One of Mad Men‘s recurring themes is that the illusion of success at the highest level can often disguise, or even create, an unhappiness far more difficult and powerful than failure. If Matthew Weiner indeed believes this, then he must be incredibly sad this morning, because last night’s episode “Signal 30″ was one of the series’ finest, an utterly gripping and powerful hour that moved with purpose and skill, was smart but more importantly wise, and was executed to the fullest by everyone involved. I simply did not want it to end.

The theme of violence carried over from last week, and I think suburban horror is quite a good look for this show. The country is once again ensconced in violence (I count a commercial plane crash, continuing deaths in Vietnam, rising occurrence of car accidents, and the UT sniper as gruesome things mentioned in this episode) and everyone is feeling slightly on edge. As Pete Campbells nubile crush remarks, (and I’m paraphrasing) “everything seems so random these days.”

Speaking of Pete Campbell, “Signal 30″ was ostensibly centered around him and boy howdy, I reckon Vincent Kartheiser just earned his first Emmy nomination. Pete has always wanted to be Don, and now we get to see him complete that journey: beautiful wife, partner at the agency, children, house in the suburbs, expensive stereo, etc. But, as he’s done in the past, he discovers another of Don’s deep, dark secrets, this time by experience it himself: all of these things make him incredibly, dangerously unhappy.

Not even the faucet works right. Nonetheless, he and Trudy (a very good Alison Brie, who should jump ship from Community and land here for good) want to have a couples night at their home, inviting Don and Megan, and Ken and his wife Alex Mack. Don’s reticence to go out there (“Saturday in the suburbs is where you really wanna blow your brains out”) reminds us how miserable he was spending a decade there. Nonetheless, Trudy wrangles him out and we get a exceptionally written dinner scene.

The wonder of it was that it actually held together throughout the whole thing, with no party being anything but genial, but the whole thing felt as though it could spin off into Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf territory at any moment. Especially when the sniper gets brought up (“his name is ‘Whitman’” says Don, who’s real name is… well) and also when Ken is forced to disclose that he’s still writing bleak science fiction on the side.

Pete’s insecurities are externalized wonderfully when his sink breaks (caused inadvertently by his feeble attempts at stopping the leak) and Don has to step in, doffing his shirt (“he’s like Superman!” remark the ladies) and fixing it with ease. To Don it’s just a sink. To Pete it’s everything that’s wrong with his life or, I should say, his own stubborn inability to appreciate it.

This conflict between him and Don is brought to a head in the middle of the episode’s other plotline, which concerns Lane Pryce trying to bring Jaguar in as a new account. After meeting the Jaguar exec, a fellow Brit, at a World Cup match he takes it upon himself to close the deal. But despite multiple meetings he’s not getting the results he wants and Don, Pete, and Roger decide to step in. Turns out that the Jaguar man has a predilection for prostitutes and fancies Lane a prude (funny, considering Lane has exhibited a similar weakness in the past).

So the four of them head to a brothel and the boyish Pete gets his choice from a roster of fantasies: of course he wants to be worshipped as a king. But morning comes hard and fast, and a perceived condescending look from the famously womanizing Don is enough to send a half-drunk and ashamed Pete over the edge. But it’s not judgement coming from Don: it’s a recognition of someone making the same mistakes he did.

Everything boils over the next morning when it turns out their actions at the brothel has lost SCDP the account (“his wife found chewing gum in his pubis!”), and Pete and Lane end up physically duking it out in the conference room. I was grinning throughout the whole fight, as it was totally weird but somehow believable. Pete is, of course, defeated and leaves work at lunch, taking the elevator down with Don. “I have nothing” he sputters through tears and a bloody, swollen face. You can tell from his voice that he doesn’t even believe himself, and that makes the pain so much worse.

Man are series finales tricky. The only ones of recent memory that stick out to me as having accomplished everything them meant to are The Sopranos(which, even whilst being incredibly great still somehow invited a stream of criticism that persists today. Not from me though. Tony is dead. Sorry.) and especially The Shield. The Shield was a great show to be sure, but it was elevated even more by the fact that its finale was also its finest episode. What a feat. Most of the time, however, whatever muse force behind a great show stumbles, usually breaking the tape but doing so with its arms flailing, energy sapped, nipples chafed to all hell and both shoes untied.

