The Oklahoman's George Lang

“Mad Men” Recap: 413, “Tomorrowland”

So, a few months of our time, about a year in “Mad Men” time and 13 episodes ago, a newspaper reporter asked the question, “Who is Don Draper?” Each episode has offered part of that answer, but with “Tomorrowland,” we learn that Don Draper is exactly who he was before this extraordinary season: a man most comfortable selling a sweet, unrealistic dream, even if he’s the customer. We’ve seen him flirt with the full embrace of life in the real world, even if that embrace was not his idea, but as we’re soon to find out, Don Draper’s “Tomorrowland” is really Fantasyland, and this episode is Mr. Draper’s Wild Ride.

At the man cave, Faye Miller is leaving to go to work, and Don is lying in bed, sweaty and freaking out about the cratering going on at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, and telling Faye that he’s got “a sick feeling” in his stomach. Faye, who at this point is probably the third or fourth most knowledgeable living person when it comes to Dick Whitman’s life, tells him he might feel better if he can settle with the past, acknowledge who he really is and move on into a brave new world as a Richard Donald Draper Whitman kind of guy. But Don is going to California with an aching in his heart, and Faye is not part of the equation. “I’m going to miss you,” he tells her. We all will.

As morning commences at the gleaming SCDP offices, Joan is pushing the mail cart through the empty expanse with a slight scowl on her face when she reaches Lane’s office. Lane is looking rather smug and self-satisfied as he hands her an envelope and tells her that, by unanimous decree, the partners have decided to make her Director of Agency Operations, which is essentially what she’s been doing anyway. Then he tells her that there will not be a pay bump commensurate with her now-official new title, and she tells him, “Well, it’s almost an honor.” With Fortunate Son off at the M*A*S*H unit and an ongoing development going on from within, Joan could use the extra cash, but no one at SCDP is taken for granted quite like Joan Holloway.

Well, maybe SCDP will be able to afford a pay bump for Joan sometime in the near future — if they remember to do it. This is because Don and Pete are meeting with the American Cancer Society and pitching an idea for anti-tobacco messages. The key PSA would feature parents and children doing family things, but always with cigarettes in the hands and the mouths of the parents. It would run during “American Bandstand” and it might have a good beat and you could dance to it, but the message would resonate: cigarettes would always get between them and their parents, the cigarettes will win, and their parents will die. The board questions it, pointing out that teens hate their parents, but Don — and this is classic Don — tells them that teenagers are sentimental: “Have you heard their music?” (cue laughter). They are mourning the loss of their childhood, and they are now feeling their mortality.

Back at SCDP, Roger yells, “Did you get Cancer?” Ah, the hilarity of the domestic Silver Ferret. Don and Petey are getting happy as they discuss how to exploit the ACS board for ad dollars, and they lean on Ken Cosgrove to talk his future father-in-law into bringing Dow Chemical to the agency. Kenny’s not on board: he tells them that his fiance is his life — “literally my life” — and that he will not let business jeopardize his relationship and that he’s not Pete. Petey gets one of his faces and shoots fire out of his eyeballs at Ken.

Up at Ossining, Glen shows up as the Salvation Army is carting out some furniture. He asks Carla if he can say goodbye to Sally. Carla is not wild about letting Krazee-Eyez Killa into the house, but since Betty is at the store, she figures it can’t do much harm. Yeah, whatever. So Glen goes up to Sally’s room and they have kind of a sweet goodbye — at first, when Sally tells him she’s going to California, he thinks it’s permanent, but when he finds out she’s just moving to Rye (home of Playland), he’s all cool with that, because in two years he’ll be driving a muscle car to Rye and threatening Sally’s virtue. But then when Glen leaves, he runs into his arch-nemesis. Betty screams at him, and he hits her hard with the cold-ass truth: she is against anyone else being happy because she’s personally incapable of true happiness. Well, that and Glen gives her the super-creeps. Carla probably should have left the room right about then, because Betty would have fired all the appliances if that’s all she had around her. So Betty fires Carla, the woman who raised her children.

So Don and his meddling accountant are discussing the sudden influx of cash he’s experiencing through the magic of real estate sales: the house in San Pedro and the Draper-Francis homestead in Ossining, which means Don can finally buy someplace to live other than his Village man-cave. But then Betty calls to tell him that Carla is canned, which means she cannot go to Cali with Don and the kids. Don goes bonkers at Betty’s summary judgment on Carla and insists that she be rehired for the trip, but Betty says Carla will “poison the well” — as if the well was all potable and tasty. Don has meetings, he tells her, and without Carla’s help it will be impossible to do business. So Betty — and this is rich, kids — tells him he should not take them, that “they’re used to it.” She’s played that one before, but never more inappropriately or with more bratty spite than here, since this is all her doing. That one belongs in the hall of fame.

Across the hall, Joyce (who’s really just there to be deus ex machina) comes to Peggy’s office to introduce Carolyn Jones Like Morticia (Cassandra Jean), a model who was just fired off a Topaz Pantyhose ad, along with the agency producing it. Harry is oh-so comforting and solicitous to the comely Carolyn Jones Like Morticia, but Harry is a schmuck and it’s not really working, and besides — there’s money to be made here, damn it! Peggy and Kenny decide it’s time to get themselves to Topaz and collect some pantyhose money.

As for California, Megan the Sex Robot has been checking into child care for Don’s trip, and she’s found that the hotel has services to handle the older kids but won’t take care of the baby, and vice versa — nobody wants chocolate in their peanut butter. So Don has a really great, Edison-inventing-the-light-bulb epiphany: why not pay MSR to take care of his kids in Cali? I mean, talk about all the comforts of home! MSR’s happiness sensors light up like her beloved Paris.

Kenny tells Peggy that the Pantyhose Men were impressed that he had found out so quickly about the failed campaign and agreed to take pitches. Meanwhile, in the sunny funland of California, Don comes in from a long day of business meetings and sees Megan the Sex Robot sitting on the bed with the kids, whom she’s taught a delightful French children’s song — one that sent little Eugene to slumberland. Don tells her, “You’re like Maria Von Trapp,” and in case you’ve forgotten, “The Sound of Music” was like “Inception” and “Toy Story 3″ rolled into one box office extravaganza in 1965, but it was also a kind of male wish-fulfillment fantasy: a virginal nun-wannabe comes to take care of the children, teaches them to sing and keeps them out of Daddy’s hair while he’s off at war — what was not to love? But Julie Andrews had none of the expert-engineered seductive power of Megan the Sex Robot. She knew he’d love seeing her lead the children in lilting Francophone song. Everything is going according to plan.

So then Don takes the kids with him to check out Anna’s house, where Stephanie is getting everything packed up. Sally notices the “Dick + Anna, ’64″ painted below the pretty flowers on the wall, and asks Don/Dick who “Dick” is. He tells her it is him, that is “my nickname sometimes.” Well, I’m sure some people have called him Dick other than Anna, but it wasn’t because he was their friend. As a lovely parting gift, Stephanie gives Don a tiny blue box. It is a solitaire diamond ring — the ring that the real Don Draper gave Anna before the Korean War. Oh yes, rubbing hands together in mock movie villain pantomime, everything is going according to plan.

Don is sitting on the bed with the kids, planning the next day’s trip to Disneyland when Megan shows up at the door with her old French Canadian college friend — they’re going to the Whisky a Go Go, possibly to see the Doors or the Lovin’ Spoonful. But that’s nothing like the rocking taking place in Ossining, where Henry is getting drunk and yelling at Betty for firing Carla. Betty protests, telling him they need a fresh start, but Henry says “There is no fresh start” — that “lives carry on.” She’s shocked — shocked! — that Henry isn’t on her side. Henry, who is showing a promising streak of nihilism that might save him in the end, tells her “Betty, no one is on your side.”

