Craig Blankenhorn
BEST
8. MAD MEN (AMC)
Flannel-suited men swirling amber drinks. Emerald liqueur sloshing in the watercooler. Full skirts wobbling like bells. Set in the ad industry circa 1960, Mad Men is packed with suitably seductive images. But those pretty pictures are hollow: That dashing exec is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who reinvented himself past recognition, and that pert blonde is his wife, Betty (January Jones), whose desperate bid to be a happy housewife is undoing her. By season's end, she's holding the mittened hand of a little neighbor boy, begging him, ''Tell me I'll be okay.'' Mad Men makes a convincing case for the art of the lie.
