While lying in bed after agreeing to spend “the entire night” at Miss Farrell’s over-garage apartment, Don provides his explanation to a hypothetical eight-year-old about whether or not different people see the color blue in the same way. It’s too literate an answer for a child, but he finally comes around to the real answer he’s been clawing for: “People may see things differently, but they don’t really want to.” The process of finding the response is similar to the act of brainstorming that happens in the Sterling-Cooper creative offices every day, but it also sums up what must be one of the most important tenets of advertising. How many times have you seen a commercial touting “The #1 movie in the country?” To be sure, there are people who want to be different. But most people would rather be only mildly different, and only in specific areas. People want to fit in. People want to be normal. It’s horrifying to think that other people might see a color in a different way.

But of course, people do see things in different ways. Aside from actual physiological differences like color-blindness, people also observe and notice different things. Peggy is especially valuable to the creative team because she picks up on things the other copywriters don’t. Part of that comes from the different experiences she’s had by virtue of being female, but also simply because she’s kind of quirky. The same is true of the other writers, and certainly of Don.

But “The Color Blue” of the title refers as much to a general feeling of sadness enveloping the lives of many of our heroes this week. Paul is feeling down because Peggy (successfully) tweaked his pitch during their presentation to Don, and now he feels undercut. Tasked with finding some golden words for Western Union — in an era when everyone has a telephone — Paul does what all ad men do and turns to the bottle. He comes up with a brilliant idea while talking to a custodian named Achilles — leading to one of my favorite lines of the night, as Peggy later asks Paul, “How do you talk to Achilles?” — but decides to drink some more rather than put the idea to paper. Naturally he regains consciousness the next morning having completely forgotten his brilliant idea.

I remember a Seinfeld episode with a similar plot, so I can’t say I was impressed by this writing, but when he has to face the music, Paul is surprised to find that Don is sympathetic. Happens to everyone, I guess. But Peggy pulls a thread from a Chinese proverb Paul previously quoted about “the faintest pen is better than the best memory.” Suddenly they’ve got their angle for selling telegrams. I wasn’t sure if Paul felt like a chump for being bested by Peggy again, or he was genuinely impressed. In any case, this was the least consequential storyline of the episode.

Who else is feeling blue? Bert Cooper, who doesn’t want to attend the Sterling-Cooper 40th Anniversary party — where Don will be presented with a humanitarian award — because he doesn’t like being reminded of how much time has passed and all the people that have died. Lane, for his part, is trying to handle a wife (whom I just noticed is played by Embeth Davidtz) that reminds him constantly that she hates New York, and a home office that insists on seeing “all flowers in bloom” because they’re planning to sell the company. Turns out Lane’s work at Sterling-Cooper was sort of analogous to flipping a house. Ever the good soldier, Lane convinces Cooper to come to the party telling him that if he’s not there, everyone will assume he’s ill. “How did you know I was vain?” asks Cooper. “It’s obvious,” replies Lane.

I have to say, when the season began I expected Lane to become a villain, but I’ve actually come to like him. He’s a doormat, obviously, but seems to be fundamentally a decent guy. It feels strange to call someone who is obviously quite well-to-do an underdog, but that’s kind of what he is. I’ve started to root for him, so let’s give some praise to Jared Harris. And of course, a potential sale raises lots of questions. Who would buy the company? Hilton? Sterling and Cooper? Don? Would Hilton buy it and give it to Don? Remember their exchange about how when a man like Hilton asks what you want…

Don apparently still wants Suzanne Farrell, and she wants him. We don’t see any of her previous reluctance. She seems to be head over heels for him, in what I think has been approximately a month since he first showed up at her door. “I don’t care about your marriage or work or any of that,” she tells him. “As long as I know you’re with me.” This being 1963, we know Don has never seen Fatal Attraction, but that was the first reference that sprang to my mind when she said that. A man as astute and aware as Don ought to be hearing some warning bells right now. There’s potential for this affair to end in tragedy. And that would kind of be a relief, wouldn’t it? Sooner or later, Don’s philandering has to actually matter.

