Week in TV: September 5-11

Rubicon

- The structure of this show is starting to remind me a bit of the first season of Mad Men. No, not because they're both on AMC. Remember how in the early episodes of Mad Men all the different twenty-something guys at Sterling Cooper seem like interchangeable shmucks, and then as the season moves on you start to really get a sense of what distinguishes Pete from Ken from Paul from Harry? We're moving out of the interchangeable shmuck phase for the folks at API. I'm particularly growing attached to Miles - Dallas Roberts infuses him with so much twitchy paranoid energy - and Kale, whose verbal smackdown of Will's less-than-fully-thought-out snooping in Spangler's office was a highlight in an episode full of great two-person scenes.

- In the spirit of what's probably Annie Parisse's best-known role, she has to be more than a silent neighbor, right? I'm pretty sure she's too well-known an actress to play someone negligible.

Mad Men

- And this is why AMC should continue to shower Matthew Weiner with cash. At least once a season Mad Men pulls out an episode that, like this one, is so riveting that I end up watching the 11:00 repeat too just because I feel like I can't bring myself to move from the couch once it's done. It's a show that's always had a good handle on thematic and plot continuity, but this episode managed to pull together so much about Don and Peggy and their respective histories and their relationship with each other and their relationships with a multitude of other characters that it'll probably stand as one of my all-time favorite episodes of the show. It's redundant at this point to say that Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss should submit this episode for Emmy consideration next spring (and, who knows, I wouldn't rule out there being another amazing episode in the pipeline for either one of them; it's been a good season) but: seriously.

- Gorgeous, quiet goodbye for Anna Draper. Her appearances were rare, but I'll miss her.

- For the emotional wallop this episode packed, it was also unbelievably funny. I particularly loved Pete's fleeting look of panic as he saw Peggy and Trudy exiting the bathroom together. As if Peggy would just suddenly lose all sense of discretion and be like, "Well, I know when I was pregnant with Pete's baby..." Also, Roger's memoirs are comedy gold.

- How great is Mark Moses? Seriously, I'm one more quality Mad Men episode away from being talked into picking up Desperate Housewives again.

Sons of Anarchy

- The first episode I've watched live and unspoiled, and shaking for an hour afterwards was totally worth it. So, RIP Deputy Sheriff David Hale (I assume. I mean, I guess anything's possible on television, but that head wound looked pretty grisly and this isn't a show that's afraid to kill people off.) and a round of applause for Tayler Sheridan. He was a unique presence on the show, not only as the rare law enforcement official both dedicated to taking SAMCRO out and to using legitimate means to do so, but also as a Charming-bred contemporary of Jax, Opie and Tara. I was always intrigued by that part of Hale that couldn't seem to completely let go of the image of the kids he grew up with. It's a credit to the writers and Sheridan that I ultimately feel sorry for Hale, that he'll never get the chance to even try to implement change in Charming.

- It's a small continuity detail, but I love that Jax's patches still look all wonky. It's a subtle reminder of the fact that from "Balm" to "So," we're only talking about days, not weeks, and that there's a lot of remaining emotional fallout yet to be fully dealt with. This season's got a lot of rich veins to tap into, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

New Shows:

Hellcats (CW)

Fantastically manic pilot, that seemed to cycle through the plots of what most shows would use to constitute their first four or five episodes. There's a decent number of actors I like in this, and I think they elevate the material just enough to make it appealingly cheesy/campy, rather than straight-up terrible. (Todd VanDerWerff's A.V. Club review really hits the nail on the head there.) I love to have a few CW shows sitting on the DVR for when I drink my coffee on the weekends, and this show seems ideally suited to that purpose.

Terriers (FX)

I never watched The Shield, so I come at this one as just a curious viewer, rather than as a Shawn Ryan evangelist. (It seems to be one of those things where critics in the know can't resist making comparisons, like The Wire and Treme, but hopefully that impulse will dissipate as the season progresses.) I liked it a lot, especially the easygoing chemistry of Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James. It seems like Terriers will have a lot of the same charm that the first season of Veronica Mars had, simply in sitting back and watching slightly unorthodox PIs do what they do.

Nikita

A solid, enjoyable pilot. The winning presence of Maggie Q in the title role and the genuinely surprising twist ending lifted it a few steps above "generic spy show" and convinced me to tune in again, at least for a few weeks. (However: Can the Alias pilot be required viewing for anyone planning a young-lady-spy show these days? Normally, the similarities are easy to write off, but Nikita had a doomed fiance named Daniel whose tragic untimely death at the hands of her nefarious employers turned her into their sworn enemy? Come on, people. At least call him "Steve," or something.)