ShareThisEven now, Elisabeth Moss can't avoid questions about The Scene.
For fans of AMC's addictive, high-quality drama "Mad Men," it was when months of plot lines and missed opportunities came together in a single, searing bit of dialogue.
The Scene is likely the biggest reason Moss was nominated for a Best Actress Emmy, sandwiched among boldface names such as Sally Field, Glenn Close and Holly Hunter.
Which Scene, you ask? The one in which Moss' Peggy Olson character tells a colleague their office tryst produced a child she didn't keep. "I could have shamed you into being with me ... (but) I wanted other things," she informs him with soft brutality.
"I think people were just happy to see her talk about anything ... to reveal any sort of part about herself," Moss said by phone from Los Angeles this week. "She's sort of an everyman -- like Ernest Borgnine in 'Marty' -- the character that's really identifiable. People wanted to see her say just the right thing to just the right person ... and they felt happy for themselves, in a way, after she did."
"Mad Men" is officially a pop-culture phenomenon, with Sunday's third-season debut heralded by photo spreads in Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly and a fashion line dedicated to the series by Michael Kors.
But as much as the industry loves to laud "Mad Men" -- to the tune of 16 Emmy nominations this year, including Moss' -- that infatuation hasn't translated to actual viewership.
Indeed, the show last season averaged about 1.5 million viewers per episode after a debut that drew 2 million. In comparison, the Aug. 6 finale for USA Network's spy drama "Burn Notice" drew 7.6 million viewers, a record high for the network.
So if this show is so hip, why aren't more people watching it?
Moss, who lives in New York with fiance and "Saturday Night Live" veteran Fred Armisen, doesn't pretend to understand why people choose what they watch on television.
But she's hopeful this is the year "Mad Men" draws more viewers than usual. In one story line, Olson must decide whether she can do the things women traditionally do and also blaze a trail as the only female executive at her advertising firm. We see her emerge as Don Draper's protege, encouraged and challenged by him even as she mimics his ruthlessness. The question she'll face: How much like Draper does she want to be?
And don't make the mistake of asking her, as fans did early on, whether the naive, awkward Olson is very smart. "I would ask people, 'How smart were you at 20 years old?' " said Moss. "I think people forget she's 20 years old in 1960. I think she's a good person and doesn't understand why everyone else isn't a good person, too."
"Mad Men" at a glance
Where does everybody stand in Sunday's season opener at 10 p.m. EDT?
-- Don Draper (Jon Hamm): Sent to Baltimore on a business trip while downsizing by the firm's new British owners roils the workplace.
-- Betty Draper (January Jones): Struggling with a new pregnancy, she's relearning to trust her husband after an indiscretion of her own.
-- Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser): Always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, he gets a promotion that isn't nearly as good as it seems.
-- Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss): Her advertising-copywriting job makes her too powerful to pal with other women in the office, but too feminine to bond with the guys.
(E-mail Eric Deggans at deggans(at)sptimes.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
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