Let's call this the long, awkward pause edition of "Mad Men" There are some good ones in this third installment of the season,"My Old Kentucky Home."

It's also an insightful, oh-so-telling study of the nature of couplehood in all of its many stages. In another life, Matt Weiner surely would have been a marriage counselor. He has a keen eye for those little details and small gestures that reveal everything about a relationship. 

And any episode that gives us Joan playing the accordion ("C'est Magnifique") and Peggy Olson, proud graduate of Miss Deaver's Secretarial School, smoking her first joint has got to be a goodie. I nearly choked on her declaration to Paul Kinsey et al: "I'm Peggy Olson. I want to smoke some marijuana."

Overall, this is an interesting episode for the women of the Sterling Cooper mob. We're seeing more assertiveness, certainly from Peggy (when Paul tells her to go get the blender, she shoots back "You get it"), but in subtle ways from other characters -- even Carla, the Drapers' housekeeper, in her dealings with Gene, Betty's batty dad. I think it's all part of the theme of great social change enveloping our characters. The show is a Petri dish for all of these New Frontier experiments, and we get to watch how various personality types react. (Harry Crane is so voting for Goldwater. And Nixon.)

It's no accident that one of the two headline news items of the day that are referenced in this episode is the then-scandalous marriage of socialite Margaretta "Happy" Murphy to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, barely a month after she got a divorce and had to give up custody rights to her four children. Betty has clearly followed this tabloid affair (she's a closet New York Post reader?) because she knows all the details when the surprise marriage is referenced.

The other news that seeps into this episode, penned by Dahvi Waller and Weiner, is the radio report that references Birmingham, Alabama. (Try as I might I could not make out the first part of the report, the sound was too muddy). If this episode is taking place on May 4, 1963 -- the date of the Rockefeller wedding -- then the radio report is clearly about the civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr. against segregation in Birmingham ("greatest city in A-la-bam," per Randy Newman). These were protests that yielded scenes of unbelievable brutality -- children and teenagers getting beaten with billy clubs, bitten by police dogs and cut down with fire hoses -- that helped turned the tide of public opinion and pave the way for landmark civil rights legislation in the years ahead.

Ouch. Everybody is uptight and angsty beyond belief in the second episode of "Mad Men's" third season. The title is "Love Among the Ruins," but it might've been called "Where Did Our Love Go?"

Perhaps the most shocking turn the seg is that Don Draper actually does something selfless in order to make Betty happy by taking in her dementia-troubled father, Gene. He pulls it off in pure Don Draper sotto vocedramatic fashion, pulling Betty's brother into the study of the Draper manse in Ossining and telling him how it's going to go down.

After Betty forces Don to accept the invasion of her brother, his wife, their children and her ailing father for the week of spring break, he gradually realizes that Betty's finely honed sense of guilt about caring for her father will eat away at her if she doesn't take care of him -- or worse, if her brother's wife winds up playing nursemaid. Goodness knows she's already enough of a b-i-t-c-h. Could she be any colder to her kids?

Don would have to be blind not to notice Betty's pain (though that's never stopped him before). Betty declares herself to be in a "foul mood" while worrying about her father, and she later declares herself "the world's worsta horrible daughter" just before Don takes matters into his own hands with Betty's waffly brother.

Having rendered himself rootless with no family, Don also instinctively understands that Betty can't bear to sell the family home in order to put the father in an old folks home, as Betty's brother suggests. (The brother Don referenced last week as being someone who's always borrowing things and putting his name on them, and whose name, WilliamHofstadt, Don assumed for his near one-night-stand in Baltimore.)

There was a heck of a lot going on in this episode -- written by Caryn Humphris and Matt Weiner and helmed by Lesli Linka Glatter -- but to me the stuff with Betty's father was the most weirdly intriguing.

After last week's season opener, I was hoping for an episode with more Betty and more Peggy, and darn if Weiner and Co. didn't deliver on both counts.

A triumphant return. I find it wonderfully confounding that for all the speculation in the ten months since "Mad Men's" second season closer about the big changes in store for Don, Betty, Peggy, Pete, Sal, Joan, et al, the major developments in the third season preem,"Out of Town," reinforce that nothing much has changed at all for our core characters.

Don is still a serial philanderer, attracted to ultra sexually aggressive Bobbie Barrett types who work outside the home. Betty is back to the blithe state of denial and I-just-want-everything-to-be-perfect mental state that can only mean she's in for a hard fall when life inevitably turns out to be less than perfect.

Peggy is still living in the deepest, scariest state of denial as she pursues her professional career above all else. Pete, even after learning last season that he has a child by Peggy, is still fueled by his status- consciousness more than anything else -- acknowledging that he's fathered a child out of wedlock or ending his marriage to Trudy (as was indicated in last season's finale) would be too much of a blemish on his social-climbing endeavors.

