As Lane said about Don watching Megan singing “Zou Bisou Bisou” in the season premiere, I think I saw SCDP’s soul leave its body last night, not just once but twice: when all the partners except Don agreed that Joan should prostitute herself for the firm, and when Peggy left. Which seems like a smart move, given how women who work at the agency are now being sold off to the highest and most disgusting bidder.

Being underappreciated has been Peggy’s theme song for years, but not having experienced work – much less success -- anywhere else, she’s been afraid to leave. Now, as former boss and mentor Freddy Rumsen puts it, she’s reached the point where she has to decide whether she’s ambitious or just complaining. “If this was about work and not about feeling, you’d make a move,” he argues, bringing up the central conflict of the episode, in which people make moves based on work – and the success and money it brings -- rather than on good old human feeling, either for themselves or for each other.

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In “Christmas Waltz,” the latest episode of “Mad Men,” we find out that cars are part of the dream for ad agencies, too – a sign that they’ve arrived, just as owning a car was once a sign of achieving adulthood, something that the staff at SCDP also hasn’t done yet. Instead, like teenagers, they’re stealing money from their corporate parents’ wallets, driving other people’s cars too fast, napping when they should be working, drinking too much, throwing tantrums (and other things) and having sex with near-strangers. And just as it did in America as a whole, this behavior is taking its toll on their personal unions – or will do so before long.

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A strange statement coming from a man with a dual identity and often hidden motives, but then “Dark Shadows,” the latest “Mad Men” episode, is rife with competitive doubles, if not actual evil twins. (Just like in a soap opera, wink wink.) Don and Ginsberg have dueling SnoBall campaigns, Peggy reminds Roger she’s supposed to be his secret sharer rather than that schlemiel Ginsberg, Megan struggles to be friends with both Sally and Don, Henry’s torn between two candidates he’s worked for, and everyone seems to have at least two wives – even if Pete’s second one belongs to another man. Unlike the SnoBall fight with Ginsberg that he rigs, Don wins the wife competition fair and square by having three, even if one was in name only. As Betty tells Sally when she works on her family tree, “They only care about the names anyway.”

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Of course, rebels and freethinkers had always done this, but they were rare and often paid a price for their actions, even losing their lives. Now ordinary people began adopting the mantra, “If it feels good, do it.” Personal satisfaction, rather than duty, increasingly became the driver behind people’s choices. And they didn’t pay a price, unless you count the anger and jealousy evoked in those who weren’t courageous enough to do the same. Nearly 200 years after America was founded on a right to the “pursuit of happiness,” Americans began to claim that right. And they’ve never looked back.

“There are no second acts in American life,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously declared, without living long enough to see the constant self-reinvention of our age. In “Lady Lazarus,” the latest episode of “Mad Men,” Megan chooses to re-make her life, simply because her career isn’t making her happy. Even with her recent success, and the discovery that she’s able to “do everything,” (as Don declared in a tone of awe), she finds advertising so boring that leaving it is akin to raising herself from the dead.

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Betty is a very interesting character, but having seen Jones on “Saturday Night Live" and in “X-Men: First Class,” in which she could barely play an actual Ice Queen, I have no lingering doubts about her skill set. Meanwhile, the consistently rated “Castle” has gained quite a following, despite the fact that Katic makes the main character on “Bones,” who is supposed to fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, seem emotionally intuitive and empathic. My point here is not to rag on Jones and Katic, so much as marvel at how little their failings have mattered to the shows they work on. Television is very kind to bad actors.

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In this fish tale, the genders are moving up and down like parallel elevators in the Time-Life building, the workplace that consumes so much of their lives they barely can escape it for a meal that doesn’t involve business – and in this episode, not even for that. But this show is about time and life – the time in these characters’ lives, and the times they’re living in. Unfortunately for them, few seem to be having the time of their lives.

After her failure to impersonate Don, Peggy’s off the Heinz account, but seems in good spirits when Stan and Ginsberg treat her like one of the boys. She rolls with the sexual banter about how she’s got a way with the equipment on the Playtex account, as well as Ginsberg’s criticism that she’s a “traditionalist in the bosom arena” (something that will be challenged in this episode), defending her opinion about selling youthful, sexy bras to older women.

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Many “Mad Men” fans were no doubt just as eager as the staff of SCDP to see someone finally smack Pete’s smug little face. Rarely a sympathetic figure, Pete’s been made increasingly insufferable this season, whining about getting no love from his colleagues while doing everything possible to make them despise him.

In the latest episode, “Signal 30,” he childishly belittles Lane for landing a new client, Jaguar, and initially refuses to help him close the deal even after Don points out that adding automobiles to planes will raise the struggling agency’s stature.

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Research into abusers and killers suggests a strong link between those two fears, with violence often triggered by feelings of humiliation and powerlessness. Both genders see the power to destroy as resting in the other’s hands – those hands that you may want to hold, or hands that may want to hold you, either lovingly or violently.

