Another facade. But what a great way to reveal it, and what a promising one it may prove to be.

Mad Men, of course, has always been about false fronts and the fragility of appearances. The ad men at the center of Matthew Weiner's Emmy-winning '60s-set drama make their living on illusion, imbuing products people don't need with virtues they don't have. Even their world is built on a crumbling late '50s fantasy, one that lets them believe their monopoly on power is just fine with the people — the blacks, the gays, the women — who are shut out.

And then, of course, there's Don Draper himself, whose post-war life is a creation of his own will and imagination. Or at least it was. In Sunday's swiftly paced, wildly enjoyable third season finale, we saw more of the real Don than we ever have, driven by a performance from Jon Hamm that combined his usual subtlety with a more open, passionate exuberance.

Last week, Mad Men dealt with one of the '60s most shattering events, the assassination of President Kennedy. Such a subject, fraught as it is with historical and social baggage, can overwhelm any series that tries to contain it. But it's also impossible for a show set in its time period to avoid, and Mad Men used it in limited fashion, to prod characters along.

While the emotional repercussions could still be felt in last night's finale, the upheavals at hand this time were far more personal. In a dispiriting meeting with Conrad Hilton, Don discovered that Sterling Cooper was about to be sold again, and him with it. And suddenly, a show where things usually happen slowly, if at all, transformed into a show where momentous events tumbled one after another — and in far more upbeat fashion than is the Mad Men norm.

Well, at least the professional divorce was upbeat, as Don, Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper and Lane Pryce came up with an ingenious plan to strike out on their own, taking Peggy, Pete, Harry and (praise be!) Joan with them. There were emotionally charged moments in the newfound partnership, as his workmates forced Don to actually admit, to them and to himself, that he valued them. (None more effectively than Elisabeth Moss' Peggy.) But the overall tone was a light "let's build an ad firm" variant on the old MGM musical's "let's put on a show."

No, the tragedy, if that's what it is, was saved for the other divorce: the demise of Don's marriage to Betty. While it's hard to feel much at this stage for Betty or the marriage, the episode did wring pain out of the effect the breakup would have on the children.

In many ways, you can see the season as the fall of Don Draper, who began the year by being thrown back into his past — and ended by being thrust into an unsettled future. He's lost the Hilton account. He's traded a house for an apartment and a fancy, high-rise office for a hotel suite. And he may lose his children, perhaps the only people who have always, plainly mattered to him.

And yet in his last shot, he's happy, smiling at the chance to create yet another new life.

It hasn't been easy to like Don this season, and that has caused some fan unrest. But our changing view of Don may say more about us than it does about him. He's always behaved callously toward almost everyone; we just overlooked it because we tend to give people who are as handsome and magnetic as Don a pass.

What this season proposed is that at a certain point, payment for bad behavior comes due. You can't continually push people away without risking ending up alone, and you can't betray your wife as often and thoroughly as Don has and then magically cure it all by coming clean (and not voluntarily or completely, either).

No season is perfect, and this one wasn't either. The show missed having Joan and Sal around, even if their departures made real-world sense. Some of the plot twists were a bit heavy-handed (the death of Betty's father springs to mind) and some of the dialogue could be gratingly opaque.

And while Betty may occupy the moral high ground, you can't help wondering why exactly Don would want to stay married to a woman, no matter how beautiful, who is such a terrible mother and wife, and why another man would be in such a rush to make the same mistake.

Still, overall, it was a terrific season, capped by a suitably terrific and surprising finale. I can't wait to see what lies behind the next one.

		Rather than be sold to a competitor they hate, the power players at Sterling Cooper decided to start their own firm. AMC