Who knew that younger brother Michael would have such an amusing tendency to blow up at his far more reserved elder, Bryan, squawking, "Fuck you, Bryan!" and also, "I'll take my time now, you fucking asshole," and, my personal favorite, "Don't be a dick"? That's classic brotherspeak, a baseline instruction to watch your step lest you get popped in the face by a stray fist. And make no mistake about it, it has come to blows with these two before. Every time Bryan mumbles something condescending then averts Michael's gaze, I can almost see a 10-year-old Bryan making some snide, superior comment in passing that turns a 7-year-old Michael bug-eyed with rage and sends him flying across the room, hands aimed at Bryan's holier-than-thou neck, ready to choke the life out of the smug bastard.

All of which merely means that the Voltaggio brothers are actually brothers and not paid actors or talented chefs posing as brothers to make it onto the show. Still, it's a testament to how completely Michael has dropped his guard that suddenly he's freaking out while the cameras keep rolling.

Which brings us back to some of the possible reasons why arrogance lights up the small screen like nothing else. Whether or not they feel comfortable with the spotlight, whether or not they approve of broadcasting themselves for a nation's idle amusement, the arrogant sooner or later come to adore the camera's gaze in spite of themselves. At first, since they're arrogant, they make pronouncements about how they'll resist the pitfalls of fame and notoriety, how they'll lead with their dignity, how they'll bestride the pathetic shenanigans of their colleagues like great golden gods. Witness how recently Michael stated with great conviction, "Yelling and screaming, arrogance and things like that? There's really no place for that in the kitchen." And now? He yells and screams with reckless abandon.

But he can't help it! His arrogance lies to him, telling him that even when he falls apart and stomps his feet like a bratty little tool, the camera loves him and embraces his every move. And let's face it, the guy is pretty hot. He has angry bedroom eyes. He's cocky. He cooks a mean pressed chicken with calamari noodles, tomato confit and fennel salad. If this guy isn't neck-deep in fine women around the clock, there is no God.

It's no wonder he gets under older brother Bryan's skin. Bryan, who has appeared relatively peace-loving until last week's episode, nonetheless has a disconcerting tendency to blow up at anyone who tries to make polite chitchat with him in the Glad Torture Chamber. State an opinion about which dish sucked the most, ask Bryan what he thought about how another cheftestant performed, speculate about who might be going home, and Bryan will bite your head clean off. He doesn't want anyone gossiping about anyone else. His commitment to accuracy, to squelching the slightest whiff of gossip, is so complete, you'd think he was a highly decorated investigative reporter on a fact-checking mission, as opposed to, say, a reality show contestant. Sometimes, in fact, when Bryan says things like, "Did you taste that dish?" and "Were you there?" you almost want to say, Jesus, Bryan, give the postproduction editors a break, will you? What are they supposed to make a show out of? Shots of you, pursing your lips in silence? This is Bravo, dude.

But last week, after that little hotheaded pussy hound Michael won the elimination challenge plus $10,000, then uncharacteristically offered to share his money with his team, Bryan couldn't restrain himself. He sat in the Glad Rage Pantry in silence until Michael couldn't help  commenting on his obvious anger. Then Bryan quietly informed Michael that he could keep his share of the prize money. I don't want your blood money, his eyes told Michael. It was like a scene out of "Jesus Christ Superstar," only with higher stakes.

"I think the two dishes he executed were great, but he'll admit he's a bit of a control freak," Bryan told the camera, sounding like a bit of a control freak, then adding, "And I'm tired of his unprofessional behavior being rewarded." Aww! Big brother hates how little brother's grandiosity and temper tantrums have landed him flashy prizes and loose women for decades now! It's sooooo no fair!

But don't judge Bryan. After all, don't we all feel a little highhanded when we notice how grandiosity and temper tantrums are not only telegenic, professionally expedient and disconcertingly lucrative, but also sexy? Don't we all feel a little threatened by the ways that pissy little braggarts and smug jerks get all the cash and the hot girls, while the rest of us sit on our hands, restating our principles and values as the camera crew races over to get more footage of the outspoken dick across the room -- you know, the one who just happens to be our slightly-more-handsome little brother?

