and the incredible self-loathing he has, even has me sympathising for him a bit. (He's the closest thing, besides Jimmy Barrett, to a villian on the show.)
You, along with the main characters, can't really explain why the main characters behave the way they do, it just 'feels right'. So when Betty screws the stranger at the bar, it makes sense. When Duck abandons his beloved dog on Madison Avenue, it feels like the type of self-punishing behavior a guy like Duck would engage in. When Peggy, smiling, twists the knife on Pete informing him of their kid, it feels right. (Peggy knows more than Pete how their raising a kid together would be a really bad idea. Also, she's ruthless enough to enjoy letting him know about that little fact.)
So when the show goes through it's missteps- like the 'real Don Draper's wife' bit, for example, it's disapponting. My concern is that when viewers stop watching "Mad Men", it'll turn into a soap opera in order to regain viewers, and lose the spark it had in becoming one of the most compelling shows on T.V. right now.