Sal by the end of this episode is shoved more firmly back in the closet than ever, after the cruel tease of very nearly experiencing sexual ecstasy at the hands of a Baltimore bellboy.

Joan is still the Machiavellian queen bee of Sterling Cooper, even if she's outwardly proclaiming her distance from office politics -- post British invitation -- and her desire to leave it all behind after her planned nuptials.

And in the larger scheme, the picture of mid-1963 America presented in this episode indicates that the Cuban Missile Crisis period -- when we last saw our heroes forced to face the threat of nuclear annihilation -- has not had a lasting impact on the New Frontier/Camelot zeitgeist of the moment.

(Doing the math based on Betty looking to be about seven-eight months pregnant, it would mean that at least six months have passed since the October 1962 period of the sophomore season finale.)

We at home, of course, know that trauma that is lurking around the corner (Dallas, the grassy knoll, a convertible limo -- you get the picture). But for now, life is all about empire-building, the march of capitalism, sex appeal and getting in good with the ladies from the docent program at the Met.

(Read Brian Lowry's take on this episode.)

"Mad Men" fever is upon us.

Although I've already seen the season opener, I'm still excited for Sunday's preem because it's the official start of season three -- and it means I only have another week to wait for fresh meat. If the first seg is any guide, we're in for a heck of a ride.

Please watch this space on Mondays for episode recaps. I enjoy doing them, even though it keeps me up late on Sunday nights, because writing helps me sort out the intricacies, cultural and literary references and foreshadowing of this most intricately crafted series. At least on my best recaps. However, the oh-so-prolific Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey Star-Ledger and the What's Alan Watching blog always puts me to shame with his insights and analysis.

There's not much I can add here to the tsunami of pre-launch coverage that "Mad Men" has received in the past few weeks. The most intriguing thing I've heard about the show's future was an offhand comment from creator-exec producer Matthew Weiner during the cocktail party that AMC hosted during the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Pasadena.

Weiner was talking about how happy he was to go into the third season knowing from the get-go that the show was assured of having a fourth season. When asked how long he would ideally like the series to run, Weiner paused for a moment and then replied: "I'd like to see us do the decade" of the 1960s.

Betty at Woodstock? Sal at Stonewall? Paul at the Monterey Pop Festival? Sally joins a commune? Don Draper joins the Nixon administration? I can just see Pete Campbell getting stomped by Hells Angels at Altamont.

Can't wait for Sunday...

POSTED BY JON WEISMAN

Don’t call “Glee” a musical – at least not to co-executive producer Brad Falchuk’s face.

“I’m not a big musical fan,” Falchuk said at the show’s Television Critics Assn. panel today. “I don’t like musicals and I didn’t want to make a musical.  The idea was to attract people like me and (showrunner Ryan Murphy) …I hope we’re so good that people can’t not watch.”

And that’s why Falchuk and the “Glee” crew have cautious optimism that the show’s momentum won’t fall off after its successful preview following an episode of “American Idol” in May.

“Sometimes things find a niche audience, and oftentimes those are very high-quality things that can’t find a broad audience,” he said. “I don’t think we have that problem. I think we are for a broad audience.”

To be sure, the music promises to be a big attraction. Executive producer Dante Di Loreto said there’s a deal in place with Columbia for a soundtrack CD to come out in November, and with success, a second CD as quickly as December.

Di Loreto added that there has been no wanted song that has gotten away.

“We’ve been very, very fortunate,” he said. “We really have gotten every song we wanted. … Our show isn’t any different than any Fox show in terms of budget, but instead of smashing cars and planes, we’re singing songs and dancing.”

BY STUART LEVINE

Shockingly, the first question put to Peter Rice (below) and Kevin Reilly at Fox's morning executive session had nothing to do with moving "Fringe" to Thursday night or the dramatic finale on last season's "House."

The sesh turned into an Abdul-athon, with every question trying in slightly different ways to pry info on how the Earth will barely stay on its axis now that she's left her seat at the "Idol" judges table.

Rice outwardly said he was surprised by Abdul's departure, and added the network hasn't had much time to decipher how the situation continues from here, yet with her contract expired it hardly seems realistic that there were no what-if scenarios raised as the negotiations became more exasperated in the last few months.

Rice said it was "probable" that the show would replace Abdul, but there was a "possibility" they wouldn't. With having the one-year Kara DioGuardi experiment under its belt, I'm a bit surprised about the assumption that having four judges is such a good thing.

