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"What the hell went on here this weekend? Half of this work is gibberish. Chevy is spelled wrong!"

- Ted Chaough

"Are we Negroes?"

- Bobby Draper

See the USA, in your Chevrolet! See, nothing to it.

Kenny Cosgrove doesn't think so. After The Crash of the title (okay, yeah, there's some later symbolism involved), caused by drunken Chevy execs blinding him as he careens down the road in the new Impala, the even-keeled exec is back at the still unnamed new SCDPCGC agency with bad news. Chevy is the client from Hell! They don't like any of the ad work and their process is interminable.

But when he gets a shot of, ah, "energy serum" from a smarmy Manhattan Dr. Feelgood, Kenny gets a new lease on life. Despite the cane, he's tap dancing away in Don Draper's outer office!

Beware of spoilers, as always, and here's an archive of my pieces on the show, in The Mad Men File.

Season 2's slinky cool The Jet Set has been definitively dethroned as Mad Men's kookiest episode ever. (Yes, kookier than the Roger Sterling takes acid episode, which I found rather stagey and firmly entrenched in place.) We've gone from time out of mind to out of mind time. While The Jet Set, a controversial California-set episode filled with sexy expat jet-setters, was, in my view, tres cool, this is more in the line of tres mess. But if one avoids becoming irritated by the repetitious EngLit symbology, it's quite entertaining.

After the Michael Kuzak guy -- that's Harry Hamlin's character, whose name I can't recall so I think of him as the old lead in LA Law -- brings in Dr. Feelgood for injections of special vitamins, really speed and some other stuff, all sorts of hijinks ensue. It's daffy, it's moving, it's ... A Mad, Mad, Mad, World, er, Office.

We learn that Stan the furry ad man is pretty good at running the office obstacle course and Michael Ginsu Knife Ginsberg is a really bad knife thrower. And that Ginzo doesn't like to get stoned. He and Peggy are the only creatives who stay sober. This is information that does not grow on trees, my friends.

But of course, while the hijinks are entertaining, what really matters is the existential drama of Don Draper. Because, well, because it almost always does.

Cutting through all the flashbacks, yada yada symbolism, and quirky EngLit touches, we learn that Don's odd seeming obsession with less than fascinating Sylvia -- who has the same beauty mark as the brothel house gal who nursed him back to health and relieved him of his virginity and sparked a beating with a ladle from his hated step-mother and please make this stop -- is really about his not so odd all too real obsession with himself. Interpreted, a bit endlessly in Mad Men, through his troubled relationship with the maternal. (See last week's discussion of The Last Picture Show.)

He kind of stalks his now ex-inamorata, despite the fact that he not all that subconsciously forced her to break things off with him in the last episode. Then the fever breaks, and he doesn't care. Good. I don't, either.

Meanwhile, the very spiffy, bright, and adorable Megan is being as supportive and charming as ever, not that he notices. Boo hiss, Don Draper, you bad man, you.

Have I mentioned that Don Draper is a troubled guy, yet?

Our Don Juan is on the verge of becoming Don Yawn.

But I prefer to attribute it all to drugs accentuating the whatever we want to accentuate in each character rather than the suspicion that this is an extended meditation on No Exit in which Hell is not other people, just our anti-heroic protagonist.

What literally put Don on the floor, just as he was coming down off his 72-hour amphetamine high, was walking into his fab flat to find the cops and a family council.

While he was off mostly amusingly obsessing in lieu of brainstorming about Chevy, and Megan was off networking on Broadway to promote her burgeoning acting career, a mini-skirted young Sally Draper was in charge of her two kid brothers. All went well till she woke up in the middle of the night to find an overweight African American woman in the home. Who promptly introduced herself as "your Grandma Ida."

As she continues rifling the place for goods -- she's a burglar and con artist -- "Grandma Ida" has just enough game, and Sally has just enough ignorance about her dad, for her story not to be utterly preposterous to the savvy but still learning tweener.

Sally finally figures it out, but not quite fast enough to prevent her would-be gran's getaway.

It's a delicious sequence, right on the knife's edge between funny and scary.

And it serves to further re-introduce Betty Draper Francis. She is again babelicious Betty, back to her fighting weight. And she's blonde again, yet another sign that she is back in the game now that Henry Francis, one-time deputy mayor to glamorous New York Mayor John Lindsay and senior advisor to mega-rich New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, is pursuing his own political career. (Why Betty would let herself go while being part of a glamorous New York scene, which we have oddly never seen, is a mystery for another time.)

But she has that certain nasty edge, perhaps as a result of the diet and exercise, saying early in the ep that Sally earned her cool new miniskirt "on a street corner" and later making a "casting couch" crack right to Megan's face.