After three years of hanging out chugging beers and being sad with America’s favorite redneck Kenny Powers – a character so fantastic he elevated his rude n’ crude dialect to a strange speak that flirted with a red, white & blue inbred Shakespeareanism – I wanted Eastbound & Down to end perfectly. I wanted it so badly. They’d done it before, when the first season was by means guaranteed to warrant them a second, and the conclusion of that finale remains the shows finest moment (and one of my favorite TV moments ever. No lie.). I was filled with joy last night because the show seemed to be pulling it off. Until 20 minutes in. Oh Jody Hill, Danny McBride, and everyone else: why couldn’t you have just left that last third off. You were so, so close.

Let’s start with the good. First of all, this episode was very, very funny. Most of the time when Eastbound does serious stuff I’m like a pig in slop, but I find many other viewers are thirsty for more straight up jokes, and I get that. No one could quibble with this episode though, which featured standout comedic moments for Kenny Powers and Stevie Janowski, the two guys we really needed it from. Stevie – still hairless and wearing a different wig and eyebrows in every scene, a great and horrifying running gag – is really on point. Some choice cuts: talking about putting up new naked lady pictures for Toby to get “baby hard to,” his comments on the welcome return of crab Spurgeon (“he lives in a bowl? He must be getting high as fuck!”) and, most importantly, his break up with Kenny on the beach.

Because yes, after Texas closer Seth Rogen (at first I balked, but then I was like y’know what? A closing pitcher could probably look like that) is killed in the cold open, Kenny is finally, after all these years, called back up to the Majors. The first sign that the finale was working was that I was legitimately happy for him (though, because it’s Eastbound, his victory came hand in hand with a death). Because of this, Kenny is leaving Myrtle for good, a decision which leads into a trio of scenes so perfect, I wish they had closed out the series.

First is the joyful moment of Kenny, Stevie, and Maria throwing all of Kenny’s strange paraphernalia into the ocean (including a many limbed beer bong, a pocket pussy, and fake breasts), and finally setting aflame the pot leaf boogie board. It was one of those wordless scenes Eastbound does so well, and it then transitioned into a wonderfully written scene where, as I mentioned, Stevie finally stands up for himself: he and Maria are staying in Myrtle. She’s pregnant (“I know, I held the stick under her pussy myself!”), and Stevie has finally realized that maybe he is one of those guys that wants to settle down and have a family. One of those guys that Kenny resented so much and taught Stevie to hate. Hey look, Stevie being his own man. Earned growth! Good things!

We then get one of Kenny’s finest monologues which is streaked with – you guessed it – earned growth! Showing up in Andrea’s classroom yet again (“Hey everyone I promise this isn’t a school shooting. It’s something much better.”) to deliver a kiss off to her that actually functions as a kiss off to his immaturity, his clinging to the past and whatnot. His hair never looked more majestically greasy than it did in that scene. And finally, we have what in my head are the last moments of Eastbound & Down, where Kenny says goodbye to Toby and April.

It was not a particularly funny scene, nor was it a loud or brash one at all. It was just really, really good. Danny McBride and Katy Mixon both acted the shit out of it, and seeing Kenny walk out of that house after April tries to reconcile was so perfect. Perfect because you knew, somewhere down the line, he would come back. It was a great callback to the end of season one. But whereas in that instance Kenny’s face was a cold, expressionless depression, here it was a cracking sea of tears and puffy eyelids. Kenny powers cared. Finally.

But we didn’t need to see that reconciliation play out in such idiotic fashion. I don’t even want to talk about the last 10 minutes that much, but here goes: Kenny drives to Texas, is given a funny motivational speech by Matthew McConaughey, pitches two great strikes in the majors before realizing he’s a family man after all, runs out of the stadium, starts driving back to Shelby (“I’m in a Cameron Crowe movie!”), crashes his car and dies, there’s a montage of everyone being said (okay, Stevie riding the Panty Dropper was great), but then a blonde Kenny actually fakes his death and reunites with April in a scene so odd I actually thought we were supposed to read it as April’s hallucination.

Bummer. As my friend Joe said, “there were basically three ways they could have ended the show and they just did all three of them in rapid succession really poorly.” Those three being: Kenny returns to the Majors and abandons his family, Kenny gives up the majors and reunites with April, and Kenny dies. All were present and none were given ample time to really work. It just didn’t feel right, and I guess there’s nothing I can do about that. Nonetheless, Eastbound & Down was a fantastic show and I will miss it dearly. It was a hysterical comedy that dared to have a very real heart, and it featured one of our great characters. And now it’s fuckin’ out.

