The TV Zone

Not being at the press tour, and thus not having an opportunity to ask all the big questions at yesterday's Matthew Weiner sesh - Matthew is the show-runner and creator - then I'm going to have to ask them, and answer them myself. It's a lonely and somewhat delusional task, but someone's gotta do it. Here goes:

Have you told your AMC bosses that you're gonna end the show after five seasons?

Yup, the fact that Weiner has a five-and-over strategy in mind was the headline yesterday, but did he tell the network? Remember how pleasantly surprised ABC was when Darlton told the press tour that they were wrapping in a couple seasons? (I think they told press tour, tho coulda been somewhere else.) Poor ol' AMC finally has a hit and maybe even a Best Drama Emmy winner, and it's already OVER? If I was them, I'm not entirely sure I'd be pleased at this moment...

Is five-and-over a good idea?

Hell yeah! Five is perfect (Weiner will hop the show each season up two years, so that it'll end by '69.) Here's why. There has to be an end-point in the Don Draper story. A dramatic arc has been set - his real identity - and if you think of an arc as, well, an arc, then you realize that what goes up, must come down. Why '69? One reason: can you imagine Jon Hamm with '70s sideburns and leisure suits? God knows, I can't.

What's the deal with Peggy's baby, Matthew?

I mean, how can someone - in the course of a 44 minute episode - discover that they are pregnant and then deliver the kid? This always seemed to me like a strange misstep in one of the most sure-footed shows on TV.

Will Betty have an affair?

Of course she will, but with whom? And how will Don find out? Or will he? And will she find out about his serial affairs by 1962 when the new season begins? I mean, don't you think she should after the last part of last season hinted broadly and strongly that the scales had finally fallen from her eyes, and she realized what a cad the perfect husband really was? Don't you just love questions that are answered with a whole bunch of other questions?

What about Roger - played to incandescent perfection by one of the great character actors in TV history who is none other than John Slattery? Will Roger be back?

I haven't seen the new season opener yet, but I'm worried about Rog, with his bad ticker and doomed personality, much as Victor Lang was doomed to be offed by a fence post in "Desperate Housewives." I just can't see this show without Slattery. I don't WANT to see it without him. He's the core of the show - the man who believes the lie and lives the lie and has perfected the lie. To Roger, a lie is the truth, and Slattery has captured this alternate universe aspect of his character so perfectly that when he's on screen, the whole show tilts visibly and forcibly in his direction. Please, Matthew. Please tell me Rog is OK.

How are you gonna incorporate black characters on the show this season?

You spoke of this, I guess, in that NYTimes piece or maybe somewhere else - I don't remember where. But this is the '60s - not to point out the obvious - and not 2008. I think I counted two black characters last season. The elevator operator and the janitor who glanced - in shock and amusement - at the silhouette of Peggy's foot during the scene that, umm, yielded the baby. Peggy ultimately got her promotion because she understood female products, like that weight-loss-vibrator-sex-device. Will a black character be developed in a similar way?

(Pix courtesy of AMC.)