Death didn't just float through Sunday's season-six premiere of Mad Men like some wispy, wimpy specter. It barged loudly into practically every scene, banging its Grim Reaper scythe on the ground and repeatedly chanting the word "Doom" as if it were the morbid mantra from some lost, sitar-heavy Beatles B-side.

Our Mad men are having a tough time on the mortality front, and that's probably not going to change much as this Sterling Cooper Draper minus Pryce chapter in the story progresses. After losing his mother, Roger Sterling — a fox in his silver years convinced that life consists solely of doors that lead nowhere — went off on a rant during her memorial service that climaxed with the declaration that "This is my funeral!" Later, he quipped to Don: "We sold actual death for 25 years with Lucky Strike. You know how we did it? We ignored it." The fear-of-croaking subtext in all this: about as subtle as Stan Rizzo's newly bushy facial hair.

Even the Drapers' doorman has a target on his back, having nearly expired in the very first scene of the episode during a moment intentionally shot to persuade us that Don was in cardiac arrest. But thankfully, our "hero" remained very much alive, which allowed him to spend most of the episode brooding — sometimes while reading Dante's Inferno, sometimes after having sex with Lindsay Weir from Freaks and Geeks — about the fact that some day he, too, will die. And it seems reasonable to assume that day may arrive in the not-so-distant future.

Within the context of the heavily-dissected AMC drama, we've just entered 1968, a year notable for its heartbreaking, high-profile losses of life, both at home and in Vietnam. We've also just begun season six of what seems almost guaranteed to be a seven-season run for this series. So it's not surprising that suddenly our entire Mad Men life is flashing before our eyes, bringing back familiar images — lighters that belong to Army soldiers, Kodak slide projectors, advertising executives upchucking at inappropriate moments, Burt freaking Peterson — and casting them in a wistful, moody light. I totally understand why Matt Zoller Seitz of New York magazine recently compared Mad Men to Lost. After Don's pot-hazy Waikiki "experience," which led to a Royal Hawaiian ad symbolic of suicide ("Hawaii. The jumping-off point."), everything is now clear to me: The island is totally purgatory, you guys.

With the exception of the serene Dr. Rosen, the males in Matthew Weiner's bunch are anxious about life's inevitable Grand Finale. (Let's just go ahead and assume Pete Campbell is, too, since his sideburns scream existential crisis.) The women, on the other hand, seem more energetically focused on the present. If the guys are on Team Get Busy Dyin', the ladies are all Get Busy Livin'.

Megan Draper's now a budding soap-opera star, busy signing autographs and snagging additional screen time on the ironically named To Have and to Hold. Peggy Olson is pouring her energies into brilliantly retooling Super Bowl commercials for headphones, all while maintaining a completely cool head and a perfectly pert bob. It's telling that the Shakespeare quote Peggy borrowed for that ad — "Lend me your ears" — comes from Mark Antony's funeral speech for Julius Caesar (more DEATH), but stops before the following line: "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." Peggy's not thinking about burials, not now. Although, is the Caesar she's burying professionally ... Don?

In the wake (see what I did there?) of Roger's funeral implosion, his ex-wife Mona focuses not on grief, but on encouraging Roger to spend more time with his daughter. As a result, Roger gives Margaret her grandmother's jar of water from the River Jordan: "Here's a symbol of fertility and rebirth, my dear daughter. Now pardon me, I'll just be downstream, treading water in the Dead Sea."

And then there's Betty "Why don't you go in there and rape her?" Francis, who, at least in this episode, seems like a more considerate, happier Betty than we've seen in a long time. Granted, that's in Betty terms, where we must grade on a curve that involves deep bitterness, locking her children in closets, and binge-eating Bugles. Still, her trip to the bohemian house in Greenwich Village (otherwise known as that time Betty Francis wandered onto the set of the '60s version of Rent) suggests a willingness to put herself out there to help others — in this case a young girl who isn't even her own daughter — as well as a desire to reconsider her judgmentalness (as illustrated by her decision to leave behind that violin case) and start trying to become someone new (see: the swapping of her Sandra-Dee-blond hair for edgy jet-black).

As off-putting as Betty can still be — and man, that rape comment was twisted and weird — she still believes there's time in life for her to evolve. Meanwhile, back on the Upper East Side, her former husband lays with a new other woman, betrays another wife, still wonders who the hell he is, and worries that he may not have much time left to figure that out.

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