My heart sank when I saw that Will Ferrel’s disastrous Ashley Schaffer character would be returning to Eastbound & Down for the penultimate episode of the entire series. How!? How could they let a character who was single handedly responsible for easily the worst episode of the series, and who represents all the worst aspects of Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green’s impulses muck up what should be a knockout stretch of episodes to close out a wonderful TV Show? Well I’m happy to say that even though I still think Ashley Schaffer sucks, not even he could fuck up a pretty darn great outing by – of course – Jody Hill in the director’s chair. Please god let them stop their trading off schedule and keep Gordon Green the hell away from next week’s finale.

The episode started out in a way that literally made me exclaim out loud “Oh shit, 2 Chainz!”, as the strains of “Gasolean” thumped over footage of a purple-clad, skull themed black biker gang parading downtown Myrtle, ending in a hysterical line delivery – from who will be revealed to by Craig Robinson’s returning one-eyed Powers rival Reg Mackworthy – to the fearful honky at the urinal stall next to him: “tight dick playa.” And we’re off to the races! Loving being a Dad after his time with Lily Tomlin last week (it seems, unfortunately, that her and Don Johnson will probably not be returning, though who knows), Kenny proudly brings Toby in to meet his “faggot teammates.”

Despite his newfound confidence, Kenny is still PNG on the Mermen (“no one gave you permission to take a hiatus”) but he can only worry about this for so long before he’s confronted by the aforementioned bikers, who are revealed to be under the control of Ashely Schaffer. Ugh. Schaffer’s sycophantic assistant, however, remains pretty funny My spirits were lifted though when Reg showed up to take the spotlight from Ashley. Craig Robinson, who’s career has kind of slowed down recently, remains hysterical but also brings a weary, sad, pathos to the character that reflects the world of Eastbound in a way that Ferrel’s 100% cartoonish Schaffer most surely does not.

While Kenny parts safely from the bikers here, there’s still quite a while left in Black Biker Week (“it’s not a work week. It’s a full seven days”) and he’s now stuck at home, paranoid that Reg will try to exact revenge. After outfitting Stevie with some truly terrifying new hair and eyebrows (god bless Steve Little for having the least amount of shame of anyone ever), Kenny waits fearfully inside while Stevie takes Toby on his quest to reclaim Maria. While that goes poorly – ending with Stevie’s wig getting yanked off, revealing a nauseating sea of toupee glue smeared across his lumpen skull – the situation goes from bad to worse when Toby is kidnapped by the gang.

Kenny and Stevie suit up for a old fashioned street showdown (Kenny in a black headband, ‘natch, and Stevie in Freddy Krueger gloves because sure) and the situation almost ends with Kenny’s pitching arm shattered, until the gang turns on Schaffer when it becomes clear he considers them his slaves. A pretty easy, somewhat lame plot fix, but to be honest any scene that ends with Ashley Schaffer engulfed in flames is alright with me. This leads to another of Eastbound’s bravura music cues as Kenny relieves Dochenko and pitches the Mermen to a resounding win.

All is not well for Powers however, as his celebratory boogie board is brought to a quietly devastating end by the return of one April Buchanan (now with hair beads!). Kenny knows this is ostensibly what he’s been asking for – someone to come and take Toby off his back – but it’s clear that having him around is now more rewarding than his precious baseball. After all, how can you part with a child after you’ve built him his own Dildosaurus Rex (“look. It moves”). So Kenny is left alone again, and we’re left waiting for one (can you believe it’s only one!?) last episode of Eastbound & Down. You wanna bet it’ll be really, really sad?

Apparently feeling boxed in by its standard Summer schedule, Mad Men auteur Matthew Weiner turned last night’s episode “Mystery Date” into a Halloween special. Sure, it took place in July and no mention was made of that ghoulish holiday, but this was a descent into true horror the likes of which had not been seen – nor, I should point out, ever expected – on this fastidiously mannered period drama. I loved it. I’ve been slightly apprehensive about Mad Men‘s fifth season thus far. Its thematic thrust has been more obvious and aggressively pursued than in seasons past, but the SCDP crew’s sudden confrontations with the passage of time, aging, shifting social climates, and the rise of the youth have felt clumsy, half baked, uncomfortably melodramatic. Especially with last week’s “Tea Leaves”, an episode crammed full of manipulative music cues, fortune telling, and a painful pseudo-appearance by the Rolling Stones, my ability to engage felt at an all time low.

