Frustrating ‘Mad Men’ season full of ups and downs

Having to question the generally unimpeachable genius of creator Matthew Weiner is enough to make any lover of quality television wince. But here goes: What in the name of Betty Draper's fainting couch is going on with "Mad Men"?

The Emmy-winning drama swaggered into its third season with all the confidence of Don Draper after a quickie with the coat check girl. But it's spent most of the past couple of months limping toward tonight's season finale (10 p.m., AMC) like the British guy -- aptly named Guy -- who lost his foot in the lawnmower.

It has nothing to do with the performances. Top to bottom, "Mad Men" still has TV's most interesting, capable cast. But that lawnmower -- a John Deere 110 lawn and garden tractor complete with a little-known foot-shredding attachment discovered by a drunken secretary during an office party -- played a larger part this year than most of the Sterling Cooper regulars.

Paul Kinsey's (Michael Gladis) biggest moments involved scoring weed and a random encounter with a janitor named Achilles. I can't recall Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) being given much to do besides acquiring that carnivorous lawnmower. And I've started waiting for Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) to turn up on the side of a milk carton.

The exquisite Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) -- she of the breathy-whisper voice and the walk that cries out to be accompanied by that burlesque-style "boom-ba-ba-boom" music -- was exiled to the dress department at Bonwit Teller.

And poor, sweet, "Bye Bye Birdie"-loving Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) was heartbreakingly fired, then shamed for his homosexuality, after rebuffing the drunken advances of a bullying tobacco scion.

The show's called "Mad Men." Plural. But for painfully long stretches this season, it's become "The Don and Betty Show."

Don Draper's (Jon Hamm) extramarital conquests always have garnered plenty of screen time, but his courtship of daughter Sally's teacher (Abigail Spencer) this season seemed interminable. Although it was downright efficient compared to Betty Draper's (January Jones) long-distance flirtation with a too-slick governor's aide (Christopher Stanley).

And it was particularly infuriating having to watch as those affairs branched off into time-sucking subplots involving the epileptic brother of Don's mistress and an awful lot of hullabaloo about Betty trying to save a reservoir.

Those were in addition to "Mad Men's" typical meanderings, like the one in which Don, driving merrily along yet another detour with a stiff drink in hand, picked up a young hitchhiking couple, gladly downed a couple of their Phenobarbitals, then ended up in a motel, watching them dance while he talked to a hallucination of his dead father, before waking up the next morning alone, bloodied and robbed.

And -- Sweet Sally's Lisp! -- I'm still not sure what to make of the season's third episode, which saw, among other things, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) belting out "My Old Kentucky Home" in blackface, Joan playing the accordion and singing Cole Porter's "C'est Magnifique" in French, the normally staid Peter Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) dancing a wild Charleston as though his life depended on it, and prim Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) announcing her entrance into the era's drug culture: "I'm Peggy Olson, and I want to smoke some marijuana."

Frustrating as it's been, though, this season still has had its share of standout moments.

Chelcie Ross has been a hoot, by golly, as late-night-phone-calling, hotel-on-the-moon-wanting Conrad Hilton.

The world was given a fantastic new pickup line when rival ad man Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) seduced Peggy: "I wanna take you in that bedroom, lock the door, take your clothes off with my teeth, throw you on the bed and give you a go-round like you've never had."

And having Don's entire world come crashing down around him -- forcing him to tearfully admit to Betty that he's really Dick Whitman, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, who took a dead lieutenant's name in Korea -- led to some of Hamm's finest work yet.

Hopefully that last one, combined with this past Sunday's beautiful handling of the Kennedy assassination, are signs that "Mad Men" finally is shaking off its funk.

I'd hate to think the series won't bounce back to reclaim its spot as TV's most outstanding drama.

But if it doesn't, as Joan observed: "That's life. One minute, you're on top of the world; the next minute, some secretary's running you over with a lawnmower."

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@ reviewjournal.com.