So now the kids are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of anthropomorphic mice dancing in their heads. Speaking of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Don hears Megan the Sex Robot return from the Whisky (it had only been open about a year and a half at this point), and one suspects Megan wanted Don to know she was back. He knocks on the door under the pretense of not being able to watch TV with the kids asleep, and wondering if she might be willing to help him plan the Disneyland trip. She makes googly eyes and jokingly and saucily asks if she should be a part of such “high-level discussions.” He’s in, and very much like Flynn.

In short order, after some discussions of her pain-in-the-ass college friend and MSR’s teeth(!), they’re kissing. MSR asks, “Are you sure we should be doing this?” But Don hasn’t stopped thinking about her, he says, and now he can’t stop doing anything else. Bwah-ha-ha-haaaa. Everything is going according to plan.

Now, as juxtaposition, Betty is all alone — nobody is on her side except her, because she’s lying on her side, in the fetal position, on Sally’s twin bed. Oh, to be young again and have a daddy figure to take care of everything and not yell at me when I’m being unbearable and impetuous. Well, it seems that papa’s got a brand new bag.

So, in post-coital repose, Don asks MSR if this is how she imagined things turning out. Her Nexus-6 circuit board sends a positive message, to which Don responds by pointing out that Megan knows nothing about him. This would be a perfect time for Edward James Olmos to drop an origami crane on the bedside table and yell, “But then again, who does?” But Megan says she knows enough: “You have a good heart and I know that you’re always trying to be better,” she says. Don wants to know if this is just a one-off, like their roll on the mid-century modern furnishings in his office. She assures him that there will not be a malfunction.

This is not the only seduction going on: the Topaz guys are being sold by Kenny and Peggy, who was smart enough to wear the product to the meeting and had some strong ideas — the hilariously named Art Garten likes what he’s hearing. But at the Johnie’s Coffee Shop at Wilshire and Fairfax (home of your favorite indie-film restaurant scenes), Sally’s not liking what Bobby’s selling (something about her being fat), and she knocks over a milkshake. Don reacts loudly, proving there’s not much air between his and Betty’s styles of parenting, but Megan Von Trapp the Cybernetic Sex Nanny has things under control, insisting there’s no use yelling over spilt milkshake. Hmm, Don thinks: this one can shield me from the headaches of parenting, and she’s expertly programmed to fulfill my fantasies — I’ll take her!

We then quick-cut back to New York. Don is sitting at the foot of the bed while MVTCSN is recharging. When she awakens, Don tells her that he’s been awake for a few hours, and could not sleep because he’s cannot stop thinking about her and “I feel like myself when I’m with you,” whatever that means. But our favorite ad man really pours it on, and when he says “I am in love with you, Megan,” it’s probably the exact way he imagines she would like to hear it. He brings out the little blue box, and asks her to marry him. She looks confused, but again, everything is going according to plan. She says yes, and if this were a much lesser show, we’d be hearing the echoing voice of Faye Miller right now: “You’ll be married again within the year.” At first, he tells Megan the ring had been in his family for awhile, but that’s, of course, not exactly true, but by Don’s standards and situation, it’s not exactly untrue, either. As Don gets up, Megan lies there like a ’60s film siren, her eyes peeking over the sheets, her smile fully visible nevertheless. Mission accomplished.

At SCDP, Don summons the Silver Ferret, Lane, Petey and Joan to his office to announce that he and “Miss Calvet” will be getting married. Of course, no one knows this name of French extraction, so Joanie pipes up to tell them it’s Megan. She’s invited in, prances over to Don in a slinky red dress as part of the coronation, and after the applause, the Silver Ferret tells Don that this is how their kind live. Indeed, Don has followed in Roger’s footsteps by marrying his secretary, and when I say “his secretary,” I mean “Don’s secretary.” Ida Blankenship died for you, Megan!

Kenny tells Peggy that the word from Art Garten is awesome — they loved the second and fourth ideas, and they want to see something in a week. They go to Don’s office, where there is much rejoicing. Don is as ebullient as he’s ever been this season as he congratulates the two, but Peggy is bewildered by the new reality: Don has thrown over her idol, Dr. Faye Miller, for this year’s model. Don thinks he’s being crafty and complimentary by telling Peg that MSR “has the same spark” as she does, and that Megan looks up to her, but Peggy just sees it as Megan taking the old way to success while Peggy is in the trenches.

Megan then tells Don that Faye has called again. Don has been ducking her, but Megan tells him that waiting will not make things easier. Meanwhile, Peggy goes to Joan’s office and the two commiserate about the impending nuptials. Joan tells Peggy that she’ll probably have to train Megan as a copywriter, and Peggy gripes that the engagement completely overshadowed the Topaz signing, which is the company’s first new business since losing Lucky Strike. Sharing a smoke, Joan tells Peggy that she learned a long time ago that she should not try to gain all her satisfaction in the workplace, to which Peggy retorts, “That’s bulls—,” and they laugh, finally finding some common ground after the unpleasantness a few episodes ago.

And now comes “the talk.” Don is on the phone with Faye, asking if she’ll meet him for coffee. She’s not buying it: Faye knows what is coming, and she does not want to sit through coffee after he breaks up with her. When he tells her he’s met someone, he’s fallen in love and he’s getting married, she starts to cry, asking who it is. He asks her, “Does it matter?” as if he already knows how little regard she’ll have for his choice in life. She tell him, “I hope she knows that you only like the beginnings of things.” They hang up, and she sobs uncontrollably. She might have been smart, accomplished and seductive in her own right, but Dr. Faye Miller, at least in some ways, overplayed her hand. She wanted Don to embrace the truth, and that was a bridge too far. It was far too easy to marry someone who has cartoon bluebirds draping daisy garlands over her when she rises every morning.

So Joan calls Frank Burns over in Vietnam to tell him about the engagement and everything else that is happening, and he asks her when she’s going to tell the office about her own news: the upcoming baby. Yes, Joanie’s going to give birth to a beautiful baby, and it’s going to be tough for Frank Burns when said baby comes out of the womb with silver hair, begging for a martini.

It is now 7 p.m. in Ossining, N.Y., and the house where Don and Betty Draper (but mostly Carla) raised their children is empty except for Betty, who is standing in the kitchen, primping for what is supposed to be a surprise encounter with Don. Don is there to meet the Realtor ™ for a walk-through, but Betty claims she forgot a few things. Don supposes she also forgot the Jameson he kept over the oven, and they share a drink out of one of the kids’ duck-shaped plastic cups. Betty starts to reminisce with Don about the old days, then lets loose that “things aren’t perfect.” Oh, but they could be, couldn’t they, Betty? Grace Kelly back with her prince?

But then, this isn’t a fairy tale, Gracie. Don tells her that he met someone and he’s getting married. She assumes that it’s Megan, since she went with him to California. Well, that didn’t go well. Betty picks up her stuff and goes to Rye, and Don lies in bed, with Megan recharging next to him, thinking about the life he left and the one ahead of him in Season 5.

All told, this was the greatest season of “Mad Men” to date. Recently in the comments section, I predicted that the next season will likely begin in 1967, with Don and Megan the Sex Robot-Draper in their beautiful new home in Connecticut. My first thought was that they would move to a stately, two-story Colonial on a large tract, but given the glass-and-metal sensibilities of the Time-Life Building and his new bride, I think he’s building a maze of modernity out there. Perfect for ice storms and key parties in a few years.

It will be a long time before we recap “Mad Men” again, but I’ve enjoyed this greatly. Next week: “The Walking Dead” begins. I’ll see you here.