“Mystery Date” solved those problems with balls and bravura, burying those same themes beneath a thick sheen of blood and guts and fear. Believe it or not, this episode at times reminded me of the best things about American Horror Story, but here made much better by stronger performances and more assured direction from Matt Shakman. The plots of this episode are all haunted by the brutal rape and murder of 8 nurses in Chicago, later to be attributed to psycho Richard Speck. But for now the killer is still on the loose, albeit states away, and so are the frightened imaginations of our characters. Let’s start with Don, who sweats his way through “Mystery Date” fighting a brutal cough (a hint at darker maladies perhaps, though are we really ready for another cancer scare this season?) and – we’re told – an aggressive former fling-cum-stalker (Madchen Amick from Twin Peaks!). While the active, antagonizing Megan – who I like more and more every episode – calls Don on his history of adultery, all he wants to do is get home and sleep, but not before he dresses down a overreaching Ginsberg (the new copywriter, who’s character still isn’t working for me).

Back in his dreamy looking apartment, Don is confronted by his former mistress, who he eventually beds before – wait for it – strangling her to death and stuffing her under the mattress. Sure it was all just a nightmare brought on by fever, but kudos to Weiner and crew for going for it and just being pretty much as open as possible with their symbolism, allowing Don to quite literally act our his insecurities. I certainly wouldn’t want these fantastical diversions every week (quick sidenote; these bits were really reminiscent of The Sopranos, the show Weiner cut his teeth on) but they worked here, especially in conjunction with the rest of the plotlines. My favorite was probably the one centered around young Sally Draper (the increasingly good Kiernan Shipka), that perfectly captures the way a long, languorous Summer day can let your imagination get the best of you.

Stuck with humorously bitchy grandma Pauline Francis, Sally tries to prove her maturity by taking in news about the murders with aplomb, but as the day wears on this unfamiliar home begins to look more haunted, the shadows extending and each creaky step becoming the footfalls of an intruder. In a cute but somehow not too cute moment, it turns out Pauline is also having these fears – shoving bugles in her face on the couch with a Myers-esque kitchen knife at her side – and after delivering a not very helpful speech about evil, helps young Sally sleep with half a Seconal (they sure plant those chemical seeds early in the 60s…). The image of Betty and Henry returning in the morning to find Pauline on the couch with Sally secreted away beneath it was just great.

Meanwhile a sauced Peggy Olsen is having night terrors of her own, stuck late in the office after accepting a bribe from Roger (what a great scene, by the way) to do some extra work on the newly acquired Mohawk account. But a bump in the night turns out to be Don’s new black secretary Dawn (hired after the misinterpreted ad from the premiere), who can’t go home for fear of violence: from murderers and race riots alike. An eager to please Peggy invited her back to her place and they share a amiable if not slightly stilted conversation where Pegs unloads some of her insecurities on the polite Dawn, but all rapport is lost when Peggy leaves for bed, lingering for a second over her purse and suddenly telegraphing her unease with leaving money in front of Dawn.

It’s a painful moment. Finally, in a good plotline that nevertheless seems slight divorced (ba-zing!) from the rest, Joans dickhole husband returns from his first tour of duty, meeting his son for the first time and reuniting with his eager wife. The actors all handled these scenes well, but I’ve never quite bought that Joan would still be so into her husband, and so when she dumps him at the end – after learning he’s volunteered to go back to Vietnam for another year – it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Overall this was definitely my favorite episode of Season 5 so far: bizarre, brave, brazenly intelligent, and purdy to look at too. It was full of tricks, but it sure was a treat. Wah-wah.

The OG Black Hippy, Schoolboy Q recently shot a day in the life, mini doc with up and coming Vate Magazine, about what it’s like in his world. Get familiar. Maybe your getting off on the wrong floor in an apartment building, and getting verbally accosted by a German Shepherd. Or it could be rocking packed shows at Santos’ Party House in NYC. Shit definitely doesn’t stop with Q.

We get cruise around with Schoolboy Q, and he friends in an SUV, and comment on weird people in midtown. Sipping lean, rolling up weed on the iPad screen, and duct taping the door of the hotel room to prevent smoke escaping into the hallway, where it could be detected by hotel staff! That’s smart. Watch and learn people. Watch and learn.

After receiving blessing from the similarly career path-ed David Fincher, former enfant terrible Aaron Sorkin became America’s best loved screenwriter, and he’s finally ready to cash in on that with the upcoming premier of his new passion project, an HBO series entitled The Newsroom. The first trailer is above, and as with all Sorkin works, it’s an impressionistic tone piece with stark, spare dialogue and a complete lack of anger.

