The MAD MEN Awards

Joan, right before she delivers the Best Line

Mad Men Season 5 starts in six hours, but who's counting? Me, me, me. The social media outlets have been abuzz this week (the only people who weren't thinking about, writing about, or analyzing The Hunger Games were those thinking about, writing about, or analyzing Mad Men), catching people up, editing Don-Draper seduction tally videos, telling us how to drink like the fellows, and so on. I'm no less preoccupied.

In fact, although we watched every other season on DVD, this time (blame it on the hiatus) I shelled out a week early for cable, just so we could watch with the rest of America and not have to plug our ears or shield our eyes whenever a spoiler came up. Mad Men with commercial breaks! What a concept. And do advertisers feel pressure not to run their lamest commercials when Mad Men airs? Do they shelve the boring car ads or make the embarrassing ED spots more clever? (If you've never been subjected to an "erectile dysfunction" commercial, you must not be a Mariners fan. Judging by the ads, seemingly many M's fans suffer from ED, from which I think a winning baseball season might cure them just as effectively. But I digress.)

The point of this post, however, was my own Christina's Choice Awards. Feel free to weigh in or to disagree in the Comments!

******************WARNING! Spoilers galore!**********************

1. Best Episode. Had to be Peggy's birthday in Season 4. I love Peggy, for one thing. I love her relationship with Don, for another. They know each other's crap and they tell it to each other straight. Don has got to figure out that Peggy is the only woman who really, really knows him and doesn't just take whatever he dishes out without fighting back. 1st Runner-Up: Don and Betty in Rome. Loved that episode and was so sad they went back downhill upon returning.

2. Best Betty Moment. This is a tough one because Betty has so many awesome ones. But my fave has to be when she shot the neighbor's birds, cigarette dangling from her lip. Because sometimes being a housewife with young children just makes you want to kill something innocent.

3. Most Hated Ho-Bag. Don's had his share of them--women willing to do whatever, say whatever, put up with whatever, just to sleep with him. But there's no competition in my mind: I hated the schoolteacher. What kind of woman finds out her young student is struggling with her grandfather's death, and then goes on to sleep with that student's father??? As if Sally didn't have enough on her plate emotionally, without a broken home??? No one else even comes close.

4. Best Line. A tie! But they both occurred in the same episode, "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency" in Season 3. After the poor sap gets run over by the John Deere, Roger eyes the clean-up and comments, "It looks like Iwo Jima out there." Later on, when Joan and Don are at the hospital, Joan says, "One minute you're on top of the world, and the next, some secretary runs over you with a lawn mower." So true.

5. Character You Just Wish Would Go Away Permanently. Gotta be the creepy neighbor boy that Betty was so weird about. I know he's related to Matthew Weiner, so I don't think I'll get my wish...

6. Character You Wish Would Come Back. I'm hoping Betty relents toward Carla, so I'm not going to pick Carla. I am so very, very sorry they killed off Miss Blankenship. Who else could resist Don and greet him with such lines as, "Are you going to the toilet?"

7. Most Squirmy Moment. Lots and lots of them, and just about all of them involve Don. I so hated when he came on to his California wife's niece because that's how he handles every emotion. I hated every minute of his swimming and journaling. I hated how he treated Faye and how willing she was to compromise herself for him. I hated when Don was out in California and hanging with the bizarre druggy people with the swimming pool.

8. What I hope for Seasons 5 and 6. I really, really hope Season 6 is the end. Quit while you're ahead. Have a narrative arc. (One of the reasons I abandoned Downton Abbey after one season was that I thought it was a discrete story, not an ongoing period soap.) Give Peggy a partnership. Let Betty get better and be happy with Henry. Let Don fall for someone with backbone and principles. I, for one, hope that woman is Peggy. Let Joan's husband turn out to be decent at something. I guess I'm asking for an ending, and a happy one.

Meet you at the online water cooler after the show!