Maniacal Over Season Two of Mad Men!

I'm maniacal over the DVD release of Mad Men (Season Two). This terrific Golden Globe-winning series on AMC about 1960s Madison Avenue ad men just keeps getting better and better. Even the DVD packaging is cool. The first season came in the form of a giant lighter (and considering how much smoking they do on the series it’s not surprising). This one comes like a dress shirt and tie in a sales box. Jon Hamm is brooding and great as Don Draper, creative director for the Sterling Cooper Ad Agency. In this season his marriage to the cool beautiful Betty (January Jones) hits the rocks, thanks to Don’s affair with the wife of an acerbic comic. Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson, the junior copy writer, is still dealing with giving birth to an illegitimate child but also rising the ranks in the firm with her common sense and smarts. Christina Hendricks as the va-va-va-voom office manager Joan is distancing herself from married boss Roger Sterling (the brilliant John Slattery) and is engaged to be married. Weasel Pete Campbell (>Vincent Kartheiser), account executive, is dealing with a nagging wife who wants to get pregnant. And Mark Moses as "Duck" Phillips is struggling as the teetotalling head of accounts. The events of the times bleed into the show -- Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House, Marilyn Monroe’s death, and the Bay Of Pigs fiasco. Meanwhile the men is suits drink three martini lunches and smoke and carouse and come up with ideas to sell lipstick and airplanes. It’s a brutally smart, riveting series. Wonderfully acted, expertly written, it’s like a John O’Hara novel coming to life on television. And the final episode is a beaut.