'Mad Men' Recap

I watched it. I'm not some massive "Mad Men" fanatic. It's more like, after watching the show off and on over the last couple of years, I feel like I might as well tune in. I can always binge watch the whole series later.

At LAT, "'The life not lived'":

If Don's powers of seduction are still awe-inspiring to his dopey co-workers, we know there's an undercurrent of desperation to all the womanizing. Make that an "overcurrent." This becomes clear when Don reaches out to Rachel Katz -- nee Menken -- only to learn that she has died. He is ostensibly calling on behalf of Topaz pantyhose, but it's safe to assume that on some level he's also hoping to rekindle their decade-old romance.

For Don, Rachel is the proverbial One Who Got Away, a woman he could have been happy with had circumstances been different -- i.e. had he not married Betty first. I'd venture that most "Mad Men" fans -- the sane ones, anyway -- remember her in a similarly fond fashion. She was a woman smart and self-possessed enough to break up with Don once she sensed the despair and self-loathing that propelled his infidelity. And they shared a great deal in common: Both Rachel and Don lost their mothers in childbirth, and both understand the painful, self-abnegating process of assimilating into the American mainstream. The timing wasn't right before; maybe now was their chance?

Alas, no. Reeling from the news, Don stops by Rachel's shiva. "I guess I just wanted to find out what was happening in her life," Don tells Rachel's sister, though he sounds like he's trying to convince himself as much as anyone. "She lived the life she wanted to live," says Rachel's sister, fully aware of who Don is. "She had everything." Translation: She wasn't pining over you. Whatever Don went there for, he walks away with little other than the knowledge that Rachel died of leukemia. He isn't even able to mourn Rachel, at least not officially as part of the minyan.

Rachel's untimely death is a tough blow for Don, and he reacts in a time-honored way: by having sex with a stranger. In this case, the lucky lady is Di, the John Dos Passos-reading waitress from the diner, whom Roger mockingly refers to as "Mildred Pierce" then placates with an $89 tip on an $11 tab. While we've seen Don revert to this sort of reckless behavior many, many times before, there's something more mysterious to his interaction with Di. Just who -- or what -- does she remind him of?

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