Culture

Every episode opens with a death. A show that made five seasons out of the question: what does a life mean?

Systematic philosophical exploration of what makes a life worth living - teleology made into comedy.

Don Draper's endless pursuit of something that doesn't turn out to be meaning when he catches it. The shadow of the value.

A fine-dining chef running a family sandwich shop, trying to build something meaningful out of grief and the only thing he knows how to do. Meaning found in the brutal specificity of a single craft.