Mad Men ended its fourth season tonight with a typically spellbinding episode, an Old Fashioned-drenched and smoke-shrouded punch to the gut that left no doubt as to the best show currently on television.

Perhaps what makes Don Draper so compelling a character is that he has all the attributes we wish we had, and each and every one of the traits that we wish we hadn’t. He walks like you want to walk, he talks like you want to talk, he looks like you want to look. But Superman is nobody’s favorite superhero… a flawless and invincible hero is neither compelling nor relatable. So Draper struggles with his drink, he beds the wrong girls, he says nothing when you want him to speak and he says too much when you want him to shut up. He’s the man we want to be even while he does the things we wish we hadn’t.

Maybe this is why Mad Men stands in such marked contrast to HBO’s most recent effort, Boardwalk Empire.  Where it’s all too easy to project ourselves into Don Draper (or into his arms, for our female readers), Nucky Thompson is… what? Played by Steve Buscemi, he’s not the physical specimen we all want to see in the mirror, and he’s (as yet) no hooker with a heart of gold.  Where Don Draper baptises himself in the ocean in the penultimate episode of Season Two, rinsing away the sins (however temporarily) of a flawed life, Nucky Thompson stands almost untouched by the water in the title credits of every episode of Boardwalk Empire.

It’s that baptism which makes us want to be Don. Don isn’t perfect, but he wants to be better than he is. Nobody likes an unrepentant asshole, but anyone who watches an accidental asshole bumbling against the slings and arrows of cruel fate and doesn’t feel the uncomfortable itch of familiarity needs to do more self-reflection.

Betts, Don’s long-suffering ex-wife, has been a completely unsympathetic character for the better part of a season.  Tonight, she took a step back towards the “good guys.”  We saw this with Pete Campbell in Season One, an insufferable prick who somehow grew into respectability over the course of a season and a half.  Who doesn’t love a redemption story? I think that’s what keeps me coming back to this show: without redemption, and I mean personal and not spiritual redemption, each of us suffocates under a pile of errors, flaws, slights, ill-conceived jokes and grievous misstatements until we’re alone, bitter, and surrounded by hoarded cats.

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