'Mad Men' Season 2 :Meditations In An Emergency

Season two finds Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in his undershirt.Immediately, you're waiting to see what young beauty he's bedding these days. Two years have passed since last we saw this dapper and secretive married man, so surely there is someone.That someone turns out to be a nurse and Don, who is now 36, is holed up in a doctor's office for a life-insurance physical. The nurse flirts a bit, but when the doctor comes in, he's all business. Don's blood pressure is high and his five-martini, two-pack-day habit has obviously caught up to him. "You're a high-powered businessman with a high-tension job," the doctor says before prescribing phenobarbital. If this were modern times, the doctor would have given him Xanax. "I'm trying to help you here."

While Don could use the help, drugs aren't the answer. His time on the top is running out and on more than one level, he knows it. It's 1962 and the wave of social change is knocking on his door. This is fun for viewers because we know he's running out of time and we can't wait to see what he does about it.

One of the account bosses at Don's advertising agency, Duck Phillips (Mark Moses), wants younger, hipper types to come in for a coffee-maker client and Don bristles at the mere suggestion. Younger means Don can be replaced, and that fear wears him like a coat.Hamm is so solid in this role that it's no wonder why he's been nominated for an Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy. You can feel the friction in his gaze and his gait. He is a man haunted and dogged by his past and frightful of his future. Oddly, he finds respite in Frank O'Hara's "Meditations in an Emergency."