The Televangelist: ‘Mad Men’ Season 5, Ep 8

• AMC.com
• “FML”

Let’s talk about Pete. I’m worried for him. Are you? After being such a slime ball in the first two seasons of the show, he really seemed to grow in the last two. This year, he’s completely falling apart (a season later than Don, of course, his idol).

The episode title, “Lady Lazarus” is based on a Sylvia Plath poem about rebirth, but it’s also about suicide. Pete cavalierly mentions to his train friend Howard that his insurance policy “even covers suicide!” after two years. Remember Pete holding a gun in a dark room to end Season Two? And then mentions of guns this season by both Pete and Trudy? Pete’s ill-considered affair with Rory Gilmore Beth (Alexis Bledel, wooden as ever. She makes January Jones look positively nuanced) was full of problems. He’s not Don, he can’t carry on an affair properly. He was emotional and reckless and needy, and his depressing comments to Harry about the insignificance of being just a dot on a tiny, unprotected orb floating in the vast darkness of space was the kind of thing that would make you say to your friend “... ok, let’s get you out of the house.”

I worry for him.

It has been a dark and foreboding season, and no moment was creepier in “Lady Lazarus” than Don nearly stepping off into an empty elevator shaft. Are we meant to take from this that Megan, his support, is gone? That there’s nowhere to go but down? If someone is going to be the falling man seen in the opening credits of the show, it certainly isn’t literally going to be Don. Not yet at least, we have two more seasons!