Yuk yuk yuk. Gotcha! This thing is chock full of Jeff Daniels having a Howard Beale moment (which, by the way, is exactly how Sorkin’s last series Studio 60 began. And we all remember how that turned out…), and then spitting hot fire dialogue whilst walking. Jeff Daniels is a fantastic and underrated actor, and is definitely perfectly suited for this role. The supporting cast also looks quite strong, and I imagine this will go over well. Just a hunch.

Mad Men [AMC] – Created by Matthew Weiner

Vs.

Breaking Bad [AMC] – Created by Vince Gilligan

Battle of the alliterative AMC shows, commence! People seem to have gotten some memo that we’re hitting some watershed moment in television that marks the end of some “golden age” we just experienced. See Vulture’s rundown of the Greatest TV Dramas of the Past 25 Years. See numerous think pieces on what the return of Mad Men means (vaguely guilty of that one myself, but I’ll call it a recap and we’ll move on…). See your parents complaining. That is a bullshit idea. The golden age of television has been happening for longer than people give it credit for and will continue longer than they want it to. People (especially critics) just like to be the people on watch when it all goes to shit. That’s why humans always think the apocalypse is coming: “we must be the last.”

But all that doesn’t mean we can’t still play this fun little game where we pit TV shows against each other like BattleBots armed with pathos, high music-licensing budgets, and feature film directors in between projects. Let’s talk drink and drugs. Let’s talk Mad Men vs. Breaking Bad. Walter White vs Don Draper. That can’t have been a coincidence. Both are about deconstructing the American Dream. Both are about generational shifts. Both purport to be realistic but are in fact outrageously fantastical in the best way. Both feature GOAT central performances. Both are some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. But you know how this works. The Choice is yours…

As the end of Eastbound & Down rapidly approaches, I find myself searching for some sort of closure, peeking around the edges for Jody Hill and Danny McBride’s endgame for this strange, wonderful beast. Though the introduction of a new major character with only two episodes left in the entire series should have felt like deus ex machina, Tammy Powers, played to absolute perfection by Lily Tomlin, not only made for a great episode (despite being directed by the recently poisonous David Gordon Green) but one which sets the scene for the final dance of Kenny Powers.

And, after all the wondering, it seems that the end may involve just what everyone thought it never could (and, if you as some, never should): Kenny becoming a responsible adult. The end result of he, Stevie, Eduardo (Don Johnson, by the way, was also really fantastic here) and Casper’s journey to see Tammy is that Kenny ends up taking responsibility for Toby. Now lets take bets on whether April returns and something really, really sad happens.

Before all that, however, we get a wonderfully debauched reunion between Kenny and his surprisingly loving Mother, as they gleefully swap prescriptions in a scene that called to mind the season one highlight of Kenny and Clegg (where’s he been at?) doing coke in the back of Shabooms. Tammy keeps he pills in a secret compartment of Kenny’s trophies? Of course she does! The truly horrifying looking Stevie (“this man made of skin”) is still nauseously upset about losing Maria and… well, Stevie didn’t have much to do here.

This was a Powers family affair, and it played out better than I would have thought. Sure, Tammy is upset at Eddie, but that doesn’t stop her from letting him into the house, playing Pictionary as a family (yes!), and maybe fellating him. Because this is Eastbound & Down after all. But he’s also sure to remind Kenny of their visit’s purpose: dumping Toby off on a Mother who’s biggest pride comes from seeing her son as a Father. Yikes.

After Eddie makes off with some precious silver heirlooms in the night (loved how he had a pistol’s laser sight trained on his forehead throughout that scene) Kenny is forced to drop the bomb, and Tomlin earns her Emmy nomination (please?!) selling the heady mix of acceptance, shame, love, and disgust for Kenny and herself as she accepts the burden. But luckily, through a combination of love for his son and fear of having to spend the rest of his life being an asshole with Stevie, Kenny has a change of heart.

This leads to a bizarre but kind of great family hug-it-out session that involves Kenny and Eddie emerging from the backs of two bowling lanes, delivering some signature Powers speeches (complete with synchronized “we love you’s”) and then giving a middle-aged woman with a broken nose the middle finger. Then the episode ends with Kenny, embiggened by fatherhood, preparing to throw a brand new pitch (which is, actually, a pretty big deal for a baseball player). Will Kenny’s knuckler mean his redemption or ultimate downfall? We’ll know for sure soon. Very soon.

