The Televangelist: ‘Mad Men’ Season 5, Ep 4

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• Dr Rapist, reporting for duty!

Is “Mystery Date” the creepiest episode of “Mad Men” ever to air? The whole hour had a nightmarish pall over it, and not just its focus on the heinous Richard Speck murders. But, to start with them: even the opening scene where “unprintable” pictures from the crime were brought in gleefully and shared among the art department had an odd and grotesque feel to it. (The moment was preempted by a nice turn of foreshadowing where Stan sat smoking with a stocking over his face). Ginsberg conveys his disgust at the actions of the others, and Peggy sighingly agrees that perhaps they took things too far. Yet, the macabre atmosphere never lifted.

“Mystery Date” reminded me of an episode of a supernatural show (any supernatural show, really) where the characters act unlike themselves until the end when we find out it’s because of some nefarious plot being implemented through a radio broadcast or the drinking water or some kind of spell. But to turn it around again, those shows are probably acting as metaphors for a very real phenomenon of the saturation of public consciousness by an unfathomable event. In previous seasons we’ve seen the “Mad Men” universe reacting to the deaths of JFK and Marilyn Monroe with grief and shock, but the odd and largely subconscious reactions to the Speck murders turned on fear - not surprising, given the particularly heinous nature of the crime itself.

On the Draper side of things, Don starts the episodes with a nasty cough and a fever, and an ill-timed run-in with a former sex partner, played by the always lovely Mädchen Amick (of “Twin Peaks,” whose casting I cannot help but think is a nod to that show which “Mystery Date” felt so derivative of). Megan wonders aloud to Don how often this is going to happen, and later chastises him for his behavior and won’t let him blame it on Betty. Don, who truly seems to want things with Megan to last, later has a fever-induced hallucinatory dream (and an extremely coherent one, much like Betty’s the week before) where he is revisited by his pushy lover and, after failing to get rid of her, has sex that ends in murder. Shades of Richard Speck? The parting shot of the body being kicked under the bed (a nod to where the only survivor of Speck’s crimes hid) is an attractive calf and fancy high-heeled shoe. That, you may recall, was the money-shot of Ginsberg’s ad pitch. When Don awakes to Megan, bathed in holy white light, he frantically checks under the bed to see if he has broken his vow. Was his dream a cathartic moment? Have we seen the last of the philandering Don? Or will he once again given into his “sick” nature eventually, tired of fighting it?