In short, the "Top Chef" producers' decision to include siblings on the show who also happen to be celebrated professional chefs guaranteed to blow away the competition while fighting like enraged squirrels looks less like a crass manipulation and more like an act of sheer brilliance every day.

"You know, why don't you keep the whole thing, if you're so mad?" Michael sulkily asks his brother back in the Glad Seething Storeroom.

"I'm not mad at all. I'm very happy about this whole situation," Bryan hisses through gritted teeth, the poster child for Passive-Aggressive Seething Glad-Wrapped in Gladness.

In a fitting denouement, wishy-washy Laurine is sent packing while explaining to the camera that on "Top Chef," "I think I've learned something about myself, and uh, I don't know that I want to be in a competition with anybody for anything, really." Now we know why Laurine was always vaguely chafing on-screen: She's humble, she hates the attention and she doesn't like to compete.

We may understand how she feels, but that doesn't mean we aren't happy to see her go. Quivering worrywarts and jittery second-guessers? Stay home. We prefer eye-rolling braggarts and scoffing, swearing jerks on our screens instead, thank you very much.

Betty gets ugly

Now think of the ever-paradoxical Don Draper (Jon Hamm) of "Mad Men" (10 p.m. Sundays on AMC). He pretends to be reserved, principled, unflappable, consistently self-assured, but Don's smooth, arrogant exterior barely conceals the roiling mess of insecurities and identity issues churning just under the surface. Don isn't the uncomplicated hero and all-seeing prophet he claims to be at work and at home. He plays the part of the dependable family man but keeps a big pile of cash in his desk drawer in case he needs to skip town. He acts as a trustworthy mentor to Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), until the moment when she needs his guidance and, feeling pressured by his employment contract, he turns on her. He builds a friendship with Roger Sterling (John Slattery) until Roger has the bad taste to leave his marriage, and Don, who's obviously envious, lashes out and calls Roger foolish instead of admitting the truth to Roger or himself.

Don's arrogance -- which like most arrogance is fueled by a vast array of insecurities that our arrogant hero refuses to acknowledge -- prevents him from seeing himself or his world clearly. Instead of becoming the man he pretends to be, choosing to embrace his responsibilities as a good father and devoted husband, or even leaving Betty once and for all and settling down with the smart, lovable schoolteacher of his dreams, Don continues to pull one over on the world. In his initial brusque manner with the schoolteacher's epileptic brother, we can see it clearly: Don wants no part of weakness. He can't stand to play any role in some loser's sob story. He can't tolerate so much as considering this man's plight in life, since it bears such a haunting resemblance to his own checkered past, and reminds him of his poor, dead brother, the one he refused to help or even acknowledge years prior.

Don tells himself he's turning over a new leaf by slipping the brother some money and dropping him off in the woods instead of taking him to the job his sister lined up for him in Bedford. But really this is more of the same: Don playing fast and loose, thinking on his feet. Don uses his money as a replacement for genuine concern, just as he uses sex as a stand-in for real love and intimacy. His essential instinct for dishonesty is what keeps him from ever forging a real connection with the women in his life. He considers himself above them, ultimately, and he seems to feel that he's licensed to make his own independent decisions about anything -- the epileptic brother, Salvatore's choice not to whore himself to a client and his subsequent dismissal, Peggy's request for a promotion -- even when the decisions aren't really his to make.

But he can't help it! His arrogance lies to him, telling him that he is the master of all he surveys. Even when he lies and cheats and slams doors like a bratty little tool, the camera loves him and embraces his every move. And let's face it, the guy is pretty hot. He has an unforgiving, unflinching gaze. He's cocky. He could write a catchy jingle for week-old bologna that would make housewives flock to the stores. If this guy weren't neck-deep in horny schoolteachers around the clock, we'd know for certain that God is dead.

But Don will not be king for much longer. The times are changing. Betty has just discovered his little box of secrets, and now that she's had a chance to stew over it, thanks to Don's not coming home that night, she's liable to keep her mouth shut while carefully planning a colorful and catastrophic exit. What kind of precipitous fall lies ahead for our dashing, overconfident hero Don Draper, or for those volatile, versatile Voltaggio brothers?