– Lang

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“Mad Men Recap: 412, “Blowing Smoke”

As “Blowing Smoke” commences, Don is taking his secret meeting with Heinz — the one Faye violated her “Chinese Wall” to set up, and things are not going swimmingly. This Mr. Geiger is not a ketchup man: he is a disgruntled baked beans executive who pines for the days when his product was No. 1 at the company, but ever since World War II and everybody started having backyard cookouts, salted, sugared and vinegared tomato gunk is king. He’s not happy with how Ketchum did such a straightforward campaign for beans, and while he understands that “there is a time for beans and a time for ketchup” (that would be 5:17 p.m. and 5:33 p.m., respectively), he wants some zip, though he’s worried that a humorous ad for beans will ultimately result in the campfire scene from “Blazing Saddles.” Geiger is hilarious: he thinks pickles are funny in a way that legumes could never be, and he’s probably right — this is a guy who lives and breathes beans, vinegars and sauces.

So Geiger seems “all in,” except he needs six months before he jumps, and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce doesn’t really have six months — they might not have six weeks. Don even offers him a break on the standard commission, but Geiger can smell the sweat and advises Draper, a man whose creativity he values, to let the account execs chase the new business. Geiger might be on to something — Draper’s idea of having creative keep the accounts happy while the brass shakes the trees for new business looks a little desperate, like they don’t have anybody to go into the field. Unfortunately, that could be the new reality at SCDP.

At the former Chez Draper in Westchester County, Sally expresses some interest in actually having family dinners, as opposed to the three kids all sitting around at 5 p.m. and eating Spaghetti-Os and Betty and Henry having dinner after the underage borders have gone to bed. Betty, who likes kids about as much as people think she does (more on that later), doesn’t have much personal enthusiasm for the concept, but she sees it as evidence that Sally is starting to accept Henry. What’s more likely is that Sally will settle for anything that remotely resembles a family unit at this point and Betty’s strategy of shielding Henry from what she sees as an annoyance is keeping the new Francis family from cohering.

Back at SCDP, Geoffrey Atherton, Faye’s boss, is proposing that our heroes take a meeting with Phillip Morris. Apparently the cigarette company is preparing to launch a smoke aimed at women (Virginia Slims), and they’re looking for fresh ideas for marketing their new, pretty nicotine delivery system. Atherton says he already has a meeting set and tells them that tobacco is the ideal boyfriend for SCDP, because they’re just that “kind of girl.” And Bert Cooper tells Atherton they’ll listen more than they’ll talk — like a “good girlfriend.” Okay… But even with this potentially good grab, our favorite Limey bean counter, Lane, is worried about making payroll and tells Petey that cuts are in the near future.

In an unkempt residential alleyway in Ossining, Sally and Glen are comparing notes on their respective child psychologists and the whole thing looks like a parody of mid-century teenage courtship, with Glen wearing his football uniform and lounging on the grass while Sally hangs on his every word — Glen comes on like George Costanza in the “Seinfeld” episode titled “The Little Kicks,” in which he’s wearing a letterman’s jacket and leaning on a muscle car to impress Elaine’s assistant, Anna. He’s offering her smokes, asking if she “kisses her mom’s ass” like Glen always counseled her — as Glen tells her, Betty “doesn’t like kids.” This is true, but above all other kids, she really doesn’t like Glen. They’re 10, but it’s like “Rebel Without a Cause” staged by the “Bugsy Malone” crew.

[UPDATE: According to reader/poster Elizabeth, Glen Bishop is 14 and Sally Draper is 11. According to the incredibly detailed "Mad Men" wiki, Elizabeth is absolutely correct -- Glen was born in 1951. Not able to verify Sally's age, but in the spirit of community and with the understanding that "Mad Men" viewers sweat the details, Elizabeth's age for Sally stands.]

As he is leaving the Time-Life Building, Don runs into Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt), who was his Beatnik lover back in 1960-61 and claims to have just been at a meeting with a Time-Life-associated magazine and seems intent on getting Don back to her apartment to buy a painting and have dinner with her husband Perry (John Ales). Don agrees and when they reach Midge and Perry’s coldwater flat, the place is a sordid mess. Perry, a sweaty, desperate pitchman for his wife’s art, starts to sell Don on “No. 4,” a painting in a series of works based on what Midge sees when she closes her eyes. Don can sense the crazed urgency, especially when Perry offers to pimp Midge out to him. Neither has any cash to buy groceries for dinner, so Don slides Perry a tenner and he runs out excitedly. Midge dismisses Perry as an idiot who’s going to take the $10 and “put it in his arm.” Considering that Midge is acting as antsy as Perry and possibly because she hasn’t taken her sweater off and it’s September, Don figures she’s just as strung out. He asks her what heroin is like, and she describes it as drinking “100 bottles of whiskey while someone licks your t–s.” Perry got her hooked and now she cannot stop. Don writes a $300 check for “No. 4,” but Midge says, “Don, what am I going to do with a check?” He gives her $125 in cash, and he can’t get out of there fast enough.

Meanwhile, Sally is in her therapy session with Dr. Edna (Patricia Bethune), during which they play cards and talk casually. Dr. Edna tells Sally how proud she is of her progress and that she can cut back to one session a week so she can participate in ballet and such. Sally, I mean. But then when Dr. Edna tells Betty about cutting back, Betty becomes visibly distraught and describes Sally as a “mess.” When Dr. Edna suggests that Betty, who always has plenty she wants to talk about during their monthly sessions to discuss Sally, should see one of her colleagues, Betty practically begs for them to continue their meetings. Now, Betty has never been a paragon of parenting but jeez: she’s keeping Sally in therapy just so she can get counseling on the side without the stigma. Who’s the mess here?

Megan the Sex Robot tells Don that the partners are assembled in the lobby, so he joins them in time to meet Atherton, who dejectedly announces that Phillip Morris canceled their meeting. They went with Leo Burnett, and this causes everyone to spontaneously lose their feces. Bert hilariously kicks Harry out of the partners’ meeting, and Mr. TV joins Peggy, Stan and the other kids to listen through the wall while Don tells everyone that “We’re desperate — they can smell it on us” — a common theme in this episode. Lane tells the partners that he has secured a line of credit so they can continue to operate, but the senior partners (Sterling, Cooper and Draper) will have to cough up $100,000 in collateral and the juniors (Pryce and Campbell) must pony up $50,000 — and remember, we’re talking 1965 dollars, so even for relatively rich practitioners of the advertising arts, these are princely sums. Petey is objecting and making one of his faces, but Lane reminds him that his contract stipulates that he must do so if asked. See, Petey, buying an apartment on Fifth Avenue is the bright side of this business, and then there are the obligations, schmucky.

While Sally and Glen talk about dreams of floating, death and the woman on the Land ‘O Lakes box, Pete corners Don about how Phillip Morris used the threat of an SCDP meeting to get a better deal with Leo Burnett, and how he cannot afford the $50,000. Don explains to Pete that “I’m doing everything I can.” Pete and Don have one of the more complicated dynamics in this office, given Pete’s acquired knowledge and Don’s power. These two are joined in an eternal business relationship, whether they can stand one another or not.

Peggy, who shares a similar but far more pleasant dynamic with Don, suggests that the agency simply rename itself and start over. Don thinks this is ridiculous — they just started SCDP, after all — but Peggy thinks this would be “changing the conversation.” That evening, Pete and Trudy have a conversation worth changing: she gets all happy because the bank called about a loan application. She thinks they’re moving out to the suburbs, but when Petey informs her of its purpose, she get supremely pissed, telling him that he’s just using the money to preserve his “state room on the Titanic.” She forbids him from throwing their money at the firm or asking her daddy for cash, to which Petey says she cannot forbid him to do jack squat, though… I think she kind of did.

Back at the man-cave, Don nearly throws out “No. 4,” but then he begins to ponder the thing and the nature of addiction, how Lucky Strike got people addicted to cigarettes (an addiction some people argue is as difficult to shake as heroin) and how SCDP became addicted to tobacco money. He begins to write in his journal an entry titled “Why I’m Quitting Tobacco,” and he details how tobacco is a product that “never improves, causes illnesses and makes people unhappy.” He types up this screed, copy-edits it in red ink and puts in an envelope. The entry becomes a full-page ad in the New York Times.

It was a radical move and probably a genius one, but the partners at SCDP hate, hate, hate it. The Silver Ferret smells blood and tells Don he’s glad he can step aside as the chief reason for the agency’s failure, but then Megan the Sex Robot walks in to inform Don that Sen. Robert Kennedy’s office is on the line. A voice comes on that is just full of baked beans and chowder, showering praise on Don for his move, but really it is reigning Manhattan advertising d-bag Ted Chaough doing a generic Kennedy impression. When Don hangs up on Ted’s ass, Bert goes absolutely bonkers, saying that they’ve “created a monster” with Don, and that he’s taking his shoes and getting the hell out of there — he’s resigning from the agency. Lane reminds Don that he’s got to belch up 100-large by the close of business “as it were.” When everyone else leaves, MSR comes in to stroke Don’s… ego, telling him that she admires what he did with the letter. When Don owns up to the fact that it was hardly an altruistic move, she tells him she understands that it was “he didn’t dump me, I dumped him.” MSR calculates like Texas Instruments — amazing. Wonder if she’s already picked out her dress.

Don calls Peggy into his office, and she’s relieved when she finds out there will be no pink slip for her — for now — but that many of her underlings will be sent packing shortly. He asks her what she thought of the ad. “I thought you didn’t go in for those kinds of shenanigans,” she says, referring to his criticism of her ham scheme in 401. She smiles as part of their mutual appreciation, and prepares for the wailing and rending of garments.

So Betty is creeping along in the Cadillac with the window rolled down and her Benson and Hedges hanging out when she sees Sally sneaking through the alley to meet with Glen. She brakes as if a deer ran in front of her and races after her daughter. Glen, ever that wall of fortitude and strength, nearly urinates on himself running away. Betty tells Sally that Glen is a bad kid — I don’t know if he’s a bad kid, but he’s got some odd ticks and looks a little too much like Alfred Molina. “I know him better than you do,” she says, mainly on the basis of him stealing a lock of her hair and trying to put his fat tongue in her mouth.

Faye is standing outside the “Don Draper” door as Don approaches with MSR. Faye is carrying a box of belongings, and once inside the office, she informs Don that Atherton resigned their services with SCDP because he wants to work with tobacco again. Don sheepishly tells her he didn’t think of that one, but the fringe benefit is that Don and Faye can date with impunity until and presumably after he marries MSR. He suggests that they go to La Caravelle (33 W 55th), which was still a fairly new French restaurant at the time (closed in 2004). She tells him, “Have your girl set it up,” after which the entire Time-Life Building is spontaneously shrouded in ice. As Faye leaves, Peggy tells her she’d like to have a drink sometime, that she admires Faye as someone who is strong and doesn’t have to play any games. “Is that what it looks like?” Faye asks. They’re still games — Faye just plays them Faye-styley.

Back at the Draper/Francis domicile, Henry shows up for that family dinner Sally was so enthusiastic about, but then Betty puts the kibosh on Sally’s happiness, telling him that she’s finally ready to move, and it looks like the Franci will be relocating to Rye, N.Y., home of Playland, which makes Bobby happy, but Sally runs from the table and spends the rest of the evening crying while clutching the lanyard Glen gave her at Christmas.

Back at SCDP, the remaining partners meet to discuss the layoffs and Roger the Silver Ferret tells Don, who at first thought it was a joke, that the American Cancer Society wants to talk to them about ads. Sure, it would be non-profit work, but it could be the window that opens when a door closes. Well, it’s time to hand out the pink slips: “Don saved the company,” Petey says. “Now go get rid of half of it.” Not so fast, you ingrate: as Lane informs him, Don paid Petey’s collateral. Petey raises his whiskey glass to toast Don — yeah, that and $50,000 should cover it. Then Don gives Danny Siegel the tiny ax, and many people we’ve never seen before hang their heads and carry boxes as Don surveys the wreckage.

I’m not sure that we’re going to see the resurrection of SCDP this Sunday as this extraordinary season wraps up — I understand that the final episode centers on a road trip, so we might not see anyone other than Don and his kids. But there is a lot to suss out: is this the last of Bert Cooper? Does Faye stand a chance up against a crafty Nexus-6 pleasure model?

Does Henry get offed by Glen?

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“Mad Men” Recap: 411, “Chinese Wall”

By early September 1965, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is being forced into a wartime mindset, and while Don Draper is a supreme commander when he’s not hitting the Jamesons too hard, he makes two crucial mistakes late in this episode and it’s hard to imagine any of this working out on the bright side. Sure, SCDP will be fine — well, most of it anyway — and everything will work out on the business end of things, but Don makes a bad play, and then a worse one. And given the magnitude of this screwup, Draper could possibly be facing his most brutal confrontation with his true past before the season ends.

It’s a Beatnik Beach Party with Joyce and Abe! Peggy and Joyce pile into the car after crazy times at Jones Beach, where Peggy has to shake the sand out of her hair and Joyce wonders aloud whether that is actually sand. It is Jones Beach after all — it could be medical waste, it could be Malt-O-Meal, it could be any number of things. So then Abe piles into the back seat with Peggy, and apparently all that “Nurenburg on Madison Avenue” claptrap is all in the past. Peggy and Abe are cozy and mega-sexual: they go back to Peggy’s place, and Abe is all over our Peggy, telling her that her shoulders make her look like an Olympian. That’s a nice compliment — much better than, “Your job makes you look like a fascist!” We’re not privy to the whys or hows of this new state of affairs: on “Mad Men,” we’re simply asked to accept that things happen because, well, they do.

Ken is at dinner with his fiance, her mother and Laura Palmer’s dad (Ray Wise) when he runs into an old colleague from BBDO, who offers condolences about the loss of Lucky Strike. Ken, of course, goes into total apoplexy and rushes off to track down Petey, who is at the hospital while Trudy gives birth to Campbellspawn. Pete similarly craps his pants and when he is unable to get Roger on the phone, he calls Don. Don tells Pete to wake Bert Cooper and go directly to the office.

So everyone is gathered at Roger Sterling’s Korova Milk Bar: Bert’s in his jammies and everyone is somewhere on the scale between morose and screaming. Sterling is trying to act surprised that all this is happening and then is prodded to — oh, I don’t know — call Lee Garner Jr. and ask why the hell he’s doing this.  So Roger gets on the phone and slyly puts his finger on the receiver to fake the call. He blows out a lot of faux outrage — “Thirty years, I have to hear it on the street?” What a guy. He then offers to fly down to Raleigh to try to change Garner’s mind. It strikes me that Sterling might have considered flying down to Raleigh about 30 seconds after their disastrous dinner wrapped up, but one of the underlying messages this season is that Roger is somewhere below Danny Siegel in the roster of essential SCDP personnel.

Don returns to his apartment and tells Faye about the bloodbath. Faye tries to be comforting, saying “Look at that face,” like she’s kissing a puppy. “”You’re the most hirable man on Madison Avenue.” Don doesn’t think it’s come to that, but one has to wonder just how quickly Draper would be snapped up. It’s not like his equals at BBDO or, more to the point, Ted Chaough would get out of the way for Draper, and I wonder if their bosses would ax them in order to bring in Don if SCDP hits the skids. I don’t think we’re going to find out what would happen — the destruction of SCDP is unlikely at this point.

Pete goes back to the hospital waiting room and tells his father-in-law about Lucky Strike, and Trudy’s dad treats this whole SCDP thing like Petey’s been hitchhiking through Europe or playing bass on tour with the Four Seasons for the past year and a half and now it’s time to get serious about his career. He also throws Ted Chaough’s name around, which is a lot like throwing poop around. Meanwhile, Peggy and Abe are getting pants-happy in Peggy’s apartment, which means Peggy will have a nice post-coital smile when she arrives at SCDP and discovers that 68 to 72 percent of the agency’s business is out the door.

Now, about that: Roger calls Bert to let him know that Garner said he can’t go for that, no can do, but he’s calling from a nice suite in Manhattan, not North Carolina. God, Roger’s been such a mongoose this episode, you’d think Rudyard Kipling wrote a story about him. Again, this is one of those plot points that would be impossible in 2010 — the hotel’s main number would show up on SCDP’s caller id. Of course, Roger could probably use his iPhone and maintain the charade.

Immediately afterward, Bert calls a full staff meeting to announce that Lucky Strike is up in smoke, then turns it over to Don Draper Superstar, who rallies the troops by telling them “”We’re going to push ourselves and it will be exhilarating.” By the looks of it, the boiler-room atmosphere that awaits our heroes looks about as exhilarating as full immersion in fish guts, but maybe I’m not the type-A personality who gets jazzed about 80-hour work weeks. The whip will be cracked. When the head of accounting gives a very tired spiel about financial policy and asks for questions, Danny’s hand shoots up, but nobody sees him because he’s about the size of a fully-grown Manhattan bedbug.

Don then ushers the creative team to his office, where Danny assumes he’s going to be the first to get a swift kick out of the Time-Life Building, but Don assures the homunculus that if he’s in the room, he’s still alive. He tells them that the SCDP brass will be in charge of shaking the trees for new business while creative does everything to retain the current clients. Peggy, who showed up late and a little flushed, is told that she will take the lead on getting Playtex on board, because having Don do it might make the situation look desperate.

Still at his Manhattan hotel room and now looking for company, Roger calls Joan to apologize for all the subterfuge and to let her know that he’s got a bed under him that could use some testing. She is equal parts disgust and sympathy, telling him that if he had said something sooner, they might have been able to do something about Lucky Strike. Sterling just wants her to get down to his room and “comfort him,” but Joan isn’t buying, mainly because flopsweat isn’t sexy.

Back where people are actually trying to keep the company afloat instead of hiding from their problems, Peggy starts talking about Playtex Living Gloves in a way that could make anyone want to do a sink full of dishes, describing them as the things that will save a woman’s hands for the things she really like to touch, which is making Stan and Danny get a tad squirmy. Then Abe shows up pretending to be a delivery boy, which brings to mind at least a few dirty blues songs, and Stan and Danny go off to snicker: “”Am I wrong, or is she giving it off?” Squiggy asks Lenny.

Ken and Pete (who spends much of his time in various states of semi-consciousness when padding around SCDP in this episode) make calls to current clients to assure them of SCDP’s solidity and then gather to discuss the state of things, but in the middle of this confab, Don is pulled away by Megan the Sex Robot for a call from Glo-Coat, who basically tell Don, “Thanks for the fine work on Glo-Coat, but would you please hold this anvil while we throw you in the Hudson?” Completely infuriated, Don breaks his Clio and storms back to the meeting to castigate Petey for spending so much time on the birth of his child that he let Glo-Coat skip out. Campbell leaves to return to not worrying about Glo-Coat, and he is greeted by Ted Chaough, who gives him a baby gift and starts talking up a big-time position with CGC, where he undoubtedly will oversee some great accounts like, say, Union Carbide, lawn darts and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic.

Roger goes to Joan’s apartment and, smooth operator that he is, immediately insults her choice of pajamas — jammies are big in this episode. Somehow, he manages to kiss her without getting a frying pan to the back of his silver skull, but Joan pushes him away, telling him “I can’t do this anymore.” I suppose I could understand this relationship at one point, but Roger has never been more pathetic — he was dealing from a stronger position when he was vomiting oysters a few seasons back.

In his office with Faye, Don tells her the clients are “dropping like flies,” and then insists that Ms. Miller should tear down this Chinese wall and start funneling her clients to SCDP. And this infuriates Faye, who tells Don that the only thing that keeps her alive in the business is her integrity, but Don acts like she just said all of that in Mandarin. He tells her, “I’d do it for you,” but Faye tells him she would never ask in the first place. It’s worth noting that Don and Roger aren’t really that far apart here in terms of spiral, it’s just that Sterling doesn’t keep his cool as well, and while Don has mostly earned everything that is now being taken from him, Roger inherited Lucky Strike and is now acting like a bratty child who just found out that the silver spoon is silverplate.

We haven’t had any frat-boy hijinks from Stan in at least an episode, so now it’s time for him to get inappropriately randy with Peggy: as she gets ready to pitch Playtex, Stan pretends that he’s some kind of enlightened spiritual leader who can peer into her soul and teaches her deep-breathing exercises. And of course, he puts his fat tongue in her mouth and she has to push him off of her. Peggy could be reading a P&L statement and Stan would think she was hot for him.

Roger finally announces that his fake entreaties to Garner and Lucky Strike have resulted in just as little success. Don goes off on Roger for letting his only account go by the wayside, but this friendly family gathering is interrupted by Megan the Sex Robot, who lets them know that Trudy just gave birth to a baby girl. Pete seems as pleased as Pete seems capable of seeming pleased, and then the gang excuses themselves to attend the funeral of a fellow adman in hopes of siphoning some business — SCDP is reduced to scooping roadkill in hopes of turning it into a feast. (By the way, if you think MSR has been unusually visible this episode, you’re probably sensing a big move. Well, keep your pants on, so to speak.) But when Roger complains to Bert about Don being out of line, Bert gives him the high hat: “Lee Garner Jr. never took you seriously because you never took yourself seriously,” Bert tells him.

As Peggy prepares for her Playtex pitch, Stan decides to let her go into the pitch with lipstick on her teeth, since the only appropriate move after being spurned for trying to force your beefy self on a co-worker is to let them potentially scuttle increasingly precious business. Everything goes fine, although the Playtex guy spends most of the meeting trying to tell Peggy about the unfortunate confluence of cosmetics and dentistry in her mouth and it comes off like just another schmo trying to make time with her. Ultimately, Playtex is impressed, but after the meeting, Harry the Deflating Device informs her of the smear.

The funeral is clearly a cautionary tale. While Freddy Rumson points out potential business that might be stolen while the deceased is eulogized as a great creative man who was “given to” his company by his family, who sit through all these niceties as if each fine sentiment were a hot knife. He was just another guy who sacrificed his family for office success and died in his early 50s of Lucky Strikes and Jamesons.

When Megan stays late to help Don, she really stays late to help Don — out of his pants. But seriously, folks: Megan is one worshipful receptionist of French extraction with an eye toward winning the Draper Matrimonial Sweepstakes. “You’re in my head all day and you don’t know anything about me.” Well, in a few moments he will know her in the Biblical sense, but MSR promises Don that she will not wail and rend her garments like Allison did. Plus, she’ll prop up “Mr. Draper” (she says, salaciously) whenever he needs it and probably not pitch much of a fuss when Faye Miller shows up. Megan is a remarkable convenience.

Roger goes home to find Jane (making what I think is her first appearance this season, since Peyton List was so busy wasting her time earlier this year with “FlashForward”) wearing the kind of gaudy housewife clothing one would expect Lucille Ball to wear on “The Lucy Show.” She presents him with a box full of copies of his terrible memoir and she tell him, “I’m so proud of you” and nuzzles him. Hollow praise and hollow affection for a hollow autobiography by a hollow man.

Don goes home to the man cave and discovers Faye, who has apparently had a change of heart about giving up information about her clients, and presents Heinz on a silver platter. While she also seems ready for a roll on the Sealy, Don is exhausted (well, of course he is), and just asks her to cuddle. Aww.

Now, clearly Don has set himself up for something terrible, especially if Faye ever gets wind of him making time with the MSR, but as we’ve noted before, Matthew Weiner learned the game of red herrings from the best practitioner in television history, David Chase. (Still wondering what happened to the Russian in “Pine Barrens,” are you? The world will never know.) There might never be a real payoff, but it just lies there in the background, creating tension. Then again, 68 to 72 percent of SCDP business has fallen away. Tension is not exactly a rare commodity.

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“Mad Men” Recap: 410, “Hands and Knees”

With the various unravelings taking place in  “Hands and Knees,” nearly every major character in “Mad Men” is facing just how tenuous success, happiness, relationships or simply the fragile balance of day-to-day life can be. The episode was a kind of chamber of horrors — everything that can go wrong, short of death or the cratering of the entire advertising industry, is going wrong for our Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce heroes and heroines. That being said, it was not a landmark episode on the order of practically everything that came before it this season, but it was extremely plot-heavy, likely serving as the springboard for some key moves in the final three.

Jon Hamm recently told NPR’s Terry Gross that one of Matthew Weiner’s key tenets for “Mad Men” is that actions have consequences — maybe not from week to week, but everything catches up eventually. This week, we see an unexpected consequence of actions set into motion in season 2 (Pete’s aerospace deal from StaticBlog’s beloved “The Jet Set” episode), and something from last week (Roger and Joan’s post-mugging alley romp). At the top, Joan informs Roger that “she’s late,” and that it could not possibly be her husband Greg, who by now is probably drinking pre-mixed martinis out of an IV bottle in an olive-drab tent. Greg left seven weeks ago, and the mugging was six weeks ago — that’s going to be one silver-haired baby.

And apparently, the bad feelings between Sally and Don persist, and Don is doing everything he can to make up for the fact that he won’t let his little girl live in his Greenwich Village man-cave and make French toast for him, so he calls up to Chez Betty Francis to see if Sally wants to go see the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Sally starts screaming — she might want to save that for the show: she won’t hear a note, but it’ll be 30 minutes that she’ll never forget.

Now we find out we will get to meet the evil bag of pickled Yorkshire pudding responsible for impregnating Lane Pryce’s mother. Robert Pryce (W. Morgan Sheppard) has arrived in New York to bring his son back to Blighty and make nice with the estranged Mrs. Pryce, because hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. Lane asks Don to go along to dinner, mainly because he could use some backup, but also because Don is essentially Lane’s designated wingman after last New Year’s Eve. So before the festivities, Lane, Pete, Don and Harry meet the rocket men from North American Aviation about promoting their hot new technology, and while key information is currently being blocked out, the NAA guys promise our SCDP men that the big, black blocks will magically go away as business progresses, but as we’ll soon find out, this will require some work from G-men and whatnot.

Playboy Club time — it’s pretty amazing that it took Lane Pryce to escort us to that monument to 1960s swinging, the Playboy Club, after 3.75 seasons. So we’re sitting there as Lane tries to big-dog it in front of his pustule of a father and Don is just observing, bemused at the sight of Lane. Mr. Pryce just bitches about not getting his drinks, but Lane wants to introduce his new girlfriend Toni (Naturi Naughton, who played Lil Kim in the Biggie Smalls biopic “Notorious”). Lane is pretty happy with himself, and he seems to be using this new relationship as a symbol of his independence — a not-so-subtle message to Dear Old Dad that he cannot tell his boy what to do anymore, and besides, he’s got a new life in NYC.

Cut to the following day, and men in hats appear on Betty’s doorstep. These guys are doing a background check on her ex-husband, and suddenly a new dimension to Don/Dick’s subterfuge becomes scarily apparent: because Don needs a government clearance to work with North American Aviation on their account, everyone could soon find out that Don Draper was killed in Korea in 1952. The G-men ask Betty if Don is who he says he is, and while that seems to be code for “Is Don Draper a commie pinko?” Betty is freaked, but not as freaked as Don will be. She calls Don to tell him about the interview, and Don goes into extreme damage control mode, sweating like a nattily dressed stuck pig. He immediately goes to his new secretary Megan (Jessica Pare) and asks her if she submitted a background investigation form on him. It turns out that Megan filled it out herself and asked Don to sign it. Like he does, Don just signed it without knowing what it was, and now he runs the risk of having everybody besides Pete Campbell know about his past and, beyond all that, probably wind up in Levenworth.

Megan, who in her sexy android way is so eager to please, practically begs Don to fire her for screwing up, when in truth she followed standard protocol at SCDP. This subservience is just what Don likes, but not what he needs right now.

In another life, I used to process background investigations in the military and was subjected, during boot camp, to my own background interview and subsequent investigation, so I’m particular interested in and attuned to just how quickly Draper’s false life would fall apart under today’s circumstances. By modern standards, his back story would be in ashes in about 30 seconds. In 1965, if the full investigation were to go forward, he’d probably have a week or so before he’d need to hop a flight to Rio and spend the next several years trading swimsuit models with Ronnie Biggs.

Lane, on the other hand, has more familiar and familial problems at hand. He goes back to the Playboy Club after hours to talk to Toni. “You know that I love you, my chocolate bunny,” he tells her. She’s definitely swayed by how “dashing” he is, but an accent can go a long way.

So Roger and Joan go to see Joan’s OB, who is one seriously judgmental scold (“You have used this woman!”). He tells Roger to write down the name of a doctor who performs abortions in Jersey, because he doesn’t want it in his own handwriting. One thing “Mad Men” has excelled at is chronicling the shift in medical ethics and even the tone and bedside manner used by doctors. The doc talks like Joan isn’t even in the room.Meanwhile, Don is losing his feces over the investigation and calls in Pete to see if his buddy in government can get the investigation halted, telling him he’d probably skip town and country to get away. Pete is pissed, because he knows this means the contract, which he’s been working on since 1962, is probably going away.

The silver fox shows himself as truly a silver weasel in the next scenes, where he wonders aloud if the pregnancy is a sign that he and Joanie should be together, but that doesn’t exactly fit into his scheme given the fact that Jane Siegel Sterling is sitting at home and Roger isn’t keen on two alimony payments a month. So he tells Joan she should just raise the kid as Greg’s baby: it would be Roger’s child, but he would not be in the picture. Joan isn’t sold on this one and, frankly, Roger isn’t exactly impressing her with his chivalry. “I’ll take care of it,” she tells him. Throughout this episode, Roger seems more upset that his dream of having Joan as his woman on the side again isn’t happening according to plan. With this scene, he basically carves a tombstone for their relationship.

When Betty tells Henry about the investigation, Henry is a little upset that agents were in there talking to his wife without his knowledge, but then he gets this kid who wants to be an astronaut look in his eyes and ponders that, just maybe, he’ll be the subject of a background investigation someday. Oh, dare to dream, Henry. But Henry has more to worry about than not measuring up to Don in terms of importance to national security: Betty willingly lied to investigators about Don/Dick. If she hated Don as much as she professes, she would not have done that. She might just have been worried that Don’s heart was going to explode in his chest, but I think there’s more to it than mere medical concern.

Pete’s ire is only rising over the NAA account: the next day, he tells Don he thinks the agency could survive and thrive even if Don were exposed as Dick Whitman and got carted away to the hoosegow, but Don is unequivocal: “Get rid of it.” Pete doesn’t have any leverage, and it’s in sharp contrast to the way Pete perceived things back at the old Sterling Cooper when he found Don/Dick’s true identity. Speaking of which, has Don ever heard of a safe deposit box?