What serialized TV shows provide is comfort. Your television set becomes a Lewis-ian wardrobe for one hour a week, a portal to a familiar world where your friends have been patiently waiting to playact in front of you. In anticipation of Mad Men‘s return to the airwaves last night, after over a year of hiatus, many people’s concerns were far from the possible particulars of the episode, instead amounting basically to “isn’t it so nice to have Mad Men back?” Series creator Matthew Weiner is both a very smart man and a notoriously petulant, fastidious one who bristles at command and expectation.

As such, I suppose we should have predicted that, after hearing 18 months of clamoring for the show – for audience comfort food – he delivered two hours that seemed airlifted in from another universe: Mad Men is not as we left it. Though only 7 months have passed in the world of the show, that time has been accompanied by a sea change not only for the circumstances of its world, but also the characters contained within it.

We begin with perhaps the show’s most overtly political confrontation of racist thus far, as executives from a rival agency drop ad-hoc water bombs on black protestors from their windows. This odd non-starter of a scene ends with one of the soaked remarking “and they say we’re the savages” as I squirmed in my couch. What’s happening? This isn’t Don Draper. This isn’t Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce. This feels like a PSA. Where are my friends?

Moving in to Don’s new apartment, the viewer still feels a stranger in a strange land. New wife Megan’s influence weighs heavy on Don’s palatial new digs, which look plasticine and perhaps left over from the Austin Powers sets. Despite the series’ deserved reputation (notorious or otherwise) for its immaculately manicured set and costume design, no space has felt as prohibitively artificial as this one. Here, in this retro-futurist wonderland we finally find our stubbled protagonist.

It’s his 40th birthday, or at least it is for the rest of the world, as he (and, surprisingly, Megan) are aware that the “real” Don Draper – Dick Whitman – hit that benchmark months ago. Don hates birthdays: especially a benchmark year such as 40. So we arrive at my applied paradigm for the episode: make-believe forcing people into unenjoyable situations.

It used to be that Dick became Don to escape: to feel powerful at Sterling Cooper, to be a cigarette smoking drink swilling badass who slept with beautiful women and lined his impressive closet with Clios and the heads of the competition. But, for reasons that will hopefully unveil themselves over the season, this fantasy has lost its obsessively buffed luster.

Despite the fact that it looks shinier, nicer, more idyllic than ever, the office is not the ever-nurturing womb it has been in seasons past. Don openly admits to Megan that he could give a shit about work, and based on his conduct there it seems like it could be true. For me, that was the quiet explosion of this whole episode. But for others, the palpable sense of “rightness” that accompanied the formation of SCDP at the end of Season 3 has also faded.

Roger is increasingly irrelevant, poaching the favor of Pete’s clients without and of the bother of business. Pete meanwhile is trapped in a terribly small office, trying his damndest to save a floundering company that cares less and less about him. Peggy too is unfulfilled in her position just under Don, mostly because Don no longer cares enough to work with her (or fight for her). Observe his disaffected obliviousness when she tries to commiserate about the “business” at Megan’s bizarre, wonderful, dreamlike surprise party for Don.

So, along with these characters, we were denied the return to the comfy, cigarette stained armchair that we expected. Don doesn’t smoke or drink anymore. Not a glimpse of Betty. Joan is painfully away from the office. I felt like Don at his party as he and Roger watched Megan converse with her much younger friends: “Don’t bother guessing what they’re laughing about: it’s not you.”

It was a brilliant maneuver that was simultaneously very frustrating. The swollen, two hour length did even more to make the show unfamiliar, the pacing refigured and confusing. I feel as though Matt Weiner accomplished what he set out for with expert efficiency, but the lack of even vague fan service here was either impressive or distressing. But it was accurate. Time will pass, and things will change, irreversibly. After it was over I found myself returning to Don, laying in bed after the party. Why was he so focused on sleep? Perhaps the world he saw around him suddenly felt a dream, and to close his eyes would return him to the place he feels home.

This amazing piece of film is called Destroy All Monsters. This was made from 1972 to 1976 by Cary Loren. This music is by Destroy All Monsters, which is composed of Mike Kelley (R.I.P) and Jim Shaw. Everything about the work catches my attention. The grainy, lo-fi quality, the tone and pitch of the music. The weird, wonky visuals. Horrific, yet peaceful at the same time. Twahh.

Destroy All Monsters were a mad influential band. They did performances, and made lots of videos. They are one of oldest, best noise rock bands, with a heavy doses of performance art thrown in. I am pretty sure their name came from the Godzilla film Destroy All Monsters, or it from a comic book with the same title. The world may never know for sure, but have a gander at the video, and decide for yourself.