Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010

Mad Men, "The Suitcase"

Unlike many opposite-sex pairings in TV, there was never a romantic will-they-or-won't-they dynamic between Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss). Yet Mad Men's Season 4 high point was a long-awaited payoff in their relationship: the adman and his protégé didn't hook up but rather acknowledged how much they had in common, as two outsiders to their business whose lives have been works of self-reinvention. Don is on a downward trajectory, reeling from divorce and the death of an old friend, drinking to numb the pain; Peggy is rising in her work and becoming more personally confident. Over the course of one long, surreal night, they meet in the middle, as Peggy sees Don at his drunk-upchucking lowest and Don, just maybe, touches bottom and gets ready to resurface. (AMC)