Mad Men Power Rankings, Week 9: 'When I Say I Want The Moon, I Expect The Moon'

It's hard to believe we're already nine weeks deep into the third season of Mad Men. In the words of some filthy hippie at whom Don Draper would sneer while taking a meaningful drag off his cigarette, "What a long, strange trip it's been." Hit the jump for this week's Power Rankings, which feature the (not so) triumphant return of Sal, and the conspicuous (if temporary) disappearance of several of our most beloved characters:

1. Don Draper (even) Last week: 1

Do you know what we secretly love? When Don, lashing out because a toxic combination of professional disappointment and personal frustration finally boil over, cuts off his employees at the knees, reminding them who's really the big, swingin' dick at Sterling Cooper. (At least in weeks where he isn't being blackmailed into contractual servitude by his boss.) Early on in last night's episode, as his team pitched him ideas for the Hilton campaign, patellas splintered as Don battered them with his underling-hobbling member, telling Kurt, whose apparent Berlitz crash-course work is making him somewhat comprehensible, "Now that I can finally understand you, I'm less impressed with what you have to say," before striking the entire group with, "I want to see work as you think of it. Give me more ideas to reject. I can't do this all by myself." Such abuse doesn't approach the verbal savaging he gave Peggy two weeks ago ("You're good. Get better. Stop asking for things. Close the door"), an assessment so brutally effective that corporate performance reviews will likely end with that phrase for years to come, but it's nonetheless satisfying to watch Don swat his too-eager ad-puppies on the nose with a rolled-up NY Times as they nibbled his favorite slippers.

Decidedly less enjoyable was Draper's belittling pow-wow with the embattled Sal, but that unfortunate "you people" business will be covered a little further down the rankings.

Don Draper Fingerbang Threat Level: Low

Did you think it was Miss Farrell who was going to wind up wriggling uncomfortably, ecstatically in Don Draper's ladyflower-wilting grip? The window during which Don may have digitally subjugated the teacher seems to have closed, so he was forced to escalate this bored-cat-and-mouthy-mouse game they've been playing directly to the "showing up unannounced at her apartment over a garage, demanding satisfaction, and after some obligatory verbal foreplay, totally getting it on" stage. This gambit, of course, worked. For a forceful cocksman like Don, teachers are really not that much harder to seduce than cigarette girls, stewardesses, or postal workers.

No, this week it was father-figure/crazy person/lunar pioneer Connie Hilton who was most in danger of having his genital shoreline stormed by Don Draper's finger-infantry. After seducing him with that boozy "you're a son to me, no, better than a son, sons are awful, spoiled brats who are always tryin' to steal me gold!" speech, then withdrawing his pseudopaternal love when Don quite literally failed to deliver him the moon, an unimpressed Connie practically dared those deadly Draper fingers to get all up inside him and take their best shot at his naughtyparts. Don, however, despite bristling at the old man's cutting dismissal of what was a rather inspired campaign, could not unsheathe his weapons of mass penetration. Once Connie came at him with that terrible, hurtful line, "What do you want from me, love?" his twitching fingers relaxed, because it was no longer the hotel magnate before him, but the moonshine-guzzling Pappy Whitman, cackling at the softness of his no-good kid's bullshit-cultivating hands. As upset he was at the disparagement of his work and the sudden emotional abandonment by his stand-in Dad, Don wasn't going to succumb to the Freudian nightmare that is finger-blasting one's own father. He's got enough shit going on as it is.

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