How Mad can you get?

Like many others, my wife Air and I have become big fans of AMC's television series Mad Men, set in New York's hard-drinking, hard-smoking, philandering advertising industry of the early 1960s. Aside from the usual reasons to like the program (i.e. it's really good), it intrigues me because the character of Peggy Olson, played by Elisabeth Moss, is the same age my mother was at that time—though I think my mom had a better time of it.

If you're a Mad Men enthusiast too, I recommend the post-show analysis published each week at The House Next Door Online's Mad Men Monday. Here are the followups for this season's first, second, and third episodes, for instance. For me they provide good critical thought without trying to be too clever, as reviews can often do.

So far each episode this season has been set around a holiday: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve 1964. Will this week see us at Valentine's Day '65? In real life, that was the one right before my parents got married in April.