[1] It covers the end of Kennedy's "Camelot era" in the country, and chronicles the characters going through immense change in their professional and personal lives.
Pete is offered the role of Head of Accounts by Lane Pryce, a PPL executive brought in from the London office.
Betty's father Gene, suffering from his strokes, comes to live with the Drapers and strikes up a warm relationship with Sally, even teaching the young girl to drive.
Conrad Hilton starts harassing Don with late night phone calls, seeking off the books help with regard to advertising for his companies.
She finds his box of Dick Whitman's family photos as well as evidence of Anna Draper's existence and Don's divorce from her.
Pete becomes despondent when alerted by Lane Pryce that Ken is to become Senior Vice President in charge of Account Services.
When Betty is confronted with the lies her husband has told her regarding his identity and infidelities as well as her own growing attraction towards Henry, things come to a head with the Drapers following the assassination of the president.
Connie meets with Don to inform him that Sterling Cooper and PPL both are being bought out by McCann Ericson, the firm handling Hilton's other accounts.
When their offer is rebuffed, Don realizes that Lane's authority to fire the other conspirators would sever their contracts, giving them the ability to walk away and start a new advertising agency.
Don, Peggy, Roger, Bert, Lane and Pete subsequently break into the Sterling Cooper office to take necessary supplies and files.
The group meets in a small hotel room, where Joan answers calls with the name of the new firm: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
The site's consensus is: "Mad Men brilliantly weaves its characters into its historical setting, and the result is thoughtful, shocking, and terrifically entertaining.
[25] Time critic James Poniewozik cited the show's excellence in writing and acting, and said "Mad Men's willingness to let moments play out seems as much a period flourish as its fedoras and highballs.
It didn’t have the phenomenal run of one staggering episode and scene after another like the first did, but this season built confidently to a climax and did an outstanding job of both capturing the sweep of history and how it related to the characters’ lives.
"[27] Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle warned viewers from falling for any inevitable backlash after the myriad of award wins for the series, saying that "the humor, the note-perfect clothing and sets, the creeping cultural change - are still there to be savored.
But what the series traffics in with astute complexity is the troubling notion of self, of identity, of rootless, undefined purpose and unrealized happiness".
[28] Robert Bianco of USA Today said the third season was compelling because "we all know the late-stage Camelot universe the characters occupy is about to shatter" and that the series was filled with "madness and passion".
[29] Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times described Mad Men as "essentially one long flashback, an artfully imagined historic re-enactment of an era when America was a soaring superpower feeling its first shivers of mortality.
"[30] Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times said the series was "a moral drama, a show about deciding who you are and who you want to be, of character as the sum of small choices.
"[31] In one of the few negative reviews, Hank Stuever of The Washington Post said that Mad Men "has importance sickness, and its idea of levity is to inject moments of utter callousness."
Lesli Linka Glatter was also nominated in Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for her work on "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency".
[35] The American Film Institute honored the "transformative" third season of Mad Men as one of the ten greatest television achievements of 2009, exalting both January Jones and Jon Hamm for leading the strong ensemble.
[40][41] The cast of Mad Men won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series at the 16th Screen Actors Guild Awards for the second year in a row.