As any Tivo or DVR owner can tell you, the constant overruns by "Idol" into the 9 o'clock hour was a big problem both for the reality juggernaut itself -- final performances were cut off -- and the next show that would start five or seven minutes late.

Last I remember, "Idol" did just fine with three judges. And having Kara not having to compete with Paula can only be good for her -- if only she can find a way to be more succinct with her comments.

Ratings-wise, a fourth judge could bring about the curiousity factor, and that's nothing to dismiss, but if what Rice and Reilly say is true -- that the show is really about the new contestants and their personal journeys -- then keep the focus on that.

Paula or no Paula, "Idol" will always be about underdogs, heartthrobs and what Simon says. Everything else is just a distraction. 

POSTED BY JON WEISMAN

For those obsessed with all things “Arrested Development,” one of the next links in the chain is NBC’s upcoming fall sitcom “Community,” which has “Arrested” alums Joe and Anthony Russo aboard as executive producers and directors of the pilot.

As with the much beloved Fox comedy from earlier this decade, extra effort was placed in forming the cast of  “Community” alongside lead Joel McHale (“The Soup”) and supporting actor/Bizarro-world father figure Chevy Chase.

“The last time we did something like this was ‘Arrested Development,’ and this cast has a similar quality,” Joe Russo said at the “Community” panel at the Television Critics Assn. gathering today in Pasadena. “It’s tricky when you try to define the voice of each  the characters.”

“We walked this tightrope of complete adherence to lack of conviction,” show creator Dan Harmon (“The Sarah Silverman Show”) added with a laugh. “We’re either so arrogant or so humble that we never had a problem changing our minds. ... and like a town looking for a missing child, hand in hand, systematically circled in on these people who were perfect.”

The ensemble includes a mix of relative knowns and unknowns such as Alison Brie (“Mad Men”), whose character’s mission Harmon describes as “because she didn’t get into Harvard, she’s going to turn Greendale (Community College) into Harvard,” and late addition Ken Jeong (“Knocked Up”). Jeong plays an Asian Spanish teacher with a chip on his shoulder because … he’s an Asian Spanish teacher.

As for Chase, he hasn’t exactly been a regular on the network comedy circuit since his hallowed “Saturday Night Live” days thirty-odd years ago, but the pilot script by Harmon turned him around.

“Films lately aren’t as good as most of the stuff on TV,” said Chase, who was very much his wisecracking self during the press session. “I never thought I would be involved in a situation comedy until I read the script.”

Harmon partly based his creation on his experience as a 32-year-old community college student, and says he isn’t looking to make fun of the setting.

“I compare it to Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree,” Harmon said. “Its ambition exceeds its grasp, and therefore it’s heroic.”

Harmon couldn't say what happens if a series based in a locale where students typically come and go gets a long run, but McHale quipped a hint.

“We do get off the island,” McHale said.

BY STUART LEVINE

In what has become a tradition, Craig Ferguson delivered pizzas to critics Saturday during their annual membership meeting.

This year's delivery -- from Joe Mantegna's Italian joint "Taste of Chicago" in Burbank -- arrived not as a bribe for good press but rather because Ferguson is a genuinely nice guy.

The Scot, who just received his pilot's license on Friday, has certainly been flying high for the net. Not just because of solid ratings but due to his honesty with guests and the audience. And for his unconventional approach to being funny.

"I I think my show is probably closer to “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” than anything else I’ve seen, and that is an aspiration. That’s a great show.I don’t — I don’t know where we are, but wherever we are, we won’t be that next week. I do know that. That’s why the puppets won’t stay forever. It’s important to keep
moving," he said.

Ferguson, who became an official Yank last year when he was granted citizenship, said being an American means more to him than he can put in words.

"There’s something else attached to becoming an American, too. I’m sure most of you will have contact with an older member of your family or a relative or somebody who became an American. There is a melancholy attached to it. There is a strangeness attached to leaving your past and making the new country your present, and I wanted to not shy away from that, too. So it’s — but it’s very important to me. It’s the defining thing of my own weltanschuaang, if you like, that America, for me,is a philosophical and emotional decision and not just — it’s not just jingoistic. I think it’s certainly notjust political. It’s not a donkey or an elephant. It’s a flag and an idea. It’s a dream. It’s a belief infairness of opportunity. It’s very important to me."

In dealing with Worldwide Pants boss David Letterman, Ferguson is quick to sing his praises. And, as everything else Ferguson says, it sounds completely genuine -- and hysterically funny.

"I’m very happy to work for him and to work close to him, but if there is — if there is a successor
to Johnny, then, of course, it’s David. And so it’s not that really. My relationship with David
Letterman is that I sit at his feet, and that’s what it is. I’m kind of his bitch."