We can't wait to find out. Because if there's one thing that's more dramatic and powerful than arrogance on TV, it's watching the arrogant finally get trampled underfoot by their own barely concealed insecurities. 

There you have it: I was wrong. 

Let me offer a glimpse of how this all transpired behind-the-scenes: My editor Sarah Hepola sent me an e-mail Wednesday morning with the subject line, "What the hell happened to January Jones' breasts?" She linked to the striking image and signed off with: "Bazoonga!" Yes, I thought, her cleavage does look rather unnatural. (For the record: I called them "porny" in my original post not because they were big but because they defied gravity in a manner that looked rather fake to me.) I published the item -- thinking of it as fun, ephemeral -- and turned to more pressing matters.

Then readers began questioning my assumption in the post's letters thread. A couple male coworkers argued that, hey, they also thought the photo looked legit. Hah! Sarah and I laughed. They just didn't understand. After all, women know real breasts and we know the ubiquity of heavily retouched women.

Oh, but I should have known better: As a teen, I spent uncountable hours propping up my breasts and smooshing them together to simulate the cleavage-to-chin look of Victoria's Secret models. I well know that slender women like Jones with anything above a B-cup can achieve this look with the right pose, outfit, lighting, camera angle or all of the above. Heck, I've been insulted in the past when a friend asked if my breasts were fake simply because of the way they sat on my slight build -- but there I was doing a very similar thing to Jones.

Why was I so quick to jump to the Photoshopping conclusion? Because it is so pervasive. My default setting is: Objects in magazine are other than they appear. After seeing the glossy rag beauty ideal you've grown up with revealed as a sham, it's easy to develop a defensiveness about such things. I wasn't the only one whose retouching radar was set off by the cover shot, either. Regardless, I'm sorry GQ. I said in my original post that I thought you were better than all that --  and you are.

What we know so far: The insider who gave Finke the dirt also noted that Weiner is known for giving big opportunities to relatively inexperienced talents, which is "one of the great things about 'Mad Men'" -- but that has a flip side, as a commenter over at "Mad Men" fan blog Basket of Kisses pointed out: "Anyone who wants to look at IMdB for a few minutes will quickly discover that there has been a lot of turnover on the writing staff."

Gawker rounded up some of the most provocative comments from the Deadline Hollywood thread, which include a couple of interesting thoughts. 1) Inexperienced talent is cheap talent; Emmy-winning talent commands a higher price, and Weiner might not be inclined to rearrange the budget accordingly. 2) Weiner is a well-known control freak, and furthermore, according to one commenter, "the lowest of the low in our business. He is a egomaniac [sic] and the likelihood is that he was incensed that he had to share credit and let alone an Emmy with her. A lowly former writer's assistant. As far as he is concerned, he is solely responsible for the success of this show and no other writer, producer, director, actor, key grip have done anything to contribute to the show's success. For Pete's sake, he didn't even let Kater Gordon say a word when they got up on stage. It was her moment as well but Weiner made it ALL about him."

Depressing thought of the day: I actually find it heartening that there's so much speculation, gossip and smack talk surrounding this story that doesn't involve the question of whether Gordon and Weiner ever slept together! It's so refreshing that Weiner's enemies have some less predictable ideas -- and for that matter, that Gordon doesn't appear to have many vocal enemies adding their two cents at all. (Though one commenter who's not a fan of her writing suggested she was fired simply for not having the chops.) However, in the wake of the David Letterman scandal, that question lurks. And Finke quickly updated her post, attempting to nip it in the bud:

A prominent female writer (she asked not to be identified) knows both Kater Gordon and Matthew Weiner and sets the record straight for me: "As a female writer who has worked with many strong showrunners, I have to say that any 'Letterman' talk on today's thread about Kater Gordon really disgusts me. The same kind of talk followed me and my success. So you see, you can't win. If you're young and female, you'll always be suspect. Success or failure, it can't be because you've actually got the goods. I feel compelled to come to both Kater and Matt's defense on this one. Kater was a fantastic writer's assistant, the best. She totally got the show and deserved the break she got. There was NOTHING illicit in her relationship with Matt. I believe Kater will go on to great success, if she so desires, and their parting of the ways was amicable."

Regardless of whether that source is correct about Gordon and Weiner, she's absolutely right that it's disgusting how swiftly some people will leap to the conclusion that any young woman who has a rapid rise to success must have slept with the boss along the way. As Hortense at Jezebel notes, similar speculation is currently haunting Molly McNeary, a co-headwriter on Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show. "Kimmel's relationship with McNearney was recently announced, and the 'uh-oh, Letterman!' comparisons began, based solely on the fact that McNearney worked her way up the ranks." Referring to Gordon, Hortense sums up the problem with such assumptions: "Surely, her promotions couldn't be the result of her, you know, talent, right? I mean, that would just be crazy, no?"

I trust I don't need to explain why the presumption that sex was exchanged for promotions is so offensive, especially to a generation that's supposed to see "Mad Men" as a startling reminder of how far we've come as a society. (For that matter, since the show itself attempts to illustrate damaging, not-so-bygone stereotypes without actually reinforcing them, even it hasn't gone there. Secretary turned copywriter Peggy and her boss, Don, have never so much as flirted, even though she's secretly slept with a co-worker, he's a notorious lothario, and some viewers believe the sexual tension between them is palpable. The audience is meant to see how Peggy's talent is consistently undervalued because of her gender, even without any whiff of her sleeping her way to the low middle.) And as Finke's second source makes clear, saying it about one successful woman casts a shadow over all successful women. When the Letterman story broke, I heard from a female friend who, early in her career, worked for a boss known for sleeping with female underlings. She was never one of them, but for years afterward, she was dogged by others' speculation about the "real" reasons for her rise up the ladder. Her former boss may have earned his bad reputation, but every young woman who ever worked for him sure didn't.

Speaking of which, I was discussing this story with friends over e-mail, and a much more obsessive "Mad Men" fan than I immediately recalled being squicked by a bit of DVD commentary on the episode "Six Month Leave," in which Kater Gordon makes a cameo "dressed just this side of Playboy bunny." My friend wrote that the commentary, by Weiner and "some other male production person" was "leering in a way that made me uncomfortable. Like, Weiner says, 'That's Kater,' and the other guy says, 'Really?' and Weiner says sarcastically, "Yeah, I hate coming into work, hahaha.'" And see, there's the thing right there: You say on the record that you view your young, female employees as sex objects (even when they've agreed to dress as precisely that for a scene), and people are going to talk, whether anything happened or not. And whether anything happened or not, it's not the male boss who's going to see any real professional fallout for it, but every woman who's ever worked for him.

In light of that, I'd like to ask the one question I haven't seen come up as a result of this story: So what if they did sleep together? Weiner's wife would have a right to be pissed, and it would suck for Gordon and every other female employee of his for all the reasons above, but it's worth noting that those very reasons are based on yet another sexist assumption: That a woman cannot simultaneously be attractive/attracted to her professional superior and be extremely talented. 

And that, of course, is based in the stereotype that pretty women are stupid and smart women aren't the kind the boss would go after -- a false binary "Mad Men" has been dealing with from Day One. Head secretary Joan is whip-smart but sees her sexuality as a stronger asset in achieving the most she can hope for -- which to her mind, in the context of the era, is being a successful professional's wife. Peggy is professionally ambitious and increasingly exploring her own sexuality, but part of the reason she was able to rise from secretary to copywriter was that she was desexualized by a pregnancy everyone else read as an unfortunate weight gain; Weiner himself has said of that story line, "Part of it was her becoming a guy. She was putting on a suit of armor to protect herself sexually and because of that she could begin operating as a man." (Yes, being pregnant somehow amounted to her "becoming a guy," which raises a whole bunch of other fascinating questions.) Betty, Don's wife, is clearly bright but has never worked as anything but a model and a housewife. One way or another, her primary role as an adult has always been to act as an ideal of beauty and femininity, and the character is increasingly depressed by the gulf between appearances and her internal life. This is exactly why so many women and so many feminists -- including most of us here at Broadsheet -- are tremendous fans of the show: The female characters are constantly shown struggling against the confines of those stereotypical boxes, while too many television programs are content to leave even contemporary female characters trapped inside them.

So the fact that any young woman who rises to success is still frequently assumed to have slept her way there is one marker of just how far we haven't come since the "Mad Men" era. But another is the fact that we so quickly assume any sexual relationship between a woman and her professional superior necessarily involves a quid pro quo. Can't sex and success ever be a coincidence? Can't talent in fact be a part of what might attract two people working in close proximity to each other? As another friend of mine said, even if Gordon and Weiner did have a relationship, sometimes "people sleeping together make really good art (hello, Fleetwood Mac)! Weiner and Gordon wrote fantastic episodes whose merits speak for themselves, so ...?" Exactly. 

It's a shame people automatically assume there must have been a sexual relationship based on zero evidence beyond her youth and gender and his power. But it's equally a shame that any actual relationship would be seen as grounds to deny Gordon's writing talent. I have no idea if Kater Gordon ever slept with Matthew Weiner (which, since it's none of my damned business, works out just fine). But either way, I think it's quite safe to assume that Gordon did not sleep with the entire Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to earn that Emmy. Female sexuality can, in fact, coexist with intelligence, skill and professional ambition. You'd think "Mad Men" fans, of all people, would have caught on to that by now. 

Ah, how the mood of "Mad Men" shifts so quickly! But can't the same be said for the mood of American life? One minute we're doing the Lucky Lindy, the next minute, we're waiting on bread lines and heating up leftover stone soup. One minute we're thinking our old LaSalle runs great, the next we're waiting on gas lines and hoping that the USSR doesn't blow us to smithereens. One minute we're investigating an all-raw, organic diet and calculating the value of our dot-com stock options in our heads, the next we're scarfing down Big Macs, waiting to default on our interest-only mortgages.

So what could be more fitting, at this time of extreme economic and cultural turmoil, than a bleaker-than-ever third season of "Mad Men" (10 p.m. Sundays on AMC)? Sure, it all started out with high times, cold martinis, hot girls, witty quips, sneaky affairs, and slow, smoldering mysteries. Who is this Don Draper cat? We asked ourselves, but we hardly cared about the answer. After all, look at how Betty's (January Jones) marvelous dress matches her patent leather shoes exactly! Look how these dapper young fellas all chain smoke and toss back bourbon in their offices! With lives this fabulous, who cares if your stupid marriage is falling apart or not?

Sounds just like the way we felt about tech stocks and Botox and real estate and every other slice of American pie that we just had to get while it was hot, hot, hot, doesn't it? This is what "Mad Men" is best at, after all: capturing a mood, and making all of the little worker bees and homemakers and children in its picture reflect that mood in their own way.

So if Don ends up bamboozled by nefarious strangers and blackmailed by his boss, or if dashing young British manager Guy Mackendrick only spends a few hours at Sterling Cooper before his foot is chopped to bits by a riding mower, is that really all that unbelievable? Even if these plot twists border on the fantastical, doesn't our collective suspension of disbelief surrounding the stock market sort of seem fantastical in retrospect, too? As Americans, it's our cultural prerogative to leap before we look, whether it comes to careers, marriages, investments, drugs, wars, politicians or tell-all books. Matthew Weiner beautifully illustrates the unnerving invasiveness of modern, postwar culture, the ways that empty trends and bad ideas and innocuous shifts in personal taste seem to join together, gather momentum, and crash down upon the populace like a sociocultural tsunami. At the moment when you think the boom times will never end and you'll live out the balance of your days on Easy Street, half of your personal nest egg disappears, you lose your job, you're uninsured, and before you know it, you're nearing bankruptcy. That's not just a cautionary tale. Here in America, from pauper to entrepreneurial prince, your dreams can come true (Conrad Hilton, anyone?), but your worst nightmares can come true, too.