I'm afraid that the Team Betty faction of fandom will be in defense mode the rest of the season.

Only a little history pierces through the druggy haze of the episode.

Stan's cousin, a Navy sailor I believe we met at a swanky Draper soiree, was killed in Vietnam. He was 20 years old, probably serving inland on a small river patrol boat, though the show doesn't make this clear to viewers who may wonder how someone serving on a ship at sea could be killed in a guerrilla war. That he uses this sad tale to try to convince his pal Peggy that this is the moment for some office sex shows that, well, I don't know what. Time is up for thinking about Mad Men this week.

Next week on Mad Men? The Better Half. In which Roger is tormented by a recurring dream and this week's unseen Joan goes to the beach. Don't forget the sunscreen, Red.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

William Bradley Huffington Post Archive

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Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 3, Episode 8 of HBO's "Game of Thrones," titled "Second Sons."

"Ambitious climbers never want to stay on the second highest rung." -- Cersei Lannister

There aren't any runner-ups in the game of thrones. You win, or you die -- or so we've heard. This week's episode, "Second Sons," focuses on the ambitions of those who haven't yet reached the heights they seek -- Tyrion Lannister (a second son) marries Sansa Stark, in a drunk blaze, while Gendry's blood is used to advance the fortunes of another second son, Stannis Baratheon. Meanwhile, Arya continues her captivity at the hands of the Hound (a second son), Daenerys Targaryen wins the support of the mercenary band, the Second Sons, and Samwell Tarly encounters -- and defeats! -- a blue-eyed Other.

The Power Rankings
Using a complex algorithm that takes into account each player's wealth, military might and dominion over lands, along with a "bonus" factor that adjusts for unquantifiable assets that could influence events, we've surveyed the lay of the land to figure out who is winning the game of thrones after the eighth episode of season three of "Game of Thrones," entitled "Second Sons."

1. Tywin Lannister (Last Episode: 1) Though he's managed to get Tyrion wed, he's more focused on the marriage bed. Watching his imp child get ragingly drunk, Tywin reminds him that he "needs to perform" if he wants a baby in his wife's stomach. Tyrion gets drunker, then tells Sansa he won't share her bed until she wants him there.

"But what if I never want to?" she asks him.

"And so my watch begins," he replies. Tywin may be waiting quite some time.

2. Margaery & Olenna Tyrell (Last Episode: 2) Margaery's charms work less well on the mother than the son. After she tells Cersei how much she's looking forward to being her sister, Cersei tells her the story behind the song, "The Rains of Castamere." House Reyne was the second wealthiest family in Westeros -- just like the Tyrells. But when they rebelled against the Lannisters, "every man, woman and child" was slaughtered and left to rot on the walls for a long summer.

"If you call me sister again I'll have you strangled in your sleep," Cersei tells her soon-to-be daughter- (and sister- !) in-law.

3. Daenerys Targaryen (Last Episode: 3) After the lords of Yunkai have departed, Dany has a meeting with the captains of the Second Sons, a mercenary band who sees her as nothing more than a clothed vagina with a scant 8,000 men. One of them offers to let Dany bear his second sons. Her response: "Give me your Second Sons and I may not have you gelded." The captains plot to have her murdered under the dark of the new moon, but instead, upstart Lieutenant Daario Naharis (a long-haired former whore, if the others are correct) chooses to uphold his personal philosophy, which heralds "the thrill of fucking a woman who wants to be fucked" and "the thrill of killing a man who wants to kill you." Her "beauty" was enough to convince him to turn on his comrades, he tells Dany. "I'm the simplest man you'll ever meet," he promises. "I only do what I want to do." He swears his sword, and his love, to the Dragon Queen.

4. Joffrey Baratheon (Last Episode: 5) The Shithead King is in fine form this episode, standing in as Sansa's father (her own, thanks to him, is not available) and taking away Tyrion's step stool so that Sansa is forced to kneel at his feet for the cloaking ceremony. Later, he takes Sansa aside and tells her sweetly how he will rape her as often as he chooses. But when he tries to initiate the bedding ceremony, Tyrion's had enough and warns him that he'll be "fucking [his] own bride with a wooden cock" if he continues to be such a miserable little wretch.

5. Robb Stark (Last Episode: 4) No Robb in this episode, but it doesn't help the North's cause to have his younger sister (and, in the eyes of many, his heir) married to a Lannister.

Wildcards
These characters are important, but don't make it to the top five in our Power Rankings -- yet.

Cersei Lannister Cersei's been testy with Margaery all season. But this episode, hostilities hit a new peak when Margaery referred to the Queen Regent as "sister." It's not likely Margaery will forget that one when she, not Cersei, is queen.

