Intolerable cruelty: Mad Men's Henry Blake moment

[Spoilers] When the writers of M*A*S*H* killed off Henry Blake in 1975 the series was never the same again: the tone became too dark for what had started as a half-hour comedy; McLean Stevenson's replacement was never as good, and viewers stopped trusting the series for pulling the rug out and murdering a blameless and loveable character. I wonder if Mad Men has just made a similar mistake. Jared Harris's Lane Pryce has been one of the stars of the season, the straight man to Don's moral windmilling. When Brian Clemens spoke at the BFI he was emphatic about his distaste for killing off characters in a TV series: "It leaves a bad taste in the mouth [and] it ruins the re-runs for the viewer."

On a more academic note it interests me to observe the writers' challenge of spinning a story out over the length of several seasons while still getting things to add up. TV shows are not novels or even narratives in sequence: they're dramas designed to entertain week by week. Actors come and go, as do the creative staff, and moods and tastes change -- the blips are part of the form. But in this golden age of American cable series such as The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, and at a time when binge-viewing has become the norm, viewers might reasonably expect more narrative cogency. Mad Men has a tradition of losing characters in the last one or two episodes but up until now those departures have been tragi-comic (the lawnmower) or poignant (Freddy getting fired) rather than depressing. I still miss my favourite blonde. I hope Matthew Weiner has a plan.