This is a Spoiled Bastard. It contains spoilers. That's the point. If you haven't seen the episode, please come back when you have.

This is a Spoiled Bastard. It contains spoilers. That’s the point. If you haven’t watched the episode in question, please come back when you have.

There were a series of gears seamlessly interlocking in “At the Codfish Ball,” an episode of Mad Men that very creatively dissected the way men talk to and interact with women and women talk to and interact with each other.

In a rousing return to form, the “Far Away Places” episode of Mad Men was its most ambitious this season and one that, given the last couple of overly-obvious efforts, would normally cause serious worry about its ability to pull off not only an LSD episode – a cliché landmine if there ever was one – but also a fractured narrative, the deepening of current motifs and subtle transformations of character spread throughout the cast.

Bravo.

From a critical perspective, it’s very difficult being any great series in its fifth season. It just is. There’s always a little fatigue, viewers are all in, thus more tolerant of lapses, and the necessity of change – characters growing, times changing, situations reversing themselves or disappearing altogether – create the sense that the series isn’t like it used to be.

This is a Spoiled Bastard. It contains spoilers. That's the point. If you haven't watched this episode, come back when you have.

As purely an exercise in the thematic display of fear, “Mystery Date” worked wonderfully if in an overly obvious fashion. But as a Mad Men episode, it felt wildly out of place – and not in that creatively adventurous and surprising way that some of the very best Mad Men episodes of the past seasons have turned out.

This is a Spoiled Bastard. It contains spoilers. That's the point. If you haven't seen the current episode, come back when you have.

While there’s a lot of momentum to talk about Betty’s weight – one of the more jarring images we’ve seen on Mad Men, if only because Betty’s been perfect Ice Princess Grace since we first met her – it was another character who really stood out in this episode who truly deserves the attention.

Roger Sterling.

This is a Spoiled Bastard. It contains spoilers. That's the point. If you haven't watched the episode, come back when you have.

The fourth season finale of Breaking Bad did a lot of things right, course-correcting most of my worries and giving viewers not only an action-packed, satisfying episode but putting the show on the path to finish its final 16 episodes in a nearly perfect dramatic state – with Walter White far closer to Scarface than Mr. Chips, but the whole of his crazy dream and best laid plans completely upended. He may have “won” as he tells Skyler in “Face Off,” but he doesn’t have much to show for it cash-wise.

I watched the “End Times” episode from Breaking Bad twice, just to make sure it really did make the stretch I thought it made the first time I watched.

It did.

And what’s confounding is whether they had to stretch at all. The logical elongation in question is, of course, the series of events that inadvertently (and too conveniently) got Walt and Jesse back on the same page, just when it looked like an epic, rage-filled meltdown from Jesse would put a bullet or four into Walt.

So let’s backtrack.

I remember the first time I made a concerted effort to meet Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad. I was working for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time and was one of the very early adopters on the genius behind the series. Getting Gilligan on the phone wouldn’t have been any trouble. But I had recently finished Season 2, which I think will stand the test of time – for me at least – as one of those rare seasons where the series didn’t miss a creative beat. Not one.

Let’s work backward. Jesse’s video game practice has paid off nicely as he takes out essentially the last man standing at Don Eladio’s infamous retreat. Gus will likely survive the crazed but creative plot to poison Don Eladio and all of his capos (and himself, in a show of support – but the pill or the vomiting or a combination of both have likely kept him alive). Mike has been shot. We don’t know how badly, since he was able to utter the words, “Get us out of here, kid.”

Now, stop.

While “Bug” may go down as one of those episodes with an ending that knocks the wind out of you – Walt and Jesse in a knock-down, drag-out, friendship-damaging brawl, I was probably less enamored with it than most, simply because it served mostly as an episode that resets the storyline.