Suzanne’s got an epileptic brother named Danny, who apparently can’t hold down a job because his seizures freak people out too much. But I wonder if that’s really true, or if that’s another case of people seeing the color blue in different ways. Does Danny just assume people think the worst and flee before that assumption can be confirmed? In any case, Suzanne finds him a menial hospital job in Massachusetts, and Don volunteers to drive him there. Danny convinces Don to let him out by the side of the road instead, but where is he going to go? The hospital job might be miserable, but he doesn’t give any indication of what he plans to do instead. Don gives him some extra money and a business card. So … I guess we’ll be seeing Danny again, probably first in the form of a phone call to Don’s office. Will Don find a way to hire him? Will he have to hire him to keep his affair with Suzanne secret? Regardless, it’s becoming increasingly more unlikely that he’ll be able to get out of that affair clean.

But it may not even matter because Betty finally got into Don’s desk drawer. She finds his box of closely guarded secrets, and most of the clues about his double life don’t make sense to her. But one item definitely does: the certificate of divorce from Anna Draper. So while most of the damning evidence doesn’t tell her very much (yet), she is devastated to learn that her husband has a secret ex-wife somewhere in the world. It’s kind of telling, isn’t it? There’s a lot of “blue” in that box, but the only blue Betty sees is her own. She only sees the part that seems to diminish her personally. While Don is driving to Massachusetts and back (and then spending the night with his mistress), Betty hovers over the box and a wine glass. And yet when he finally calls her in the morning, she has decided not to confront him. She bristles when he asks why she doesn’t want to go to the party that night (“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?“), but ultimately bides her time.

I thought Don’s claim that he wants to “show her off” was one of the more revelatory lines of the episode, and I’m not sure how to read Betty’s reaction. He doesn’t always treat Betty like an accessory, but he certainly has before. I don’t think she is ambivalent about it, but I’m not sure whether she especially enjoys it or especially doesn’t. I do not think, however, that she was feeling especially proud when Don took to the podium at the party and said, “I’m very honored.” There was an almost Hitchcockian menace in the way that final scene was shot and edited.

There is another interesting thread tying all of these subplots together: unfinished business. Don and Suzanne have their tryst interrupted by the arrival of Danny. Paul’s efforts toward a brilliant ad campaign are aborted by his careless inability to take a few notes. Sally doesn’t get to demonstrate her phone-answering skills because the person on the other end hangs up. Don’s attempt to “do the right thing” and take Danny to the hospital in Massachusetts is thwarted by Danny’s unwillingness to go. And Betty is deprived of the chance to throw her righteous anger in Don’s face by his continued, uncooperative absence throughout the night. No one gets to finish what they start. Even Don’s speech is cut off by the closing credits.

The other shoe must be about to drop. We’re very near the end of the season, and it comes back to the way people see things. Betty doesn’t have all the information, but she knows something about Don that she didn’t before. At that party, accepting that award, he is surrounded by people who admire him or respect him or resent him or fear him. But one thing is certain: Betty doesn’t see Don the way anyone else sees him.

The quality of episodes has been quite good of late. Also Ken Cosgrove enjoys receiving telegrams, but never sends them himself. I’m not sure how that’s helpful though.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My other favorite line of the night belonged to Cooper: “You really pour the honey on. Then you lick it off.” In a completely unrelated matter, I do not want to discuss what Paul does in his office.

Welcome to my first Mad Men write-up. I started watching this excellent series last summer, racing through the first season using my cable’s “on demand” service just in time to catch the second season premiere. I no longer have that cable subscription. In fact, my current satellite package doesn’t even carry AMC, so for the moment I’m forced to purchase the season one episode at a time from Amazon. Oh, the pain of it all.

I actually didn’t take to Mad Men right away. I thought the first episode of the series (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”) was brilliant, but tremendously unpleasant. I had serious doubts that I’d want to spend an hour every week with such horrible, unhappy people. I’m glad I stuck it out, because I’ve since discovered that no series currently on the air gives me so much consistent joy. And “consistent” is the key word. While Lost still has the power to amaze me, Mad Men is without question the most consistently excellent show on television — that I’ve seen, anyway.

