"Mad Men" is an award-winning drama on AMC which recently returned to television for a third season.

The story follows the lives of a cadre of New York City ad agency employees as they make their way through life in the early 1960s. In other words, they dress smartly, most of them smoke and drink freely — both at home and at work at the fictional agency Sterling Cooper.

And they all guard their secrets closely.

Many of the secrets, starting with the ones ad executive Don Draper keeps, are ones that ought to make many of the characters despicable. (They lie. They cheat. They use people!).

Yet the show's appeal lies partly in turning these characters into complex and oddly endearing human enigmas. Other allures lie in the good writing, the showy opening sequence and the attention to period details.

Here are the episodes that have aired (or are scheduled to air) through September 2009.

(July-October 2007)

1. Smoke Gets I Your Eyes
2. Ladies Room
3. Marriage of Figaro
4. New Amsterdam
5. 5G
6. Babylon
7. Red In the Face
8. The Hobo Code
9. Shoot
10. Long Weekend
11. Indian Summer
12. Nixon vs. Kennedy
13. The Wheel

(July-October 2008)

1. For Those Who Think Young
2. Flight 1
3. The Benefactor
4. Three Sundays
5. The New Girl
6. Maidenform
7. The Gold Violin
8. A Night to Remember
9. Six Month Leave
10. The Inheritance
11. The Jet Set
12. The Mountain King
13. Meditations in an Emergency

(August 2009 - November 2009)

1. Out of Town
2. Love Among the Ruins
3. My Old Kentucky Home
4. The Arrangements
5. The Fog
6. Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency
7. Seven Twenty Three
8. Souvenir
9. Wee Small Hours
10. The Color Blue
11. The Gypsy and the Hobo
12. The Grown Ups
13. Shut the Door. Have a Seat.
    

(Yes. There's going to be a season four.)