Nor is Cersei making inroads with her fiance Loras. He approaches her while she's looking out at Blackwater Bay and tries to tell her an anecdote that had been related to him by his father Mace. But she cuts him off. "Nobody cares what your father once told you," she says angrily.

Tyrion Lannister In terms of the balance of power, the most important event this episode was certainly Tyrion's unhappy marriage to Sansa. If the Lannisters win their war against Robb (by no means a given), the wedding will make Tyrion the Lord of Winterfell, securing Lannister preeminence across the vast majority of the country.

But Tyrion's still not happy about it. He knows full well that Sansa doesn't want to marry him. And he doesn't want to marry her. He tries to build a bridge to her, using their mutual distaste for the wedding, saying, "I know how you feel." But she doesn't take the bait, and instead keeps her distance. During the ceremony, he's embarrassed when he can't reach Sansa's shoulders to place his cloak atop them. And afterwards, he drinks enough wine to get utterly wasted, surpassing even the impressive level of inebriation Cersei demonstrated during the Battle of Blackwater last season. Though his father urges moderation, to make sure Tyrion will be able to consummate the wedding, Tyrion is too considerate of Sansa's (and Shae's) feelings to go through with the act once they're alone in their wedding chamber. He tells Sansa that they won't sleep together until she wants to. What a nice boy! But if part of his intent with this gesture was to win Sansa over with his chivalry, she isn't having any of it. "What if I never want to sleep with you?" she asks. Well, then the wedding wouldn't be a real wedding -- and Sansa could get an annulment.

Sansa Stark The character who's suffered the most this season is clearly Theon. But Sansa must be the runner-up. She looks like she's on the verge of tears throughout her entire wedding weekend, despite Tyrion's best efforts at gentlemanliness. That said, it's not necessarily too late for Sansa to have a comeback and take revenge on her enemies. The Tyrells clearly still like her -- and if she and Tyrion can reach some sort of truce, they'll wield enough influence to be a serious threat to Joffrey and Cersei ... not necessarily Tywin, but he'll die sooner or later. Valar morghulis! (The "hakuna matata" of our time?)

Arya Stark Arya's angry enough about having been captured by The Hound that she considers smashing his head in with a big rock. But he senses her presence and talks her out of it -- then reveals that he plans to take her to her brother and mother at the Twins, not back to King's Landing. It seems he's telling the truth when he says there are worse people than him -- even if he's just returning her for the reward the Starks will give him.

Gendry & Melisandre Once these two get to Dragonstone, Melisandre reveals that she intends to slaughter Gendry like a lamb -- but that she wants to make sure he doesn't see the knife coming before she makes the cut. So she plies him with wine, sex and promises of divine preordination. But it seems death isn't in the cards quite yet. Davos Seaworth's objections lead Stannis to command Melisandre to prove that Gendry's king's blood is as powerful as the Red Lady says. So she drops leeches all over his body instead...

Stannis Baratheon ...which Stannis drops in a brazier one by one, naming one of his usurper enemies each time he does. The idea here seems to be that, if Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy and Joffrey Baratheon all die, it'll prove the power of Gendry's blood, allowing Stannis to sacrifice him despite their kinship.

Samwell Tarly Samwell's sequence, at the very end of this episode, very quickly transitioned from cute flirty banter with Gilly to the very scariest scene so far in "Game of Thrones." Crows start to caw outside their broken down hovel in the snow. The volume increases and Samwell offers to go outside, sword in hand. An Other approaches. Gilly shouts that it wants her baby, but Samwell is determined to keep it. He brandishes his sword -- and the magical creature snaps it in half then throws Samwell aside. The White Walker is about to grab Gilly's son when Samwell finds his antique obsidian arrowhead in his pocket. He takes it out, runs at the Other and plunges it into his back in a last ditch effort to save the baby. Miraculously, it works. The Other screams in pain, falls to the ground and shatters into a icy dust. What just happened?

"Game of Thrones" airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

Awards and performances may have been the main attraction at the Billboard Music Awards Sunday night, but there were also plenty of eyebrow-raising moments (sometimes literally) behind the scenes as well. Fortunately, vigilant social media users were on hand to capture all of the crazy happenings and immortalize them online. Here are the five wackiest moments from the awards, in GIF form:

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Hey guys,

How are you? Ready for the finale?

I feel like we're ready. We're as ready as we'll ever be. We definitely put the hours. We had 12-to-14-hour days every day. I had a little scare yesterday. My neck started to do a weird spasm. I'm trying to forget about it — mind over matter. It's not as bad as it was last time, but it's there. There are some moves that I'm doing in our freestyle ...

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