Mad Men began its third season on AMC last night, with Don Draper (Jon Hamm) taking a sexually charged business trip and cavorting with a stewardess (that's what they called flight attendants in the '60s.) When he gets back to work, he's going to face some morally challenging new jobs this year.

"He basically sees what the aerospace industry is turning into," Hamm said. "It is essentially a war industry and a military defense industry. And he realizes that his job will essentially be selling people on nuclear war. That's what he's going to be pitching and I think that lands on a guy like Don. It sits kind of heavy. That turns into, 'What am I doing with my life? What's important to me? What am I really doing?'"

A master ad man like Don Draper certainly could sell nuclear war, but as with most issues on Mad Men, the show won't take the simple way out. "Sure, but I think with anything, you could write a story or something that maybe would be detrimental to a friend of yours or someone you knew or whatever, but you have to go through that process of like, 'How much of myself am I giving away by doing this?' And I think that's basically what Don's journey to California was. What is important to me? What do I care about? Who am I? And I think at the end of it, he realized what was really important to him was his family and his life that he's created, literally, out of whole cloth. Of course, he goes back, it's in a shambles and he has to work to rebuild it, but that's part of the deal."

Outside the office, expect to see Draper try to reassemble his broken family. "I think he realizes that going away isn't the answer all the time. I think what he really needed was to be grounded and to really stay and to really be who he is. I think that's what he had with Anna. When he went back to Anna Draper and said, 'Anna, I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing. Help me.' And I think she did."



Mad Men airs Sunday nights at 10 on AMC.

Story/Interview by Fred Topel

Starpulse contributing writer

(Starpulse in Hollywood): Every week, Hollywood's biggest stars are meeting in the hot spots and Starpulse is there.