‘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: