'Mad Men' season three review

 By Andrew Wallenstein

Even with all the loose ends left dangling in the finale last year,is there a "Mad Men" fan in God's creation that actually believesthe upcoming Season 3 premiere is going to tie each and every oneof them up in pretty bows?

As two seasons of "Mad Men" is enough to indicate, that is notMatthew Weiner's way. As a "Sopranos" alumnus, the "Mad Men"executive producer graduated from the David Chase School ofStorytelling. You not only don't give the viewers what they want,you confound them by toying with their expectations. Maybe you evenmake them question those expectations in the first place.

Want tidy resolutions to cliffhangers? Go watch "DesperateHousewives."

Weiner certainly had his pick of explosive story lines to detonate.We already know Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has re-entered family lifeafter wife Betty (January Jones) tells him she is pregnant withtheir third child; she hasn't told him of the torrid one-nightstand committed in retribution for Don's own infidelities. Peggy(Elisabeth Moss) has finally told Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) oftheir child she gave up. Joan (Christina Hendricks) is to marry theman who raped her on the office floor. Sterling Cooper is on theverge of being reshaped in the wake of its merger to British adagency Putnam Powell Lowe. Roger Sterling (John Slattery) hasrenounced his marriage to marry a comely young secretary.

All that should be revealed about the third-season premiere is thatsome of these sleeping dogs are roused, some are not. Some aren'teven acknowledged. That's about as much detail as should be givenrather than risk spoiling the fun (such is the peril of writing a"Mad Men" review, to risk telling too much even by saying whatdoesn't happen).

Perhaps the only predictable element of "Mad Men" is that thepremiere is a return to form, the series is as spellbinding andelusive as Draper himself. If "Mad Men" is making some kind ofsignificant creative recalibration this season, there's no evidenceavailable in this episode.

The only significant new element to be found is the addition to thecast of Jared Harris as Putnam's financial officer, Lane Pryce.Together with Pryce's assistant, John Hooker (Ryan Cartwright), theinterlopers' mere presence at Sterling Cooper carries a menacingundercurrent before either even so much as opens their mouths. Theinevitable consequence of a merger being no different in 1963 or2009, this installment of "Mad Men" reverberates in ourrecession-rocked era more so than the usual episode.

Bottom Line: A return to form, spellbinding and elusive as Don Draper himself.

Airdate: 10-11 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16 (AMC)