Don Draper Episode 8

‘Mad Men’ and the Need for Speed

Last night’s disturbingly hilarious, pitch-perfect episode of Mad Men, entitled The Crash, had me thinking about speed—not the vroom-vroom engine-powered kind, but the drug in its various forms—and the creative process. After a wild opening that features account exec Ken Cosgrove on a symbolically dangerous, drunken joy ride in Detroit with managers from GM, the episode lopes—with a lack of lackadaisicalness uncharacteristic for the show—into a scene in which almost the entire creative team is dosed

Jon Hamm as Don Draper

‘Mad Men’: Let’s Get Metaphysical

If you look at Mad Men as pure entertainment, it simply isn’t.  Well, maybe if you’re an art director or costume designer it is.  If you look at it from an intellectual point of view, then season six is kicking off as hands-down the most philosophical series on TV.  Not that there’s much competition, except for perhaps Breaking Bad, but even that has too many gangsta moments to match the metaphysical meditation that Mad Men has become.

The new season opens with Don Draper on the beach in Hawaii (i.e., paradise) reading the opening canto of Dante’s Inferno: