“Mad Men” Recap: 404, “The Rejected”

Since the beginning of this season, most viewers have been pleased with the focus on the psychology of our anti-hero, the question of “Who is Don Draper?,” but a vocal portion of the fan base has complained that simply not enough attention is being paid to the business of advertising, and that some characters such as Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) have been missing in action. In the case of “The Rejected,” Pete is back in full force, but Roger Sterling takes a back seat, mainly because John Slattery directed the piece, but the mechanics of the advertising business get a front seat. The peculiar phenomenon of the focus group is something we’ve seen before on “Mad Men,” but not as a kind of Skinner Box in which questions about facial treatments are met with emotional meltdowns.

“The Rejected” begins with Don and Roger on conference call with Lucky Strike problem child Lee Garner Jr., and they’re going over some of the new restrictions that are in place for cigarette advertisements and brainstorming ideas to replace images of, say, teenagers smoking. Don is unusually distracted during the call, even for this season, and is relying on Allison (Alexa Alemmani) to give him cues to say vague things like “We’ll do our best” when his name is mentioned. In the middle of the call, he asks her one of those double-meaning questions posed by corrupt bosses: “Why is this bottle empty?” On the face of it, this is a stupid query that merits Allison’s actual response: “You drank it all.” What the boss really means is, “This bottle should never be empty. I should never be able to feel the lightness of a Jameson bottle emptied of its elixir. Ergo, get thee to the package store or no more $100 Christmas bonuses for you.”

Don is also bluffing his way through a conversation with Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) over her Pond’s Cold Cream concepts — he clearly has not looked at either of them. Faye Miller (Cara Buono) asks Don for some 18 to 25-year-old women from the secretarial pool and Don tells her, “Help yourself” — just as he does, I suppose. Meanwhile, Lane (Jared Harris) and Roger buttonhole Pete in the hallway to tell him he must cast off the Clearasil account he got from his father-in-law because the Pond’s people see it as a direct conflict. Don tires of Garner taking precious time away from him being in his cups and claims he sees a fire down by Radio City and stops the call, perhaps because SCDP are regularly called in as an auxiliary volunteer firefighting squad in midtown.

Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) lets Pete know he’s having lunch with Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), and tells him he should come, too. Considering that the old British regime put Pete and Kenny in direct competition, getting the two of them into a booth with drinks should be like shoving a ferret and a weasel into the same tube sock. Meanwhile, Peggy has a new friend in the building, Joyce Ramsey (Zosia Mamet, and yes, she is the daughter of David Mamet). She works at Life Magazine, she loves nude photography and would probably love Peggy as a female nude.

Pete meets his daddy-in-law at a bar, ostensibly to discuss Clearasil, but that doesn’t happen: he finds out that Trudie (Alison Brie) is with child and — Yikes! — hasn’t even told Petey yet. There is much stammering from Dad and Pete generally looks like he’s been slapped in the face with a flounder, but he’s happy, and he blows off the bad news, since it’s champagne all around and a bonus of $1,000 if it’s a boy, $500 if it’s a girl. Yes, the mid-’60s were a bit like feudal China. So Trudie is apoplectic when Pete gets home, because daddy called to warn her, but Pete is a happy boy. Tomorrow night, Yankee Pot Roast!

The focus group begins, and Faye runs the thing like she’s one of the girls, not like she holds a doctorate in psychology. Things are fine when the front office receptionist Megan is going on about her “French extraction” and how she does what her mother does with her facial ministrations — splash tepid water on her face, pat with her fingers and smile longingly at herself — but then one of the homelier secretaries, Dottie, starts talking about how taking care of her face never amounted to much, since her boyfriend left her high and dry with cold cream on her face a year ago after not really noticing her. Allison pipes up with “Sometimes it’s worse when they notice” — a comment that will certainly sting on the other side of the two-way mirror — and everything goes straight to Hell. Allison is weeping with big, body-wrenching sobs and has to leave the room. Peggy tries to console her, but then when Allison takes her sympathy for empathy, thinking that Don must have treated Peggy the same way when she worked as his receptionist, Peggy goes full-on cobra on her: “Your problem is not my problem, and honestly, you should get over it.”

On a personal/professional note, your StaticBlogger has been on Don’s side of the glass during a focus group, and while Faye insists that crying is a standard occurrence at these things, mainly what I saw were comments like, “Why did they review that CD? I don’t like music” and “I don’t eat that stuff” and “Why don’t you show what’s coming on the TV?” and “Can I have more of them chips?” No crying on their side. Plenty on my side.

So then we cut to Ferret vs. Weasel, and Cosgrove goes off on Pete for badmouthing him. Pete does his dishonest best to deny it, but finally owns up and apologizes to his moral equal, and it’s all good times, with jokes at the expense of the mentally disabled and everything.

