The Doorway, A Stream of Consciousness

Rumors were true, Matty, you took us to Hawaii. Hamm looks hot with a tan and a lei. Mahalo.

Who’s more annoyed by high Megan, Don or the audience? Doesn’t matter. Whole world’s a soap star’s stage here.

War talk at the bar. This drunken, pre-marital P.F.C. Dinkins reminds me of a young Roger Sterling. Meanwhile, Don’s so Kenobi this year. Moreso than e’er. Sobering.

She’s back, she’s speeding, she hates cops, and she’s settled into a matronly kind of chubs. Betty got a ticket. Mum-in-law Pauline is channeling Divine.

Sally has a Julliard prodigy for a bestie and the budding musician’s mom died.

Don sees dead people. Doormen, specifically.

(Once again, this show reminds me just how bad commercials are today. You’d think, if you were buying a slot during a show about the Golden Age of Advertising, you’d feel some pressure to deliver a decent pitch to your audience.)

(Christina Hendricks is pimping Johnnie Walker?! It’s like Joan being traded for a campaign all over again. Hope they gave Christina stock in the company. Or partnership.)

“You said you wanted to spice things up … you can stick a rag in her mouth and you won’t wake the boys.” Rape jokes are Betts’ latest coping mechanism. “My goodness, you’re blushing.” Chaste kiss goodnight.

Cigarettes and Ritz Crackers are the new milk-n-cookies. Betty never seems entirely convincing in maternal mode, but she’s improving. Correction: not a Julliard prodigy.

Leica camera! Like everybody else, Don only knows about the price.

“We discussed this … I can’t laugh at everything you say.” Sterling goes to therapy. Now we get the doorway reference. Weinberg can’t get away from a shrink’s office. And I can’t stop thinking of Tony Soprano. Breaking down the fourth door.

I’m a little bored. What’s this ear joke? Peggy can’t stay at this job much longer. It’s not comic relief. It’s painful. “Go home. There’s no second show.” Blame the army.

(While grabbing a snack, I think about imminent death — the show’s and its characters’. It becomes clear to me that Sterling’s going down. We’ve known it since his heart attack. I also realize that Don Draper might die too, but that Dick Whitman will not.)

Bob Benson from Accounting was on that short-lived show Lone Star and the USA series Political Animals. “I smell creativity.”

“No, Stan, you look great.” Stan is so totally brewing beer and pickling okra on his window ledge.

I’m ready to take a nap, Pete. Ain’t no shame in that.

“My job is to introduce your headphones to a huge drunk male audience.” Swap out “headphones” and Peggy’s just described everyone’s job. Heidi Klum’s too, as the ad for the Jim Beam bourbon burger at Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. reminds us.

Love doesn’t belong in the kitchen. Tell that to the people of 2013, Don. They wouldn’t believe you. “Why are we contributing to the trivialization of the word?” “We’re wearing it out. Let’s leave it where we want it. We want that electric jolt to the body; we want arrows. It’s like a drug. It’s not domestic. What’s the difference between a husband knocking on a door and a sailor getting off a ship? About 10,000 volts.” Can Don Draper publish a book of Sonnets when the show’s over?

“Nah, she’s a fruitcake. She’d want to have a seance.” That’d be a sweet scene, a Mad Men seance. Don’t you think? They could get in touch with Lane, for one. Sorry to make light of the death of Roger Sterling’s mom, but that’s what he’s doing, so it’s hard to get choked up or solemn.

That phone call Peggy just had with the pastor was great. From Lutheranism to cremation to the Super Bowl in under two minutes.

In life we often have to do things that just are not our bag. I see a tagline coming.

I hope Megan spends more time traveling for work.

“She acts like she’s twenty-five because she uses tampons.” My hero, Sally.

Jane’s funeral ensemble is fabu.

I like the no-graveside speaking policy but not the no-libations one. Awesome funeral, but seems out of character, not for Roger, necessarily; for the show. A little too slapstick.

Also heavy-handed, the overall preoccupation with death.

Birdy, slumming it, cliche scampering rat included.

Goulash, pork butt, two onions, lentils. Looks like something I read on a Brooklyn menu last week.

I went to my nana mimsy’s funeral and all I have to show for it is this lousy jar of holy water. “Her will looked like the manifest from Noah’s Ark.”

Refrigeration, it’s the wave of the future. So much for goulash.

Speaking of which, Megan’s home and she’s making dinner.

And, we’re back to goulash. Someone needs to control this mess. “We are your garbage.” You’re not allowed to ask anyone to leave. “There are bylaws say if someone is a nuisance or a narc, that shall not be observed.” Even anarchists have rules. And tetanus and crabs, too, according to Betty.

Peggy’s boyfriend looks like a member of the goulash commune. “Those are three different versions of the same idea. If you can’t tell the difference between which part’s the idea and which part’s the execution, you’re of no use to me.” Wise words, Ms. Olson. Her job sucks and she’s a hard-ass boss, but she is emerging as the resident voice of reason.

January Jones is emerging as Most Improved Player.

What’s the deal with the lighter? And why do we have to endure TWO therapy sessions? “I don’t feel anything … life, unlike this analysis,will eventually end and somebody else will get the bill.”

Bob Benson is back. Gosh, he’s a nuisance.

Jumping off point. I had the same thought, guy. Not of James Mason in A Star Is Born, specifically, but of suicide. Again, I think Dick might have a metaphoric jumping-off moment at the end of the season.

All right. That’s it. I feel beaten over the head with the death bludgeon. The theme has now been done, to death.

Nice Christmas sweater, Henry.

Another dead duck? Et tu, shoe shine man?

This is why I don’t leave the house on New Year’s Eve.

Whoa, Linda Cardellini is on Mad Men. Freak out. No way this is a one-time cameo. Lady’s in the mix now.

Adorable, this Stan-n-Peggy phone reunion.

Um, is Peggy going to start up an office romance? That never ends well. (Jinx, Stan. Ted totally likes her.)

“Honestly, Don, the whole life and death thing, it doesn’t bother me. Never has.” Wish I could say the same for the writers.

Cent’anni.

p.s. yup, lady’s defs in the mix.