Starting Five

1. Don Juan

The last season of Mad Men opens with Don sexing up a TWA stewardess, a waitress at a diner and an unnamed brunette. No wonder he requires so many naps.

Also, Joan and Peggy take a ride in the “Elevator of Truth,” as both women let their panty hose down and air it out. Peggy: You’re built like a bimbo, so of course you dress like one to get ahead. Joan: You’re not, so you don’t. Ouch, babes.

Don seems more lost than ever –no appearances by Betty or Sally in this episode–but at least he hasn’t followed the lead of Roger Sterling and Teddy Chaogh and grown a hideous mustache. Here’s hoping SCDP lands the Gillette account soon.

I think we’re in 1970, so Matt Weiner chose to bypass Woodstock (granted, you’d need a few extras) and the Manson family. Bummer.

Peggy’s Lee’s Is That All There Is is an inspired choice. The partners now all have money, but who’s really happy?

The actor playing Peggy’s date is the guy who had the frizzy hair and had the huge cruch on Angela Chase in My So-Called Life (Brian Krakow was the character).

The opening scene was perfection (and who was that minx in the mink?). If you notice, Mad Men does this occasionally: Don is in the scene with other men and one woman, but the camera does not reveal other men immediately (see: last season’s finale in the hotel room with Peggy, Pete and Harry as they are watching the moon landing). The point is simple: when Don Draper’s in the room with a female, no other male exists.

Roger Sterling (John Slattery) had few scenes but still had the line of the night. “I supposed I’ll have to drop one of you off….I’ll let you decide.”

Finally, you did get that the waitress assumed Don was cashing in on Roger’s $100 tip, right? As a recently retired server, I never surrendered my honor for less than $75.

Alan Sepinwall’s review.…

2. “Fear that Nabob!”

Following a thrilling and scintillating national semifinal between Kentucky and Wisconsin –that was at most a minor upset– the big story was not the game but the three-word imperative sentence uttered by Kentucky guard Andrew Harrison.

The Wildcat player thought that only a teammate or two would hear his utterance, as he shielded his mouth with a hand, but the mic picked up the words. There was no question to it, the only question was how much mileage Jason Whitlock will get out of America’s latest sports-racism firestorm.

My six cents: It’s not the words themselves, it’s the culture that produces all that hostility. The contrast between Harrison’s words and the loose and happy Wisconsin team, as plays out at press conferences, is jarring.

What I see all too often in African-American culture in sports is a feeling that getting respect trumps most everything. Certainly it trumps sportsmanship. And mostly, you get respect by winning. Please don’t try to tell me that Harrison was anything but pissed in that moment, and that perhaps he was even more pissed that a team of white guys stole his chance at respect, and that his only reaction was not to be gracious at all but rather to emote as if something rightfully his had been taken from him.

I get it: your perfect season blew up not 15 minutes earlier. You have a right to be upset. You don’t have a right to be angry at the team that was responsible for that moment.

3. Rolling Stone: How Does It Feel?

If you have the time, read this detailed report of all the ways that Rolling Stone failed to adhere to Journalism 101 in its catastrophe of a report on the alleged rape at UVA.

Two things: 1) Aaron Sorkin spent the entire second season of The Newsroom giving media members a tutorial/cautionary tale on fact-checking (“red team, white team”) but it appears nobody watched or paid attention. And, for all the grief he took about Season 3’s episode that dealt with campus rape, he was spot-on, as this Rolling Stone debacle shows.

2) There’s actually a movie, Almost Famous, in which a key scene involves a Rolling Stone fact-checker taking a dump on a young writer’s story for his failure to be factually accurate. The irony is that William Miller did have his facts straight. What would Ben Fong Torres think?

4. Roam, If You Want To…

If you have $74,000 burning a hole in your pocket (as so many of this blog’s readers do) and 24 days to kill, why not embark on a magical mystery tour with National Geographic Expeditions that encompasses five continents and will cover the following: Macchu Piccu, Easter Island, the Great Barrier Reef, Angkor Wat (Tern down for Wat!), Tibet, the Taj Majal, the Serengeti, the Lost City of Petra (Jordan), and Marrakech. Begin and end in Washington, D.C.

5. Cristiano Has Risen

On Easter Sunday in Madrid, the capital of a fairly Catholic nation (the Jesuits began here, after all), Cristiano Ronaldo scores FIVE goals as Real Madrid rout the last-place team in La Liga, Granada, 9-1. Ronaldo’s masterpiece included an eight-minute hat trick, three goals scored in the first half between the 30th and 38th minutes. Here’s video of all five goals.

It was Ronaldo’s first career five-goal game, and with it he wrested the goals scored lead away from FC Barcelona’s Lionel Messi (36 to 32). One of them is the world’s best player. You can argue all you want about which one is, but both of them are playing on another planet.

Of the 98 clubs in Europe’s five premier leagues (Spain, Germany, England, Italy, France), Ronaldo has scored more goals this season than 53 of

Music 101

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

This 1969 tune by The Band, written by Robbie Robertson and sung by drummer Levon Helm, is not just music history; it’s American history. It belongs in any anthology of Civil War literature or American poetry. Both this song, an elegy to the final days of the Confederacy, and The Weight appear on the album Music From the Big Pink. That’s a pretty decent one-two punch. The video below, from the 1976 film The Last Waltz, marks the final time that Helm would ever sing the song publicly. Helm, an Arkansas native who made his home in Woodstock, N.Y., died three years ago this month.

Remote Patrol

Duke vs. Wisconsin

9:18 p.m. CBS

There are those who consider this a let-down game because Kentucky lost and won’t face Duke. I don’t know what those people are smoking. These were consistently the two best teams all season and this guy (thumbs pointing to nipples) regularly said that they and Kentucky were a cut above the rest. You’ve got the POY PTPers, Jahlil Okafor of Duke and Frank Kaminsky of Wisconsin, and then you have their teammates whom I think may actually be better-suited to the NBA: Sam Dekker and Justise Winslow.

There are no villains here; just two terrific teams coached by a pair of men in their late sixties–and yes, Coach K is older than Bo Ryan.

Better Call Saul

10 p.m. AMC

Season finale of AMC’s Rookie of the Year program. Last week’s finish smelled like a season finale, as Jimmy learns –through his own intuition and sleuthing–that it was his big brother/hero, Chuck, who had betrayed him. Bob Odenkirk has carried this show with aplomb, which I did not expect.