There was a moment in “The Arrangements” that made my heart sink. It wasn’t the hard-nosed way Gene passed along his last wishes to Betty, and it wasn’t Gene failing to pick up Sally and Bobby from school. No, my heart sank when Gene told Sally that their ice cream was supposed to be chocolate, but instead smelled like oranges.

This third episode of the season is very much about home, or the pale imitations of it that we content ourselves with.

Don Draper is not necessarily a bad guy, but he’s not much of a good guy either. In short, Don Draper has sold his soul, and there’s no getting it back. He’s lost. He’s not the hero.

It is with satisfaction but not surprise that I say unto you that “Out of Town”, the premiere episode of the third season of Mad Men, is a wonderful, fitting start to the new year.

While “Epitaph One” is gripping and thematically rich, it could take a lot of mystery out of future season of the series if we’re meant to treat it as canonical.

Lost does season finales very well, and I’ve always enjoyed that the finales seem to change the entire premise of the series. That’s certainly the case with this thrilling finale too.

FOX hasn’t announced yet whether or not we should expect to ever see Dollhouse on the schedule again, but I thought Tim Minear’s “Omega” did a reasonably adequate job of finishing off the season and leaving room for the future.

We know the Others ultimately wipe out the Dharma Initiative — so there’s no hope of any kind of peaceful coexistence there — but what will be the fate of the Others in 2007 and beyond? It appears that fate will be determined by Mr. John Locke.