It makes perfect sense that, when most Americans are preoccupied with safety nets -- healthcare reform, banking regulation, real estate reform -- "Mad Men" should lay bare an old (but still thriving) American perception that expecting protection from a personal disaster by your employer or your government is flatly wrong, and evil and un-American to boot. When Guy Mackendrick strides into Sterling Cooper, all sunshine and optimism, at the start of the day, only to be lying in a hospital bed with no foot, no job, no disability and no recourse at the day's end? It isn't just a haunting glimpse at the harsh realities of the workplace in the early '60s, it's a fitting parable for the ways that Americans are still left high and dry by a social welfare system that doesn't work, but that still tries to make comforting sounds about keeping its citizens safe from ruin. "The doctors said he'll never golf again," one of Mackendrick's bosses says with a shake of his head. As absurd as this remark is, the dark humor is utterly in step with "Mad Men's" barbarous take on the tenor of the times.

While "Mad Men" is undeniably darker this season, clearly Weiner is setting the stage for the humanist movement of the late '60s. Why do Betty and Don (Jon Hamm) bark at their kids to "shut up" and "cut it out" and "go play" in every other scene? Sure, it's kind of funny. But we're also witnessing the groundwork being laid for the impending cultural revolution. When Don's daughter, Sally (Kiernan Shipka), wakes up and spots that Barbie doll that her mother gave her on her dresser, she's not just afraid of her grandfather's ghost. The doll and Sally's response to it foreshadow the growing gap between Sally and her mother, between Don Draper's generation and the next. The charming but cold-hearted grifters in Sunday's episode made it clear that, despite Don's ability to relate to this younger, freewheeling generation, a hard rain's gonna fall on him as well.

Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) and the younger guys in the office also hinted at the generation gap when they laid around all weekend, smoking pot and musing aimlessly instead of making steady progress on their ad campaign. Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) might be gaining confidence in her newly empowered path as single career woman, but her naive nature and neediness persist, as demonstrated by her unexpected affair with Duck Phillips (Mark Moses). Despite her relatively traditional choices and her sophisticated understanding of people, Joan (Christina Hendricks) looks doomed to be relegated to a role of caretaker of lost boys. As always, Betty wavers between independence and a retreat into the comforting and occasionally dismaying folds of domestic life. Weiner does a remarkable job of translating social sea change into rich, believable, flawed characters, straining to right themselves before the next big wave hits.

"You see? It's all right. This is your little brother. He's only a baby," Don tells Sally after she confesses that the boy scares her. "We don't know who he is yet or who he's going to be, and that's a wonderful thing." Just because Gene is named after his grandfather, that doesn't mean he's the same person, not by a long shot. He may grow up to be the opposite of his grandfather. Likewise, he may question every choice his parents ever made, and despise everything they ever stood for.

Isn't that the American dream, after all? We like to see ourselves as independent, headstrong, deeply unique individuals, paving our own paths through the wilds of contemporary life. We so easily forget that almost every decision we make, from whether or not we breast-feed our babies, work overtime, sleep more than six hours a night, exercise, visit the doctor, vote, do drugs, drink, stay married, all of it, springs from the common, accepted attitudes of the times. The beliefs we hold most sacred, the ideas that define our identities, more often than not boil down to trends. It might take a few decades, but one day we inevitably wake up and notice that a big percentage of the individuals in our demographic were also smoking, dabbling in Buddhism, using formula, spanking their kids with a wooden spoon, getting divorced in middle age, reading Dr. Spock, becoming vegan, you name it. The very choices that feel fundamental to us are the ones that look almost hilariously clichéd and goofy in retrospect.

"Mad Men's" tendency to lean in to the almost surreal inhumanity of modern times, its thirst for savagery in mundane settings, are exactly what make it worth watching. Absurdity, extreme story lines, that flippant tone -- the very aspects of this show that some critics are starting to question -- are essential to a drama series that's primarily concerned with capturing the sociocultural flux of an era. Even as we gawk and gasp at the depravity and outrageousness that unfolds before us each week, we foreshadow the gawking and gasping our children will do when the 18th season of "Mad Men" depicts attachment parenting, Botox, life coaches, organic farms, reality TV, white wine spritzers, 3-car garages, spray tans and doggie day care.

"People actually got sick and went bankrupt because they didn't have publicly funded health care back then? How is that even possible?" they'll say.

We'll just nod knowingly, and tell them, "Yep. Those were brutal times, man. Brutal times."