My favorite season of the show thus far, and also the one that most feels like a complete picture of what it’s really all about. Never before have these characters been so wholly visible to us, all the episodes before having brought us startling clarity, and what we’re given next is a rollercoaster filled to the brim with character dissection and emotional nuance. Matching the dark tone of season 4, and at times even exceeding it, Mad Men’s fifth season only works is to bring us deeper into the wicked world of advertising. The show has always questioned the type of people who work in this environment, but it’s never been to this degree of transparency. Toying around with everyone with all of its ever watchable stylistic tricks, the developments here only heighten the character drama. The show knows what we know, and thus when it fully coalesces into joy or tragedy, it comes with true weight and a strike to the heart, never to be recovered from again. It’s all the things that make the show so great at their highest. I say this with no hesitation, a masterpiece.