shipperx | TVGuide's Roush's Week in Review (Reply)

TVGuide's Roush's Week in Review

Instant Classic TV: Mad Men

I haven't been able to stop thinking about Sunday's episode of Mad Men, regarded by many as the high point of the season to date and a series peak as well, a blistering tour de force for Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss, who now have dynamite entries for their Emmy reel next year. (This season has been particularly strong for Moss, as Peggy Olson comes into her own.) "The Suitcase," so masterfully penned by Matthew Weiner that it wouldn't be a surprise to see him at the Emmy podium yet again next year, felt like watching a three-act play — or maybe a three-ring circus veering from drama to comedy back to drama, or perhaps an emotional heavyweight bout that went on much longer — and with more actual ferocity — than the legendary Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston rematch knockdown of May 1965.

So many mood swings, so much remarkable writing and acting. It's Peggy's 26th birthday, a reminder of how much future there is for this on-the-rise career woman and what a contrast she presents to Don Draper's season-long midlife malaise, exacerbated by the sorrowful news that his beloved Anna Draper has died back in California. Bereft and alone, he needs someone to confide in and unload on during this dark night of the soul, and that would be his long-suffering protégé and former secretary. (Under the pretext of brainstorming a new Samsonite ad, Don corrals Peggy to stay late, upsetting her birthday dinner plans. Which turns out to be a blessing of sorts, since her hopelessly outmatched beau has invited her awful family along as a (dreadful) surprise. So much for that doomed relationship. And then there's Peggy's awkward ties to Duck, the show's most pathetically fallen ad man who tries to woo her with a pipe dream of a joint business venture but can't fool her acute loser radar. Duck's drunken, nearly scatological late-night visit to the new firm, capped by the sad slapstick of Duck's and Don's fisticuffs, puts a seeming end to that relationship as well.

Given all that transpires during the episode, the yelling and the laughing (over Roger's dictated memoirs) and the crying and the drinking, all the sound and fury that could be bottled up no longer, the relationship that grows strongest is Don's and Peggy's. He finally reveals bits of his cloaked past to the woman he saw through one of her worst (and to most, still secret) periods of despair. He starts the ball rolling early on by telling her, "I'm glad that this is an environment where you feel free to fail," but later comes to realize that in her presence, he's in an environment where he feels free to fall apart.<

What an outstanding hour of TV drama. (And what's more, who can look at the hilarious Ida Blankenship the same way without seeing the former "queen of perversions" as the office hellcat of yore? What a hoot.) I could quote from this episode all day, but would rather just go back and watch it again.

DOUBLE TAKE: The Vampire Diaries

How much fun is Nina Dobrev having in her dual role as good girl Elena and evil vampire Katherine on The Vampire Diaries? Now it's not only Damon Salvatore who's getting all the good lines. "Kiss me or kill me. We both know you're only capable of one," she taunts Damon, seducing him and ravaging him, then wrecking him with the news (no surprise to us) that "It was always Stefan." (To which all self-respecting Vampire Diaries fans respond: Are you freaking blind? Anyway.) The second-season premiere was the kickiest and sexiest guilty-pleasure hour of the week!