Just as we'd suspected, Mad Men's Sal Romano (played by Bryan Batt) won't be returning to the brown, bedroom-flanked corridors of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce for season four. Don Draper's gruff dismissal of Sal's emerging homosexuality culminated with the character's firing, and now one of the most provocative players on the show is gone without fanfare. Mad Men has eliminated excellent roles before their time in the past, and now we honor three sullen presences whose stints in bitchin' cinematography ended without fitting resolve.
Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff)
Don's most intriguing sexual conquest remains Rachel Menken, the wealthy storeowner's daughter from season one who was both his intellectual superior and romantic slave. After an instance when Don fled to her house and proposed -- in one of his patented "I start life anew now" blitzes -- they run off together, Rachel talked sense into him, pitied her own feelings, and soon found herself brushing past Don at a restaurant without much acknowledgment. Not only was Rachel a seductive (and beautiful) screen presence, but she's had some of the best dialogue in the show's history. Ahem: "They taught us at Barnard about that word, 'utopia.' The Greeks had two meaning for it: 'eu-topos,' meaning the good place, and 'u-topos,' meaning the place that cannot be."
Father Gill (Colin Hanks)
The guitar-playing, mildly progressive priest from season two "prayed" for Peggy Olson's soul a lot. This may have to do with Gill being the horniest character in Mad Men history. It's all bubbling under. Or over, several times a day. (Man of the cloth, indeed?) He may not have appreciated Peggy's flier ideas, but this provocative young presence's arc seemed destined to prove more than what it did -- that Peggy didn't want a savior. Hopefully we'll see him again in an episode entitled Vatican II: Back in the Habit.
Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler)
Has there been a better character on Mad Men? This old-timey comedian and unrepentant misogynist, who once excoriated a company president's wife to her face for being overweight, ended up flaying Don after realizing he slept with his wife, Bobbie. Behold, the most succinct appraisal of Mr. Draper yet: "You don't screw another man's wife. You're garbage, and you know it." Though that storyline ended with quite a punch (heh), Jimmy's exit from our lives was not so climactic. Come back to us, you moral roller coaster of a man!