Don directs his accountant to establish a trust fund for Sally, the boys and Betty, and the accountant is more than a little dubious about the notion, thinking it is unwise to grant Betty access to such funds. Yeah, me too — this plays like one of those seemingly minor moves that turn into a colossal problem two years from now. Or, it’s one more step on the road back to Don and Betty’s marital unhappiness.

But true unhappiness, thy name is Joan. She sits in the waiting room of that New Jersey doctor while a mother her age or younger cries for her daughter as she gets an abortion. The woman assumes that Joan is there for her own daughter and asks how old she is. “15,” she replies. It’s a lie of comfort, but you can see that Joan, having been here a couple of times before and riding alone back to the city on a bus, feels like no progress has been made.

Roger, meanwhile, is getting his ass handed to him by Lee Garner Jr. After dinner and drinks, the Lucky Strike scion tells Sterling that he’s covering the check — an ominous move, given that it’s the agency that traditionally wines and dines the client, not the other way around. Garner informs Roger that they’re consolidating all their business with BBDO, and Sterling looks like he’s going to throw up, which is actually Don’s job at the moment. Roger tells Garner that he has covered for him in the past (re: Sal, I suppose), and that he owes him to give SCDP 30 days to make things right. At the moment, we don’t know what this means. He might try to mitigate the loss (yes) or convince Garner that SCDP should take care of all company business (a tough bill). At any rate, according to Lane Pryce, Lucky Strike constitutes anywhere from 68 to 72 percent of SCDP’s business. This is bad.

So yes, Don is a quivering mess of a man, feverish and sweating profusely when Faye finds him in his office and insists on taking him home. Once they arrive in the Village, Don sees two men in hats walking down the hallway, and he can barely contain his stomach — he rushes into the apartment and projects epic chunks into the porcelain. Faye is concerned, but Don isn’t suffering from chest pain, and if she learned anything from her heart-patient father, that is the dividing line between panic attack and heart attack.

Now, when it comes to actual pain, Lane Pryce knows what that feels like, now that his kidney pie-eating pig-tyrant fossil of a father has shown up to press the issue on Lane’s return to the British Empire. Lane had Toni there and had hoped that he, Toni and his liver-stained potted meat mound of a father could have dinner so they might get better acquainted. Well, Robert is going to take a pass, so Toni goes on ahead while Lane and Robert have some quality father-and-son time, culminating in that ancient,  moldy treacle tart rapping Lane hard in the old bean with his death cane and then stepping hard on our old lad’s bangers-and-mash grabber. God, what a bastard that old booze sop is — I was hoping Lane would take his now-swollen hand and give that tepid beer swiller a sock in his shepherd’s pie hole.

Up on Park Avenue, Trudy, wearing poofy pregnancy lingerie, walks into the living room to find Pete brooding and/or pouting. He won’t share what is bothering him, but he bemoans the people who leave destruction in their wake (Don) while “the honest people” are left to clean it up. So, who are these honest people you speak of, Petey? Everybody’s got something to hide except for me and my monkey: Roger is at the office, frantically calling old contacts to cover up for the impending Lucky Strike loss, finding out that some of them have died while he was writing his memoirs and resting on a big pillow of tobacco money. But Don, to his credit, is sick of all the lies and, well, just sick: he tells Faye about the real Don Draper and Dick Whitman. It’s strange, but Faye never really seems shocked at anything Don tells her. You would think that there would be at least a pause, but Faye never misses a beat, suggesting that Don might be able to get leniency. Don counters, telling Faye there is no statute of limitations on desertion. But then Pete shows up, acts a little haughty and disgusted at seeing Faye there, although it could be just one of his faces, and tells Don that if they drop the account, the investigation will not go through.

Joan tells Roger that the procedure went fine and they averted “a tragedy,” which might be a kind of loaded statement if you think about the possibility that Joan could have ended up shackled to this mewling has-been for the balance of her life. Roger and Joan go into the partners’ meeting and Pete reveals that NAA is toast, which gives Roger license to rip Pete up and down. This serves two purposes: Roger has a legitimate complaint because they’re passing up good money, and Roger can use Pete as a convenient whipping boy and object of Lucky Strike fury. When Joan goes down the list of clients and asks if Lucky Strike is stable, Roger gives her a “thumbs up.”

Then Faye comes into Don’s office, where he tells her everything is resolved on the Don/Dick potential fiasco. She tells him, “You see? Everything worked out.” But Don Draper is still Dick Whitman is still Don Draper. After agreeing to dinner on the weekend, Faye leaves and Don kind of luxuriates in the pliant, vacant beauty of Megan, watching her apply lipstick so that she’ll be pleasing to everyone. That’s our Don — tell Faye everything you’ve ever hidden from the world, and then threaten your very well-being when you have sex with another secretary (well, to his credit, he skipped one) and incur Faye’s wrath.

And as we saw a couple of weeks before, Faye’s got wrath to spare if she’s crossed.

– Lang

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“Mad Men” Recap, 409: “The Beautiful Girls”

Well, so much for the chaste, “That’s as far as I can go right now” Don Draper, but our anti-hero is still the guy we met in “The Summer Man” — fighting his way back, regaining his power. And that’s a good thing, because he needs full control of his faculties with the fecal storm brewing in this episode. As Don and Faye make the beast with two backs in the Greenwich Village man cave, there are two sodas on the table and a lamp crashing to the floor.

“Is it broken?” Faye asks.

“The lamp?” Don says, wondering if, in fact, the bed needs to be hauled to the curb.

Their post-coital pillow talk is what you expect from two people subsumed with work: Don attempts to get information about Faye’s other clients, but the “Chinese wall” is a strong one. Don leaves for SCDP, where Roger is having a fit with a potential publisher over his ephemera-filled memoir. Joan informs Roger that Lane will be taking two weeks off for his son’s visit to New York, but doesn’t want a memo circulated because he’s afraid people will stop working — officious limey. When Roger asks if he could give Joan a “hard time” (heh-heh, he said “hard time”), Joan tells him it’s “not cute,” and leaves. Caroline comes in, and asks him what he said to her, then tells the silver fox that Joanie’s pseudo-surgical husband is off to French Indo-China, where he’ll presumably spend R&R in a dank Saigon hotel room where every minute he stays in the room, he gets weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger.

Don arrives and immediately blows off Peggy, who is worried about both a car-parts company and a laxative maker coming in, and how messy that could be. Don is not concerned, because The Summer Man just got back from a swim and now it’s time for a nappy-poo. Ida Blankenship, ever the fount of good tidings, tells Peggy, “It’s a business of sadists and masochists. You know which one you are.”

So then Joyce Ramsey (Zosia Mamet) shows up to invite Peggy for drinks, Stan makes some snide lesbian jokes and tells Joyce “you can never do what a man can do.” Joyce tells him, “You’re right,” and licks Peggy’s face. Now, I’m fairly sure that Stan could physically pull that off, but he probably doesn’t have license to do so. Then Peggy tells Stan, “Bad news — Don showed up. We’re on at 4.” Stan immediately swings around and gets to work — no smarting off or anything. The lessons of Joey resonate.

Don wakes up from his refreshing siesta, Ida gives him a message from Faye, and as he’s walking off, she asks him, “Are you going to the toilet?” like she was some kind of distaff Archie Bunker. Oh, Miss Blankenship, how we’re going to miss you.

