'Mad Men': A Journey and Scenery Worth the Ride

A man who creates images for a living, Don has spent most of this season watching the image he created for himself come apart — waiting, as that first episode poem prophesied, "for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again." Sunday, he attempts to come to terms with who he is and who he wants to be, and whether he wants to rebuild his life with the increasingly complex beauty he married (January Jones, who has become the upside epitome of a Hitchcock heroine).

(AMC, via AP)

This journey to self-discovery, or perhaps self-reinvention, has not always been a smooth one. Like The Sopranos, the show that reset Weiner's career, Mad Men's ambitions can get the best of it, as with a miscalculated, miscast jaunt to Palm Springs that seemed wildly out of character for both Don and the show.

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The only plus side to Don's poolside stint was that it gave us some relief from a world that, for all its chilly beauty, can be stifling. This is a land where people are cold and calculating, and even a child's crush can take on a tinge of madness. And yet for anyone who loves TV drama at its best, it's a land that demands to be visited.

And you don't even have to get in your car to get there.