Until age 16, all I wanted to be when I grew up was an Olympic equestrian. I'd muck stalls, study horse parasites, ride four hours a day, lug hay bales, scrub sweat-crusted bridles, bandage wounds, and wake up while the sun was still asleep -- all for a sport I...

Last night's episode was the most compelling of the season; provocative without being tawdry. Bookended from Sally's POV, we see the little girl not only thrust into the adult world of dirty deeds (walking in on Roger [her "date"] getting head from Megan's mother) but also that the lies start...

Message to The Walking Dead writers: Keep Shooting Children PLEASE! Not because I'm a mean old hag that loves luring them to my confectionary apartment, but because it's fiction unafraid to provoke.

I've been enjoying this season's more contemplative pace as the follow-up to the first season's...

The Walking Dead premiered its second season Sunday night. The rotting chased the living. Juicy sound effects accompany dismemberment. A search party finds a church instead of a missing child.

Zombies and the Judeo-Christian apocalypse share a blatant parallel -- the resurrection of the dead. In contrast...

My problem isn't a weak body -- it's a stubborn mind. I still think I should train hard for the upcoming New York City Marathon. With each new injury begetting a new limitation, my goals continue to whittle down to simply finishing the marathon -- the same goal I had...

One of my favorite storytelling devices is the use of the countdown. The characters must resolve whatever conflict by a certain deadline, the stakes get higher and more complicated and thus, the story becomes more riveting. Whether it's Gary Cooper's Will Kane facing Frank Miller in High Noon or disarming...

Janet Turley is running the ING-New York City Marathon on November 6, 2011.

It was sometime when the needle stuck in my metatarsal joint, filling it with cortisone, that I blurted "maybe I should pick another sport." It's week two of marathon training, and...

Jani Lane, frontman of the eighties glam rock band Warrant with his palomino locks and bulging eyes, was found dead yesterday at the age of 47. And I'm a bit saddened because I've got an indelible nostalgic spot for hair metal. While most kids can cite the Beatles or Nirvana...

Fresh starts bring back a renewed sense of the possible once the old ways have exhausted their potentialities and have become weighted with complications. It's a season finale of the age-old contradiction of the end of something bringing the beginning of another. Don Draper meandered throughout the season trying on...

Addiction is the dominant theme in this episode. It weaves its predatory way through SCDP's decline, Midge's heroin habit, and even Glenn and Sally when he offers her a cigarette.

SCDP is having no luck drumming up new business because prospective clients smell their desperation and fear the agency...

Work and family often vie for our time. The episode Chinese Wall showcases how business always seems to win in the battle between personal and professional lives. The most intimate of personal events, a birth and a death, both happen off-screen and throughout the episode both events become platforms for...

The thing with moral dilemmas is neither choice is without consequence. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, so the saying goes. Sometimes you have to sacrifice what's good for you, what you've worked for, or who you love all for the sake of someone else's desires. In...

As we approach the season finale, episode 9 functions as a lily pad for season-ending drama. Situational chess pieces are shifting around, setting up professional and personal alliances and tensions. Not that it's been a dull ride -- so far we've had sado-masochism, a masturbating child, some arrogant young schmuck...

"When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him," Don's voiceover says. One can't outrun the past -- it's our lifelong, constant companion. But we can try to change its shape by changing ourselves.

After a season half-full of being a self-pitying, fall-down drunk, Don's...

We're about halfway through Season 4 and "The Suitcase" focuses on the show's most functional couple -- Peggy and Don. And of course when the episode opens with tickets for the historic prizefight between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali, we're in for a show full of confrontation.

Leave it to Mad Men to schedule an awards show during the Emmys. Coincidence? Definitely not.

Identity continues to weave its way through the season. Don, the ultimate charlatan, is imploding under his identity crisis. He's so drunk throughout most of the episode that he becomes unconscious of his...

Ah, an episode rife with conflict! Sweet interpersonal, intercultural, intergenerational conflict.

We have the war of Guilt vs. Shame -- "A man is shamed by being openly ridiculed and rejected. It requires an audience," Don quotes from The Chrysthanemum and the Sword. Full disclosure -- I've never read the...

We're back to the daily grind at SCDP, and I'm grateful that the writers decided to put the characters back in the office without the holiday sentimentality. Now we can find the significance within the mundane.

This week focuses on Pete and Peggy's developing lives and diverging trajectories. I enjoy...

En route for a New Year's getaway to Alcapulco, Don stops in LA to spend time as Dick Whitman. Anna Draper welcomes him into her home, giving him the perfect relationship where he can come and go as he pleases, and always receiving...

First up -- thanks for the encouraging feedback from last week's post. I'll continue to blog weekly with my two cents on certain themes within the show and look forward to reading comments. And now onto it!

"What I want versus what's...