Don Draper + Lane Pryce + Gamera = one of Mad Men‘s most memorable episodes.

Dennis

I hope this episode has inspired everyone to befriend a British man, get him drunk, and watch Gamera with him (steak and strippers optional). Lane was my favorite part of this episode. Sure he was mean to Joan, but he said funny things and rubbed beef on his crotch!

I was also pleased to see The Real Don Whitman’s wife back, even if this might be one of (if not the) last time we see her. Poor Anna can finally meet Dick’s kids now that Betty’s in the know, but she might not even live to see that visit. I’ve enjoyed Melinda Page Hamilton’s mellow portrayal of Anna in the moments we’ve seen her and am sad we won’t get to see her. But if Sal has taught us anything, nothing gold can stay on Mad Men (yes, I’m going to mention Sal every episode until that time if/when he shows up, and then I’m going to mention how excited I am that he’s back, dammit!!).

I’m actually surprised at how few characters were in this episode. Don, Lane, and Joan had a lot of screen time, with just slight cameos for the rest of the office folk, and nary a glimpse of Betty, Sally, and the rest of the (fake) Drapers. Still, I like that the writers don’t try and force everyone into every episode of the show, especially when it’s Don, Joan, and drunk Lane we get to spend time with. I’m sure Peggy’s New Year’s with her boyfriend (which she humorously had to remind Joan, and us, that she had) was delightful, but I’m happy I got to spend the first moments of 1965 with this threesome of characters instead!

Zoe

“I know exactly who you are, and I love you.” Is there anything as rare and wonderful as that sentiment, especially when it’s true? Mad Men‘s strength is the way it plays with dualities and the past, forcing us to consider the many faces we end up showing to the world. Don is not alone in his secrets, though he certainly has heavy ones. Each and every character and viewer has one–what many of us lack is our Anna, the person who offers us a reprieve from the burden of having so many different roles.

I hate to think that’s the last time we’ll see Anna, if only because the idea of her and Sally meeting is too amazing, but what a send off. Not only does she offer Don some of the kindest words he’ll ever hear, but Melinda Page Hamilton plays her so well, as this light and beautiful woman who has faced some terrible hardships and come away loving and fun and just the right amount of sarcastic.

And, so, of course when faced with her–with everyone’s–mortality, Don goes on an epic bender with the perfectly British awkward Lane, a man who has done some many things the proper way, only to have them fall apart in his hands. No wonder he’s embracing America, Texas belt buckles and all. Lane’s public face is so much more rigidly enforced by the standards and protocols that he grew up with, that it’s great to see him lose them for a bit and realize that it’s OK.

Lastly, Joan. Joan and her terrible marriage to a nice, handsome, but awful man. A man who denies her passions while abandoning her to whatever fate awaits him in Vietnam. A man who treats her like a child, failing to recognize how much she has kept everything together. And Joan has no refuge, no drunken coworker, no Anna. And so when her dualities confront her, it’s heartbreaking, a person who sees how doomed they are, but no way out. And, unfortunately, I’m not sure that there is.

Scott

Clearly, “The Good News” was a fine hour of television, mostly as a chance to spend time with some of the show’s most underused characters (maybe only the  fifth or sixth time Joan’s been given considerable screen time and only the third notable Lane appearance). But it also spent a while wallowing in sleaze, an unwelcome development for this fourth season that’s gnawed at me in every episode. I hate to sound like a prude, but one of my favorite elements of the first season of Mad Men was that while the male characters would behave like demented sailors on shore leave, their vices were handled in tasteful ways. We wouldn’t see, for example, Don having graphic sex with sadomasochistic prostitutes, or pathetically propositioning teenagers he’s known since they were babies.

This isn’t a new problem, it’s just worse than ever. Don’s mistresses in season one – Rosemarie DeWitt’s deceptively deep beatnik Midge and especially Maggie Siff’s tortured Jewish career woman Rachel Menken – were two of the show’s brightest stars, complex and compelling women who challenged and ultimately rejected Don. His two main mistresses since then – the callous Bobbie Barrett and the airheaded proto-hippie schoolteacher Suzanne – were one-note bores whose relevance to the story was more theoretical than actual.

I know there’s a reason behind this. The Don we also worshiped for his effortless cool now seems like a creep. A guy who could get any girl he wanted while he was married is now single and pays for sex. He’s been turned down in every episode so far by women of a younger generation who aren’t eager to hop in bed with a handsome man just because he told them to. But he’s also gotten laid in each of the three episodes by three different woman in an increasingly cringe-worthy fashion. Now I dread the moment every week when Don turns predatory, engaging in grossness that sends one of TV’s most high-minded shows directly into the gutter. We get that he treats most women like trash and that he’s bad for doing so, do we really need to see it every week?

Ellen

After this week’s episode, the friend I was watching with turned to me and exclaimed, “I love this show but it always leaves you wanting more.” Not only did she set me up for a perfect That’s What She Said, she ably summed up the glorious frustration of this week’s ep ending on the cusp of a new year, with life and death literally hanging in the balance. This week brought us the welcome spectacle of a Don Draper New Year’s Eve, but also a number of unanswered questions: Why does Joan seem so single-minded all of a sudden about starting a family? Will loyalty or dishonor win in Don’s behavior towards the California Drapers? Seriously, can we hand Lane Pryce his Emmy right now? We’ll probably have to wait all season for these, but the writers are digging us in and I am right there in the trenches with them. Next week hopefully we’ll know how everyone else spent their New Year’s Eve, but I’m guessing Gamera wasn’t involved.