Mad Men: A Little Kiss

After an unfairly long hiatus, Mad Men is finally back on our TVs.  Now I can sleep at night again.  Has absence made the heart grow fonder, or have I been set up for the letdown of all letdowns after a year and a half of waiting?

"Shut up, black people!  How dare you demand to be treated like human beings.  You're distracting me from my white privilege!"

The episode begins with some "negros" protesting out on Madison Avenue, presumably to make sure that we're all aware that it's the 60s and the civil rights movement is big.

What else is new?  Don and Megan got married and moved into a swinging new apartment (20 bucks they're going to be wife-swapping within the next two years, if they last that long).  Also, there's a new Bobby.  He doesn't look anything like the old one.  Is Don really so wrapped up in his blissful new life with his hot young thing that he doesn't notice that his son picked up and moved to ABC?

Pete and Trudy now have their very own generic homestead in the suburbs.  And Joan has a shiny new baby boy named Kevin, who is one of Roger Sterling's bastard children.  He's the only one we know of, but in my head canon Roger has 12 illegitimate children on four continents.

Megan is trying to prove how little she knows about Don by throwing TV's most introverted and private man a surprise party.  Even Peggy tries to warn her off of that one.  But Megan goes through with it anyway, and everyone has a good time, except for Don.  His soul quietly leaves his body, as Lane would put it.  Megan decides that the mature thing to do is to take her marital issues out on Peggy, whom she chastises for something completely unrelated.  Way to make friends at work, Megan.

Meanwhile, Pete starts gunning for Roger's fancy office.  He argues that he does way more work and is responsible for a huge percentage of their new clients.  Roger argues that he has seniority and challenges him to a fight.  No, seriously.  That's what happens.

Other Things of Note:

• Oh god, the relationship between Joan and her mother.  It's not exactly what you would call warm.

• OK, no offense Peggy, but I'm not really on board with the bean ballet either.  On the other hand, I'm a little confounded at the idea that this guy thinks an ad campaign showing college kids picketing for beans is going to help them reel in the demographic that was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements.  I mean...can we say out of touch?

• When I first started watching this show, I never imagined that there would come a time when I could legitimately say that I like Pete Campbell.  But I do.  He's ambitious, hard-working, sneaky, under-handed, and now that he's a partner he's not nearly as annoyingly desperate as he used to be.  And he does make a good point.  Roger is a dinosaur at that company, and he's out-lived his relevance.  And Pete does deserve to have an office that doesn't have a comically misplaced support beam in the middle of it.

• I have mixed feelings about Megan's little performance.  On the one hand, she is ridiculously attractive.  But did she never even entertain the notion that a private performance like that in front of a roomful of friends and coworkers might be incredibly awkward?

• I love the bitter old Sterlings. "Why don't you sing like that?" "Why don't you look like him?"

• I also love how Don says that he forbade Betty from throwing him a birthday party, just because I would love to see him try to forbid Megan from doing anything.  It highlights how they come from two very different generations.

• OK, I'm not going to defend Harry, but when you basically perform a burlesque for your coworkers you have to at least consider the possibility that they're not going to take you as seriously on Monday.  Especially when you're sleeping with the boss.

• Lane, you naughty boy.  Phone sex?  You are so uptight and repressed...it's adorable.

• Seriously, why does Harry have such a nice office?  All he does is namedrop famous people and spoil TV show plot twists.

• Try to guess how depressed I was when I realized that Harry's salary circa 1966 = my salary when I worked at a talent agency in NYC in 2011.  Hint: the answer is very.

• Harry and Roger's conversation about the office was priceless.  I would like to request that they have this type of interaction every week, please.

• LOL Roger bought his bastard infant son a bicycle.  I don't know why but I find that hilarious.

• Awkward scene with Peggy, Pete, and a random baby?  Yes please!

• Aw I kind of love Joan and Lane together.  They're so cute.  And it's interesting because I feel like they writers are so much better at writing the platonic relationships than the romantic ones.

• Harry's paranoia about Megan is a thing of beauty.