TVSquad

The assassination of JFK on Sunday's episode of Mad Men may have been the catalyst for Betty Draper's "awakening," but it's been a long time coming.

Here comes my rant: I, for one, am sick and tired of seeing the women in this show get walked all over! I know it's the way things were back then, but the times they are a changin', so I'm hoping we'll get to see more women stand up and take charge of their lives.

I was cheering when Betty stood up to her lying, cheating, skank of a husband Don and told him she didn't love him anymore. Bonus points for driving off to meet your lover, Betty. Hopefully, he won't cheat on you.

Now if Joan would leave her loser fiance who raped her at the office and then went about his business like nothing happened -- that'd be the icing on this women's movement cake. I'd say that she and Roger Sterling belong together, but she's too good for him.

First of all, I have to say that I'm terribly distracted at the moment, because my daughter is watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even though I just watched it a few months ago, I wouldn't mind watching the entire series again from start to finish. But, alas, there are other things in my stack o' DVDs, so I'll have to be content with hearing it in the background while I work. She just watched the first two eps, and I had totally forgotten that Darla showed up in the very first episode. Interesting. Anyways...

I'll get back to The Wire -- I still have season five to watch -- but this week's Jane After Dark is all about Mad Men. Sometimes I fall deeply and madly in love with a TV show, and that's how it is with AMC's love letter to the 1960s. I raced through season one right after it was released on DVD, but stupidly waited for season two on DVD. I bought it last week and watched the entire season, devouring it like a hearty tenderloin that's perfectly cooked, so I'd be caught up for the season three premiere on August 16. If you haven't watched season two yet, spoilers follow after the jump...

I'm not going to lie to you: Pretty much my whole life right now is leading up to the Mad Men season 3 premiere on August 16. I'm so excited, I'm practically vibrating. You can judge me if you want, but I'm perfectly fine with my priorities.

Anyway, like the rest of the internet, I have been salivating for any Mad Men morsel that AMC deigns to share with the unwashed masses. So, yes. I was super-psyched about the water-logged Don Draper promo poster that came out a few weeks ago, and yes, I totally Mad Men'd myself.

So obviously, I was ridiculously excited to see that Zap2It had a whole crop of new Mad Men promo photos. Jon Hamm! January Jones! Christina Hendricks! John Slattery! There may be a chance that there's a more conventionally good-looking cast out there, but I defy you to find a sexier cast on television. Seriously. If you have any suggestions, I welcome them, because I cannot imagine anything you would actually come up with that would beat the power, glory, and pure sexiness of Mad Men.

I'm almost to the end of Firefly, my Jane After Dark readers' choice for this week. I really love this series, from the quirky characters to the general theme of a band of renegades burgling their way through the universe.

But even though it's set 500 years in the future, Firefly isn't your typical sci-fi space series that includes all manner of aliens and weird creatures. They're on a spaceship, and yet they rob trains. How cool is that?! It's like Alias Smith and Jones meets Babylon 5.

As with the other Whedon shows I've watched – Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel – the stories are fun and deep and fanciful (yes, I said fanciful), but it's the characters and their interactions that make the shows.

Do they cook? Not sure. Are they Jedi Knights? Errrrr, maybe? So what's the deal with Celebrity Jedi Chefs? We wish we knew. In their own words, they're [mostly] TV actors who "do the same sorts of things that 'normal' Jedi do, but [they] also cook." There are 216 of them, and most have appeared on buzzy sci-fi shows, including Heroes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Battlestar Galactica.

We're not talking background players, either. Yeah, we're still stuck trying to figure out what Celebrity Jedi Chefs...is exactly (and if the pictures, as suggested by the fashion, were all magically taken in 1993), but we needn't hear any more if it means we get to see pictures of Joan Holloway (among others, after the jump) weilding a saber.

Since I'm still new enough at TV Squad not to exist on the "Meet the TV Squad" page, this is my first Festivus. It's nice to be able to dig deep into my heart for all of my TV wishes in hopes that some internet fairy will grant them and make the television landscape just a little bit more awesome... for me, at least.

Without further ado, here is what I want for Festivus:

• Christina Hendricks and the rest of the Mad Men cast should guest-star on more shows. Ever since I started watching Mad Men, I've noticed Hendricks popping up places. She's on an episode of Without a Trace here, an old episode of Cold Case there... I love me some Joan Holloway and Mad Men isn't returning soon enough. I loved seeing Jon Hamm host SNL, and I'm super excited about his upcoming guest stint on 30 Rock. More please!

I posted on Friday about the craziness that was the Flanvention. After it was canceled at the last minute, fans sprung into action and organized their own little shindig. And based on reports about what happened, it sounds like it was a pretty amazing substitute for the originally planned affair.

It turns out that not only did most of the scheduled guests turn up for the impromptu gathering, but they managed to get even more people from the whedonverse in the mix as well. Fans made their way to Claire Kramer's restaurant, La Cantina, where the guest list included Nathan Fillion, Ron Glass, Morena Baccarin (pictured), Michael Fairman, Mark Sheppard, Jonathan Woodward, Yan Feldman, Christina Hendricks, Claire Kramer, James Leary, Camden Toy, Michael Muhney, and Greg Edmonson. That's an impressive list.

Of course, while a good time was had, it's not the end of the story. The strange dealings of event planer Booster Entertainment continue. The website that mysteriously disappeared with the announcement of the cancellation has popped up again. Kind of, they are getting hammered by people looking for answers, so it's very slow when it does load. At this point the big questions everyone is asking are: Where did the money go? And where are the refunds? It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.