All of these fears are portrayed in “Mystery Date,” which may rank as the most disturbing episode ever of “Mad Men.” The dark side of the fairy tale of American life and of American marriage has been a constant theme of the series, and in this spooky house of an episode, various characters play Sleeping Beauty, only to wake up safely back in the brighter world (at least we hope that Sally will, once that Seconal wears off).

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All youthful dreams die, and adult life is the long, slow accommodation to the way things actually are versus the way we not only hoped but believed they’d be. (As Henry puts it later in a more hopeful context, “This is what it could be, but it’s not gonna be.”) “Tea Leaves” draws a bright line between those who are still young and optimistic enough to have dreams – like sunny, yellow-outfitted Megan, back-to-connivingly-striving Pete, our plucky career gal Peggy, and even the new gaffe-a-minute copywriter Michael Ginsberg. On the other side, the middle-aged realists who are in the process of giving their dreams up, including the superannuated Roger, the always-doubtful Don, and the model-turned-matron Betty.

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Nothing like that ever happened to me before or since, that is, until Sunday night. The flash: Pete Campbell will take a header out a Time & Life Building window, probably around Thanksgiving on the show. (I’m iffy on the when but feeling solid on the who, what and where.)

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I thought this antiquated expression had gone the way of “arm candy” and “trading up” as part of the second-wave agreement that likening your lady to something you consume or drive is just not cool anymore.  But perhaps even in 2012, our “Mad Men”-fueled nostalgia-fest is making us long for an era of clear-cut sexist distinction, when wives were wives and mistresses, mistresses. The AMC show's fifth season premiere explored this dichotomy, as Don Draper’s secretary-turned-wife Megan bridged the divide separating working women from their marriageable counterparts.

These days, concerns like Megan's seem absurdly anachronistic, but they also raise a bigger question: In an age of increasing divorce rates and single ladies celebration, what does this wife material “compliment” really mean?

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Several “Mad Men” characters will learn just how dangerous words can be to their status in the world, while others will find themselves losing their place no matter what they say. As in the country as a whole, some characters who’ve always had power are losing it, while others find it within their grasp at last, even if no one will recognize their ascendance. And one notable control freak, a certain Don Draper, lets someone else take over for the first time in his life -- a miracle that requires just a little French kiss.

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Creator Matthew Weiner has said in recent interviews that momentous historical changes are often “blips” to people busy with their own life dramas, yet the essence of “Mad Men” has always been its portrayal of the subtle ways that societal events affect even the most self-absorbed individuals. So where did we leave the show’s characters and what might be coming to pierce their Madison Avenue bubble?

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“Mad Men’s” greatness — and it is great — is not enough to explain its cultural ubiquity.  “Breaking Bad” attracts both as many viewers and critical hosannas as “Mad Men,” but it has not secured the covers of Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and Entertainment Weekly. Other zeitgeist-inhabiting shows — from “Twin Peaks” and “Survivor” to “Lost” and “The Sopranos” —  have had tens of millions more viewers, and even recent flavor of the month “Downton Abbey” attracted 5 million.

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Matt Weiner, the show's creator, spoke with us about the new season, or, more accurately, spoke with us on the occasion of the new season. Weiner, as you'll see, is a strict constructionist when it comes to spoilers, and in addition to specifically requesting that the press reveal nothing to the audience — not the year in which the new season is set or basic plot developments — he makes sure to answer questions with as few hints as possible. But, even avoiding major plot revelations, Weiner had a lot to say about this year's big themes, all those TV shows aping "Mad Men's" style, the recent controversy about the "Mad Men" ad campaign, and when, if ever, American society is going to get back to normal.

I found it very touching to see these characters again after so long. Did you find that you had missed them?

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I was new to the area, trailing a high-tech spouse who worked 14-hour days. The gloom had settled in. It was good weather for writing but after several hours, scenes from “The Shining” would be running through my head. I was slogging away at a second novel (my first was a tiny seller, now remaindered). I’d been a visiting professor in Providence and Minneapolis, but for the first time I couldn’t even find an adjunct job.

So this man offered to show me the city, grab a cup of coffee and talk for a while. He listened and gave me good advice. Then as dusk overtook the storm, he told me his tale.

At 30, he’d been a promising history scholar, on faculty at a major university and traveling the world. But after five years, he was denied tenure. And suddenly, everything in his life — teaching, research, sabbaticals — simply disappeared.

He fell apart briefly, then rallied and decided to write a book. It would be successful and he’d reclaim his rightful place. A few years into the project, he won a prestigious grant. And with that, he became obsessed. His marriage fell apart; he lived on next to nothing. When he finished the novel and his agent couldn't sell it, the man hired a series of editors to help him revise.

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