Don returns to his office to find Allison, still very upset, and she tells Don she wants to move on, that there’s a job at a magazine where she could work for a woman. She asks Don for a letter of recommendation, and he’s got a ripping good idea: why doesn’t Allison just write her own damn letter of recommendation, with all of her “sparkling” great work denoted in beautiful courier type, and he’ll just sign it? This is, of course, insulting, because Don won’t even semi-literally lift a finger for a woman that he has literally screwed over. And she responds by throwing a bauble at him, breaking the glass in a couple of picture frames, and running out. Afterwards, Don hits the bottle hard, like he’s trying to prime a fuel pump, and Peggy’s looking over the wall as he self-medicates.

Life magazine girl shows up in the front lobby to tell Peggy about a party downtown, which is bound to have reefer and hippies. “It starts at nine. I’ll be there at 10,” she says, leeringly. Megan calls her pretentious, and Peggy agrees, approvingly. Meanwhile at Pete’s apartment, there is much rejoicing at the announcement of Campbellspawn, and Pete immediately starts playing extreme hardball with Trudie’s dad, telling him, “I’m done auditioning,” telling him he’s got to drop Clearasil and, as a bonus, he wants the account for all of Dad’s Vicks holdings, including Formula 44, the cough drops, the inhaler, and Vapo-Rub and everything else. Dad calls him a “son-of-a-bitch,” to which Pete, one of the most self-aware characters in “Mad Men,” just gives a hilarious shrug.

Don’s party time involves drinking in his office until the floor polisher gets too loud and forces him to go home to the man cave, while Peggy is “swellegant” and downtown, hanging out in a Warhol-like “factory” where men in bear outfits drink Budweiser and Life magazine girl makes a genuine play for Peggy, who politely rebuffs. Now at home, Don starts to write an apology letter to Allison, but when we starts to write “Right now my life is…” he rips the page out of the typewriter, because nothing is more anathema to Don Draper than an easy revelation. So it’s much easier to just fall down on the couch.

Back at the love-in, Peggy has a run-in with the nude photographer (he’s clothed, but he photographs nudes — tough modifier) and tells him they could use his talents at SCDP. He returns with some “selling my soul” jibber jabber, and then the whole soiree gets busted, with the NYPD bringing in paddy wagons. Peggy ends up spending some quality time in a hiding place with the party thrower, which could spell trouble for her fiance. He seems like too much of a simpering tag-a-long anyway, and Peggy seems destined for a full flirtation with the counterculture.

When Don returns to the office, he is greeted by his new secretary, Mrs. Blankenship, a relic from the old days, and by the old days I mean the 1880s or so. This is by Don’s request, mainly because in an apparent moment of clarity, he realizes that attractive women in their early 20s are a bit of a problem when they are in close proximity and filling his scotch glass. Pete delivers the good news about Vicks, Don gives him a semi-congratulatory “Keep up the good work,” and tells Mrs. Blankenship to reschedule Dr. Miller, but it seems his new receptionist might need to listen to life the Nu-Sound way.

Peggy is talking to her snide copywriting partner Joey (Matt Long). Now, Joey doesn’t seem long for SCDP, because he’s the most insubordinate little creep this side of Pete Campbell, only he voices his contempt for his superiors in the open air. When one of the receptionists passes the envelope for a congratulatory gift for Pete and Trudie, Peggy is surprised at the news while Joey says, “I would get her so pregnant.” Joey will be great at SCDP if the agency ever lands the Massengill account. Otherwise, I see him getting shanked.

Peggy congratulates Pete, and clearly there are still some feelings there, since Peggy goes back and bangs her head on her desk like Charlie Brown. Cut to Don’s office, and Faye Miller shows up because Mrs. Blankenship told her to get to his office immediately rather than simply rescheduling. Yes, this Blankenship phase of the Draper office is going to be ripe for 1970s-level situation comedy. Faye tells Don that Pond’s cold cream appeal should be linked to the prospects of holy matrimony, to which Don says “Hello, 1925.” Which is funny, because when those ideas are promulgated these days, we usually say, “Hello, 1955.” Don insists that Faye manipulated the group, but focus groups have been commonplace in his business for years, and he seems more upset that there were personal ramifications for him. But however he got to his decision, Don is right in the long term: that kind of approach seems terribly old hat — like something Queen Victoria might wear.

In the lobby, Pete is meeting with the old men from Vicks, while Peggy is going to lunch with Life Magazine girl and a bunch of her young friends from upstairs. The message seems fairly simple: Peggy is casting her lot with the next generation, while Pete will make his bones with the ruling class.

And speaking of old hat, Don goes home to his dreary man cave, where an old man is standing in the hallway in his underwear repeatedly asking his wife, “Did you get pears? Did you get pears? Did you get pears?” His wife says, “We’ll discuss it inside.” I think Don would have preferred Nurse Phoebe to be outside asking about the pears, but no such luck. He’s feeling the desolation of the world he’s made for himself.

There was a lot going on in “The Rejected,” mainly a sketch of the mid-60s as it is shifting to a youth and freedom culture over the one Faye Miller seems to be recommending. While there was no exploration of Betty Draper’s world, that seems to be coming next week, along with another, more difficult advertising conflict. This one did not have the grand sweep of last week’s “The Good News,” but it fleshed out the storylines of more characters. A smaller episode, but more densely packed, like a jar of cold cream.
– Lang

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