Apropos of nothing, I'd also like to insert into the Congressional Record that season two of Mad Men, for all the Zeitgeist hype, has been almost uniformly so-what in its sliding nowhere malaise, the most recent episode a hodge-podge of watered-down baptismal redemption cliches and clumsily integrated flashbacks that reduced Don Draper to an existential everyman in an Antonioni for Idiots exercise. The only pleasurable element is Pete's snappish irritation over ever hoop he's being made to jump through (his outburst over his travel expenses, for example), which is also just about the only recognizable bit of human behavior that's managed to squeak through the show's alienation effect--its trafficking in period stereotypes and talking mannequins at the expense of individuality. At its draggiest Mad Men is like some square's idea of Douglas Sirk, a graduate thesis with its head stuck in a fishbowl.