The West Wing, of course.

You left off "Friday Night Lights".

What those guys said. Plus ... The Sopranos, the early seasons of ER and Weeds; The Wire and Treme; Deadwood and John from Cincinatti; recently ... The Good Wife on CBS. And In Treatment on HBO.

I have to confess to being a Firefly fangirl. Big time. So, Joss Whedon.

I rearranged the wording a bit to bring the following ideas into relief.

"Why on earth do people call it a satire? Why is its real subject commonly assumed to be the 1960s when its governing metaphor is authenticity? If Don Draper has no idea what he really thinks and feels, who does? Who exactly are these people? And is anything they say or do real – to themselves, or to us?"

To me, this is the crux of the story of Mad Men, but it is not so personal as overarching in its question what is this society? I think Mad Men will play out in a way that will inform us today about where we came from and what changes have separated us completely from the post-war mindset.

By concentrating on an advertising agency, the writers of Mad Men avoid many of the previous metaphors of conformity and dig into the source of those metaphors. The characters are people who must eventually bridge two or even three worlds. Don Draper has a past self, a 'present' self, and a future self (since the audience knows this guy is their dad). He'd be in his eighties now. Who is he in 2010? Does he understand the changes better than the rest of us? Or has he been buried by them?

This is heavy stuff. No other TV show except the Simpsons has had such a breadth of vision that it means something to everyone, but Mad Men before it finishes its run may come close to defining what it means to be North American.