Mad Men…This episode starts off deliberately disorienting, throwing us for a minute as we try to figure out exactly what’s changed for all the characters since we last saw them more than a year ago. Time has certainly passed for our core group (only Don and Pete look exactly the same) but not much internally. Don is still a stoically tortured soul (the mythology around him may now be more interesting than the man himself), Roger is still an irrepressible man-child, Peggy is still a workaholic with a power attraction, and Joan is still woefully underutilized except as a sex object. Mad Men is a character based show, not a plot-based one, but what happens when the characters are running in place? [This is also going to be the big theme of the season according to Matthew Weiner, but that doesn’t even sound promising.]
It’s saying something when the best plot line belongs to Betty. The show’s most hated character actually got a chance to remind us of her soul, something largely missing in recent seasons. Betty’s interactions with (and attempts to save) a younger version of herself were touching and actually achieved the depth the rest of the overly murky episode was trying for. The most emotionally resonant scenes coming from the show’s most hateful character? Now that’s change you can see. Grade for the two-hour pilot: B
Bonus Review: HBO’s Vice is the right kind of newsmagazine. The first episode felt gritty, raw, and intelligent. You won’t see irrelevant, something-bad-happened-to-one-person stories like Dateline. Instead it takes viewers to global hot spots and tries to shine a light on things you wouldn’t ordinarily see. [Oh, and for those that don’t know, this is the show that sent Dennis Rodman to North Korea to make buddies with Kim Jong Un…and he’ll be quite possibly the last American to step foot there before a potential war breaks out.] Grade: A