'Mad Men' recap: 'Lady Lazarus' explores sex and death

"Mad Men" just gets trickier and trickier, evolving and developing its theme like a complex novel that refuses to let you bail out by (say) chapter seven, at the risk of then never being able to put the puzzle together.

And so we come to Sunday night's "Lady Lazarus," referring to the 1962 Sylvia Plath poem, which instantly places this episode in the context of death -- death and suicide, this being Plath -- and the Holocaust.

The poem is about a woman who arises, Phoenix-like, to consume "men" so that they will never be able to revive her again, in a death camp.

Or something like that.

Any Plath scholars out there? Your input is welcome.

But this is the point of this episode: Sex and death and rebirth, and the great cycle of life that our little band of characters find themselves in. For some wacky reason, I kept thinking of the Woody Allen line: The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.

Linking sex and death -- and the linkage is inescapable in "Mad Men" -- has been a long theme here, but Sundaynight we moved it along a bit further.

Don's and Pete's existential -- sorry, hate the pretentious word but it does seem to apply here -- isolation becomes ever more pronounced, evidenced in particular by three wonderful scenes: Pete, alone, waiting for his paramour to arrive (she does not); Don, staring down the empty abyss of an elevator shaft; and Don, striding through the empty apartment -- and the episode's conclusion -- drink in hand.

Sex and death. So where's the rebirth? That was the ironic kicker, I believe, with the John Lennon song, " Turn off your mind relax and float down stream It is not dying, it is not dying... And ignorance and hate mourn the dead It is believing, it is believing/ But listen to the colour of your dreams It is not leaving, it is not leaving/ So play the game "Existence" to the end Of the beginning, of the beginning..

Don turns off the record in disgust.

 Contrast this with the closing lines of "Lady Lazarus:"

OK, let's break it down: