Don Draper

Did Don Draper cheat on Megan? You get an answer, but it is far from the point of the episode. "The Doorway," the good-but-not-great, often poetic (but also often very slow moving) Season 6 premiere is not an exuberant return. The action is often very detailed, very muted, very dark. But after a not-the-best Season 5, it was wonderful to see "Mad Men" become a bit more nuanced with its characters and the themes it has often explored: the various types of masks people wear, if people are stuck in their lives or can change.

It's time to meet the really, really bad parents. Look, no mom and dad are perfect. They make mistakes. They miss ball games. But Megan Draper's folks (played by guest stars Ronald Guttman and Julia Ormond. Julia freaking Ormond) fight loudly in French, cheat at an American Cancer Society Ball and basically make their daughter feel like crap. Also making her daughter feel like crap, in a particularly non-French but more brutal way, is Peggy's mom. Sigh. I want to give my parents a call and just have them say something nice to me. Lets start with Megan folks, who are visiting from Montreal (yet have really, really, really French accents)

WELCOME BACK Real Time with Bill Maher returns to HBO tonight just in time for one of the country's most daring political comedians to share his thoughts on the Democratic and Republican conventions. No one on mainstream TV goes where Maher does, and the medium is better for it. Maher's show will air weekly through the November election. No preview available. (11 tonight, HBO) GET MAD ON SUNDAY Mad Men is on a terrific run. The past two episodes ended in scenes set in the home of Madison Avenue ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm)

The Starter Wife, a hit cable miniseries that garnered 10 Emmy nominations, arrives tonight as a weekly series on USA. Debra Messing reprises her role as Molly Kagan, ex-wife of a show-biz mogul forced to navigate the shark-infested straits of Hollywood with only a little help from a few select friends and a 7-year-old daughter. One of the friends is played by the divine Judy Davis, who won an Emmy for her work in the miniseries and, happily, has signed on for the season. (9 tonight, USA)

Finally, Baltimore gets a chance to look good on prime time TV - and it's on the most stylish and honored drama on television no less. It's the Baltimore of the 1960s, unfortunately, not Baltimore today. But nevertheless, Baltimore is featured prominently in the Aug. 16 premiere episode of Season 3 of AMC's Mad Men, last year's winner of the Emmy as the best drama on television. And what viewers will see of the city - from Haussner's restaurant to the Belvedere Hotel - makes Baltimore look like a first-rate East Coast urban center with good hotels, restaurants, night life and thriving businesses.

Advertising executive Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is having health concerns and a sudden problem in bed. His strikingly beautiful wife, Betty Draper (January Jones), meanwhile, is feeling feminist Betty Friedan's "nameless aching discontent" worse than ever in their suburban Connecticut life, and has taken up horseback riding and flirting with strangers to try and fill the void. Copywriter Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) has a most unwelcome office mate, as well as a host of problems in her new role as unwed mother.

Let's get one thing clear from the start: I love "Mad Men," and this stylish series about life on Madison Avenue in the 1960s is by far the best drama on television. It's steeped in authentic period detail while still speaking more eloquently than any other TV drama to America today. But there is historical detail, and then there is historical detail. And when it comes to keepers of the historical flame in Baltimore, this is a city that loves its past and can be downright picky about it. "Mad Men" opens Season 3 tonight at 10 on AMC with a business trip to Baltimore.

One thinks of that scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where Toto pulls back the curtain and the "great and powerful Oz" is revealed to be only an old man manipulating a smoke and fire machine. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" bellows the Wizard as the man tries to pull the covering back into place. One suspects that if he were not reposing in a watery grave just now, Osama bin Laden would be doing something very similar. After all, in the two months since Navy SEALs killed him in a raid, American officials have released a series of revelations deeply unflattering to his image as a terrorist mastermind.