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There are a lot of ways to adapt a film to a TV show, and it's not as common as it was for a while there. For a while, you had strange experiments like TV telling the story of Ferris Bueller, TV telling the story of Baby and Johnny from Dirty Dancing, and TV revisiting 9 to 5. Usually, it meant just moving the characters over to a series, having them played by new actors, and following new stories about them. (Melora Hardin as Baby Houseman!) Every now and then, it worked: you might have heard of M*A*S*H. Usually it did not: you might not have heard of The Firm, starring ... Josh Lucas. (Yes, a couple of those are also books. But ... still.)

It seemed, candidly, like an absurd idea when FX announced that it was making a TV series based on Fargo, the Coen Brothers film from 1996. That was a completed story that didn't lend itself to a lot of obvious "further adventures." It didn't seem like very much more activity could be ... afoot.

Furthermore, the film was full of performances surely no one would be dumb enough to try to do over, like Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson and William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard. The Coens were on board as executive producers; what could these people possibly have in mind?

As it turns out, what they had in mind was a completely new story borrowing the tone, some of the dynamics, and some of the atmosphere of the film, but not the characters and not the story itself.

The state of Ohio was told by a federal judge Monday that it must recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states, Ohio Public Radio and TV's Jo Ingles reports.

The decision follows similar rulings by federal judges in other states and was not a surprise. Judge Timothy Black had said earlier this month that he would soon issue such a ruling.

For now at least, Black's decision applies only to the four couples who brought the case. They want their names on their children's state-issued birth certificates.

"The federal court has stayed the order for everyone except the 4 couples named in this suit," Ingles wrote as she tweeted the decision. The state will argue against expanding the ruling in its appeal of Black's decision.

In his ruling, Black said that "Ohio's marriage recognition is facially unconstitutional and unenforceable under any circumstances," The Columbus Dispatch reports.

In 2004, Ohio voters approved a ban on same-sex marriages in the state. As WVXU notes, the lawsuit at the center of Judge Black's ruling "did not seek to allow same-sex partners to get married in Ohio, just the recognition of marriages from other states."

[This piece discusses the plot of both the Alice Munro short story on which Hateship Loveship is based and the film itself, although it's frankly nothing you can't intuit from the trailer.]

The Alice Munro short story "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" begins with a plain and awkward woman named Johanna arranging a shipment of furniture and shopping for a dress. She's leaving town to go to the man she expects to marry, though he hasn't yet asked. The story shifts to follow the nasty fellow she's been working for, who's angry about her departure, and then it makes its way to Edith.

Edith is a young teenager, and with her at the center of the narrative, we leap back in time to learn how Johanna came to be leaving: Edith and her friend Sabitha played a cruel joke in which they made it appear that this man, Sabitha's father, was writing Johanna love letters. He was not. But, fooled into believing she's been carrying on a long-distance romance, Johanna made plans to leave all she knows and head off to what appears certain to be abject humiliation.

We then jolt forward to the present, where Johanna arrives at her destination, and we follow her for a short time again. But then we leap ahead two years. And those two years later, we learn, through a notice in the paper read to Edith by her mother, what became of Johanna and Ken.

Alice Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. To adapt her work, as screenwriter Mark Poirier and director Liza Johnson have done for the film Hateship Loveship, is a hugely daunting thing. The risk is that there is a way to look at this story that would rob it of everything about it that's interesting, and that way to look at this story is the way this trailer looks at it.

Don Draper finally told the truth, and it ruined his life.

Perhaps that shouldn't have been such a surprise. Because Don has mostly been a master of the lie — especially in the form of an ad pitch. And he never lost his touch: He suckered everyone last season with one of his best pitches for Hershey's chocolate bars.

Facing a roomful of Hershey's executives, he told a heartwarming story of getting one of their candy bars as reward for mowing the lawn. "And as I ripped it open, my father tousled my hair and forever his love and the chocolate were tied together," Don said. "That's the story we're going to tell."

But that bit about his dad was a total lie. And as his partners in the advertising firm were practically spending their first check from Hershey's, Don couldn't resist dropping a bombshell that brought it all to a halt.

"I grew up in Pennsylvania, in a whorehouse," he said, voice nearly cracking. "Closest I got to feeling wanted was from a girl who made me go through her john's pockets. If I collected more than a dollar, she bought me a Hershey bar."

This infusion of truth dropped jaws in the boardroom and in the TV audience. Don had never spoken like that in public before.

So when Mad Men returned Sunday, beginning the first half of a final season ending in 2015, any hope Don might have developed a habit of telling the truth was dashed.

He had already found a new lie to tell.

The first hint dropped in the episode's very first scene. We were mesmerized by a near-perfect advertising pitch which had become a Don Draper specialty: "You go into a business meeting. Is there food in your teeth, ashes on your tie? And you've got nothing to say. But you're wearing an Accu-tron. This watch makes you interesting."

Smooth and professional. A Don pitch if ever there was one, only it wasn't Don delivering it. It was Freddie Rumson, a recovering alcoholic who had been forced out of Don's firm long ago.

Turns out Don is still on the outs at his firm, and he's using Freddie as a proxy to deliver his perfect pitches as a freelancer. But Freddie had a few words of advice for Don while the two shared a couple of sandwiches and gossip.

"They had Christmas without you and the Super Bowl,you know, I've been there," Rumson said, pushing Don to find a new job before he got canned. "You don't want to be damaged goods."

This is what will stand out in all the Mad Men talk today; how Don Draper is still stuck living a lie. To the outside world, he still looks like a bicoastal advertising executive married to a rising actress in Hollywood. But just like before, that appearance is a thin facade. He's living in New York, increasingly estranged from his young wife and barred from his job.

As fans obsess over every nuance of new Mad Men episodes, I hope the show answers one of our biggest questions: Whether Draper can find peace in a truthful life or surrender to the lies.

One real-life liar even appeared in the background of a crucial scene. The show's writers slyly staged Don and Freddie's conversation in front of a TV broadcasting Richard Nixon's 1969 inaugural speech.

This is what Mad Men truly does best. Don and Freddie have an important personal moment while a historic event unfolds around them. They see the promise of a new presidency, but we know it all ends in lies.

It's a terrible omen. A brutal future is coming for everyone.

And I can't wait to see more.