It’s election day…

…up north, at least. Voters are forging through blustery stormy weather (in Saskatchewan, at least) to cast their ballots for the next Prime Minister of Canada. Not directly, of course. Canadians never get to vote for their leader. It’s a trickle-up system. You elect your MP (member of parliament) and he who at the end of the day leads the most elected MPs becomes Prime Minister—assuming he also won his own MP position. You see, the Prime Minister is also a Member of Parliament representing a specific constituency. If he loses his local election, then someone usually volunteers to step down in a “safe” riding and a by-election is held to get the PM the right to sit in parliament.

Mad Men was interesting this week. The young woman who seduced Don away from his aerospace meetings (“I’m Joy,” she said, and it sounded more like a character attribute than a name) may have been reading Faulkner (and what’s she going to think when she gets to the end to find the last page missing?) but the story felt more like F. Scott Fitzgerald, as the rich young playthings floated from one destination to the next without aim or purpose. “I like professions,” one says. “Maybe I should get one.” I’m very curious to find out who he called, identifying himself not as Don Draper, but by his original name, known to few.

Duck’s gambit (that would be a good name for a novel or a rock group) is also an interesting one. Did he sell his soul (by drinking again after some period on the wagon) to forward his moribund career? And I thought the bit with the self-proclaimed European “homosexual” (I don’t think that means what you think it means, one of the ad men advises) was funny, especially with the closeted gay ad man lingering in the corner of all of those shots, drawing our attention to see how he reacts. You could almost see the envy in his face, wishing he could proclaim himself as artlessly. Poor Peggy, always choosing the wrong guys. And Pete, trying to generate some interest at poolside only to be totally ignored.

Samantha Who? is back, and treading exactly no new territory. Okay, so we discovered that amnesiacs lose not only memories but physical skills, but beyond that, nada. The show is dangerously close to becoming mired in a rut. I did like How I Met Your Mother, though, as the Friends-like group teetered on the verge of inertia, then seemed to shake it off, only to have the flash forward reveal that perhaps not much has changed a year later after all. The interventions were pretty funny.