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Mad Men's final episodes have been so hyped that by the time I started watching "Severance," I felt like I was in Don's kind of demi-world between dreams and reality. Is this really it? Are we finally here? Oh my God, does everyone had a Sonny Bono mustache? (Except for Don, of course -- but can you imagine?) Thanks to that clip of Nixon's speech, we know that "Severance" took place April 30th, 1970, when puts it about 9 months after Burt Cooper's death. In most ways, "Severance" was largely a reorientation into Mad Men's world, reflecting (as the show so often does) on the concept of identity. [caption id="attachment_408841" align="alignright" width="350"] Image via AMC/caption] In the non-Don plots, Joan still struggles to be taken seriously in the workplace, suffering some gross, sophomoric jokes from the idiots of McCann, who now own a 51% stake in what was the formerly autonomous Sc&P. Peggy and Joan,...

Analyzing Mad Men is simultaneously the hardest, and easiest writing gig in town. The show’s refusal to sacrifice artistry for clarity, and say what it’s really thinking, means you can forget the particulars of a scene very quickly, especially if there’s a lot of agency business acronyms and numbers being thrown around. But so long as you have some sense of what’s going on, there’s nothing stopping you from spinning out your reading of events into some sort of interpretation of the show’s deeper mysteries that has a shred of merit.

Mad Men has even poked fun at its knack for being so inviting to consider, yet so hard to pin down: in season two’s “The Gold Violin,” office workers trying to express their thoughts on Burt Cooper’s new painting played like a mini-Rorshach test, but all the meditations were turned into...

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

It’s always apparent, when watching Mad Men, how much the drama draws from its setting. This is a period piece, no matter how effectively the writers enrich our characters and focus on their own personal triumphs and failures. Matthew Weiner has often cited his desire to keep the show character driven while the backdrop just unfolds around them, but as is the case in real life, the political and cultural atmosphere in which our characters exist deeply shapes their lives.

“The Flood” brings history to the forefront, as did “The Grown Ups” back in Season 3 where we watched the Mad Men world stunned and hunched around TV sets, all the while their lives continuing around them, unable to stop. That episode played with the Hitchcockian device of showing life go on, oblivious, after a terrible event. Margaret’s sad wedding set amidst the tragedy was...

This week on Mad Men, Joan learns the limitations of her power at Scdp, Peggy swoops in and steals ketchup like a boss and Don proves to be a staggeringly huge hypocrite when he freaks out at Megan for an onscreen kiss. 

Also, there's too much Harry Crane and his distracting sideburns and much too little Roger Sterling and Burt Cooper, who prove with a few sharp barbs that I would watch a spin-off where they insult people and shop for argyle socks. Plus, African American secretary Dawn gets to develop a bit of a personality and proves she might be someone to keep an eye on at the agency.

The premiere of Mad Men’s sixth season was about death, death, and death, but as the point is hammered relentlessly home, a new side of this obsession is revealed: death as an escape. Most notably acknowledged in the pitch scene with the Sheraton representatives, Don’s looming obsession with death has turned into more of an infatuation with the options it presents. Remember, this is a man who has killed himself before, when he left Dick Whitman’s family standing beside a coffin, and the reinvention he was able to experience has inspired a lust with escapism that our protagonist has never been able to shake. Don may seem shocked at his clients’ immediate association of his ad (A picture of a man’s discarded suit and footprints leading ominously into the ocean) with suicide, but somewhere in his subconscious, Don does want to kill himself; it worked once and it could work again.

Screen Actors Guild presented its coveted Actor statuette for the outstanding motion picture and primetime television performances of 2010 at the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in ceremonies attended by film and television's leading actors, held Sunday, Jan. 30, at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. The 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards was simulcast live coast-to-coast by TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. (Et), 7 p.m. (Ct), 6 p.m. (Mt) and 5 p.m. (Pt). An encore presentation was telecast on TNT at 10 p.m. (Et), 9 p.m. (Ct), 8 p.m. (Mt) and 7 p.m. (Pt).

The complete list of recipients of the Screen Actors Guild Awards follows.

Theatrical Motion Pictures

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

Colin Firth / King George VI - The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company)

Jeff Bridges / Rooster Cogburn - True Grit (Paramount Pictures)

Robert Duvall / Felix Bush - Get Low (Sony Pictures Classics...

In the midst of planning a special Mother's Day episode (thank you NBC for re-airing Bitch Hunter, more Will Ferrell for us!) the moms of the Tgs cast and crew showed up and taught us a great deal about our friends: Danny is adopted, Liz could have been Buzz Aldrin’s son, and Tracy has no idea what his mom looks like, aside from the fact she wore red in 1984. While moms have a way of protecting us from these family secrets, they can always tell when we’re hiding something of our own. With her motherly instincts in full gear,...

Jared Harris has been boosted from guest star to series regular in the upcoming fourth season of Mad Men. Harris's character Lane Pryce is a founding partner in the newly formed advertising agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, comprising of Roger Sterling, Burt Cooper and Don Draper along with Pryce. The actor's character first appeared in Season 3 of the Emmy award winner as an account manager for Sterling (more)...