So it is with satisfaction but not surprise that I say unto you that “Out of Town”, the premiere episode of Season 3, is a wonderful, fitting start to the new year. It opens with a mind bending set of vignettes playing in Don’s mind as he warms milk for an insomniac Betty. Visions of dead babies and dead mothers flicker before him before finally we see a midwife delivering an infant baby (soon to be Dick Whitman) into the arms of Don’s mother. Is he Moses? In any case, he scalds the milk.

Betty seems to have welcomed Don back into the house, although I had a moment of doubt when she told him she’d packed his valise — it’s only for a business trip. The couple seems to have settled back into their normal routine, which was never a particularly good routine to be in.

Meanwhile, the Brits have taken charge at Sterling-Cooper, though for some reason Sterling and Cooper are still around — Cooper still has his senior partner Japanese-themed office, in fact. No one mentions Duck Phillips, so I don’t know what ultimately happened with him. There’s a new CFO, however, named Pryce (Jared Harris), and he sends Don and Sal on an important trip to Baltimore to soothe the nervous father-son team at London Fog. Before that, however, the brass take the opportunity to fire Burt Peterson, the apparently incompetent head of accounts. This leaves a vacancy which Pryce fills by hiring Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove to split the responsibilities, a decision which leaves Pete absolutely livid. So once again, back to the normal routine.

Don and Sal fly to Baltimore, meet some randy stewardesses (and the flight navigator, for some reason), and Don prepares to fall into bed with one of the ladies. Back to the normal routine. Sal, for his part, calls for a bellhop to fix his air conditioner, and instead gets a surprising sexual advance. Then the fire alarm goes off, everyone scrambles, and Don comes traipsing down the fire escape just in time to see Sal through the window, temporarily sharing his hotel room with an undressed man. Whoops.

“Out of Town” seems to be about people operating in places where they don’t belong, and sort of stumbling because of it. Don is performing domestic duties in the kitchen. Pete and Ken are promoted together and apparently have to fight it out. Sal has a near-tryst with another man, something he has studiously avoided for a variety of reasons (mostly fear). And then there’s Pryce’s assistant John Hooker (Ryan Cartwright), who repulses both Peggy and Joan, but has quite strongly caught the attention of Peggy’s secretary. Hooker is both a fish out of water as a Brit living in America and as a man doing a job normally done by a woman in the 1960s. “This place is a gyocracy”, he laments.

Hooker gets dressed down by Pryce after setting himself up as a placeholder in Burt Peterson’s old office, quite literally scolded for being where he doesn’t belong. Trudy tells Pete that in his ambition and disappointment, he reminds her of her father — a comparison he can’t tolerate. And on the plane back from Baltimore — returning to where they belong — Don pitches Sal a London Fog slogan that serves as a warning to be more discrete in the future: “Limit your exposure.”

Don, of course, is the man who hopped into a car with a girl he’d just met and fled to Palm Springs. He’s not even really Don Draper. His whole life is about being where he’s not supposed to be! But the one thing about Don we can rely upon is that he’s an adulterous bastard, and though we’re disappointed when he takes Shelly the flight attendant up to his hotel room, we’re hardly surprised. And he gets off the best line of the night when, after Shelly tells him that she’s engaged and this might be her last chance to have a fling, he responds, “I’ve been married a long time. You get plenty of chances.”

Like it or not, Mad Men fans, screwing around is where Don Draper belongs. And the show’s poignant ending — aren’t the endings always poignant? — shows Don unable to recount to his daughter Sally the events leading up to her birth. Does he get choked up from the emotion? Or can he just not remember? I don’t think there’s any question that Don loves his wife and children. But advertising is about creating a need, and Don has needs in spades. Through the first two seasons, it’s been abundantly clear that Don is most at home when he’s away from his family, either at the office or in some other woman’s bed. When he’s in Manhattan.

When he’s in town.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Okay, so Season 1 ended with the presidential election of 1960. Season 2 ended with the death of Marilyn Monroe. Unless I missed it, we don’t actually know what year we’re in now, but I don’t see how they can skip past the Kennedy assassination.