I am more familiar with "The Sopranos" playbook, as I can only commit "emotionally" to one or two serial dramas at a time. They take too much out of me.

From what I've seen of SFU, it went a bit "wilder" than "The Sopranos" in terms of off-the-deep-end material, though last night's "Mad Men" ended up a rather weird and nasty affair, so maybe that playbook is also being followed.

"Mad Men" follows the workplace-home-snappy patter true line of "The West Wing" (what a "workplace", though), though "The West Wing" was constrained by network TV standards in a way that "Mad Men" is not.

Still, "Mad Men" isn't granted HBO/Showtime candor.

Still yet, Don Draper's final physical assault/negotiation on the comic's wife was certainly pushing it, basic cable-wise.

The episode was so heavy that Slattery's interlude of dealing with Harry and his raise was like a smile-injection moment. Great initial camera angle on Roger at his desk, spectacles on and huge distance to him from Harry.

I also had great regard for the sequence in which the men sequentially blamed each other for the debacle with the sponsor and his wife.

The sponsor and his corpulent wife and the danger of joking about her rather reminded me of the Johnny Sack and fat wife scenarios on "The Sopranos," btw.

And: "Sack" isn't two far removed from "Duck": in both series, these men started out as non-confrontational associates of the anti-hero (Tony, Don)...but Sack became a major foe and Duck is shaping up that way.

Last week Duck told Don: "You thought you'd do a great job for a small airline and the big airline would say "we want that guy", well it didn't play out that way!" On Duck's challenge to Don's "wunderkind" status, Don advanced and Roger put up a cautioning hand: "Easy...." Duck's plan -- sell out an existing little client and pimp out the death of Pete's father -- provides an interesting moral conflict with Don's "talent wins" approach.