Mad Men: Babylon

 "Mourning is just extendsed self-pity."

The title is clever. It relates to the ad campaign for Israel and Don's half-flirty, half vaguely racist decision to pursue lunch with Rachel because, well, she's Jewish, so she must know about Israel, right? But no; she's happily exiled in Babylon. Yet another kind of Babyon is on show, one of sin and adultery. Roger is having an affair with Joan. Don is avoiding sex with his actual wife and sleeping instead with his Bohemian girlfriend.

A lot is going on, as usual. Peggy hints that there may be substance to her, and gets a chance to write some copy, much to the disgust of Joan, who randomly alludes to Marshall McLuhan, of all people. Rachel may well acrually like Don, in spite of him being married. We get a flashback to Don's Depression childhood as Dick Whitman. Don ends up out of place in a Beatnik poetry place, where his profession is treated as a sell-out by pretentious jobless types.

There are lots of subtle moments about the characters and about the place and time in which they find themselves living. Not a lot actually happens, but that's not the point. And both the acting and the directing are utterly sumptuous.