Peggy’s at the bar, commiserating over the competition at SCDP when Abe Drexler from the downtown be-in/Factory party shows up. Joyce might be interested in some personal Peggy time, but she’s kind enough to help out the apparently lovelorn beatnik Abe — total set-up. Joyce excuses herself to go throw darts — presumably at pictures of Stan. During drinks, Abe goes on and on with his anti-corporate blather while Peggy explains that SCDP is there to help companies that need good communication, and that most of the companies are family owned — including Fillmore Auto Parts. Abe tells her that the company does not hire blacks in the South, which upsets Peggy, but what upsets her more is that Abe, for all his supposed enlightenment, is kind of a chauvinist. He doesn’t see that equal rights for women is all that important.

Meanwhile, in a very nice move, Swedish masseuses appear at Joan’s front door — it’s rubdown and pedicure time. The silver fox isn’t always the most sensitive guy, but this was smoove.

Bert is doing a crossword puzzle and asks Ida for “a three-letter word for a flightless bird.” She tells him, “emu.” He says it starts with an “L,” and she says, “the hell it does.” The would have made a lovely old couple.

Joanie comes in and thanks Roger for the day of luxury. He says, “I knew I was rubbing you the wrong way, so I thought, why not have somebody rub you the right way?” Yeah, like Johnny Gill. But then, Roger goes a bridge too far and tries to get more than just a thank you. Not smoove.

Speaking of not smoove, Abe Drexler shows up with an obnoxious manifesto instead of the 10 Commandments of Love. The beatniks were cool in their own way, but they weren’t the most romantic bunch. While Peggy walks back out of the lobby, the Fillmore guys are in the meeting room with Don, Ken and Faye. Faye is telling them that the modern man has become soft, but wants to do work on his own car to feel like he’s still in control, so they should market to both the pros and the shadetree mechanics. The Fillmore guys cannot decide who to target, Ken offers to use conjunction junction so they can hit both markets, and Don is overwhelmed. But really, he doesn’t know from overwhelmed, because Megan and her French extraction walk in with terrible, whispered news.

Sally has run away, and was found on the train by Gladys Kravitz-Vivian Winters, who won’t let it lie that she thinks Don is a terrible human being. Ida says about Sally, “She looks so chubby in the pictures,” but those were taken before Betty turned into Joan Crawford. Don gets on the phone and reads Mrs. Henry Francis the riot act, and Betty responds by making Don keep her for the next two days. Don tells Ida to not let Sally leave the room, and Ida says nothing, letting the phone ring.

Speaking of riot acts, Peggy tears Abe a new receptacle over his manifesto, and sends him on the road, so to speak. When Peggy tries to get Ida’s attention, she just sits there with her mouth open. She tries again, then touches her own the shoulder. Ida goes face first into her blotter and Peggy screams.

Megan is forced to go back to the boardroom and French-extract Don with his second round of bad news. Joan, Caroline and Peggy are standing around Ms. Blankenship. Joan tells Megan to get an afghan from Harry Crane’s couch. As Faye, Don and Ken present “Fillmore Auto Parts: For the Mechanic in Every Man” to the execs, we can hear Harry protest that “My mother made that!” Yes, well, you can probably get it back later, Harry. Enjoy!

Tough day at SCDP. Don asks Faye to take Sally back to the man cave. Faye, who is such a winning number with adults, doesn’t know the first thing about talking to kids. She relates to Sally like she was trying to calm down a frothing Rottweiler.

As the men in while wheel out Ida Blankenship, Bert Cooper is understandably distraught — as was revealed in Roger’s memoir tapes, Ida was his 1930s Joan. When Bert asks where they’re taking her, Roger tells him the coroner’s office. He says, “No she’s not, she’s going to Frank E. Campbell.” (Frank E. Campbell: The Funeral Chapel, 1076 Madison Avenue. “Known for excellence, trusted for value since 1898.”)

Roger is understandably upset and self-absorbed, telling Joan “I don’t want to die in this office” — meanwhile, others in SCDP simply don’t care: Harry’s telling a terrible Irish joke while Ida goes to Frank E. Campbell wrapped in Mom’s handiwork. “She died like she lived: surrounded by the people she answered phones for.” Naturally, he turns his grief into a chance for some Joanie fun, and asks her to go for dinner and drinks.

Don goes home, where Faye managed to take care of Sally without breaking anything. Don is pissed, but not too pissed to deprive Sally of order-in pizza. For all his issues, Don knows when his little girl needs something more than commands and criticisms — enough of that back in Westchester.

Roger and Joan have cheesecake, of course. And things are starting to thaw a little. Smoove. And while all that cheesecake is going down, Sally and Don wait for their own pie and Sally starts giving Don the third degree over Faye. Sally seems to have her dad down cold — she knows Faye is more than a co-worker, since she knew where the peanut butter was and she had his keys.

As Roger and Joan walk through a tough neighborhood — one that apparently wasn’t so tough not that long ago, before all that Panic in Needle Park set in — they are accosted by a mugger who takes everything. Roger tells Joan to keep her eyes down, as does he, and they give the fine young man their belongings. This has the effect of making Joan want to get sexy with Roger, and they do — in a stairwell not far from the attack. Personally, I’d rather go up to the Waldorf. Hell, it might be more romantic at Frank E. Campbell.

Don tucks Sally in and asks if she wants to call her mom or her brothers. She really doesn’t want to — she wants to move in. “I’ll be good,” she said. These next few scenes with Sally are pretty heartbreaking. She’s been given a crappy home life and Don, who hasn’t taken a single drink this episode, knows it. He sits down to write in his journal, but nothing happens. The next morning, she makes French toast for her daddy. She tries to bring him some Mrs. Butterworth, but it’s a bottle of rum that just happens to look like a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth. No rum cakes for breakfast. But, all this buttering up works — Don agrees to take Sally to the Central Park Zoo.

And while they visit the lions, Bert and Roger struggle with Ida’s obituary. Joan finally gets things rolling and it finally jog’s Bert’s creative flow:

“She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut.”

If there is a single line that will be remembered from this season of “Mad Men,” it’s that one.

Roger and Joan discuss what happened the night before. Joan says, “I’m not sorry. But I’m married. And so are you.” True enough, but how often have we seen Jane Siegel Sterling this season? It’s on.

Don and Sally walk into his office and are greeted by Megan, who will “be helping out a bit” in Blankenship’s old seat. Honestly, that’s not the kind of help Don needs — that’s why Joan gave him Ida in the first place.

Cosgrove, who repeats Harry’s joke about Ida’s cause of death (“Don Draper”) proceeds to make fun of the Fillmore CEO’s stutter, which Don is assuredly not cool with, and then tells him that they shouldn’t use rock ‘n’ roll if they want middle-American males to buy in. So, it’s all translucent crooners like Frankie Laine and Perry Como who are mentioned to sing in the spot. Peggy goes for Harry Belafonte to tally Fillmore auto parts. No go.

And then, when Don announces that Betty and Henry are downstairs, Sally starts to throw a fit. Faye has no idea how to deal with her — “Hi Sally. Remember me from yesterday?” Really? – and runs out screaming down the hall at SCDP and faceplants on the linoleum. Megan picks her up and holds her.

“It’s going to be alright,” Megan says in her ultra-cheery tone.

“No, it’s not,” Sally says, burying her face in Megan’s shoulder.

Sally gives Don a cold goodbye — he wouldn’t save her, and this moment will likely color how she sees Don and how much she can rely on him, for anything, in the next few years. And Faye completely loses it because she thinks Don was testing her and she failed in her handling of Sally. He finally gets her to calm down.

“Jesus, what a mess,” Don says, commenting on everything that essentially crashed and burned this episode.

“But part of it is good, right?” Faye asks.

“Yeah.” And they kiss.

Joyce returns and agrees that “Abe Wexler pulled a boner.” (Heh-heh — remember, it meant making a mistake in 1965), and tells Peggy some painful metaphor about soup and pots. Peggy finishes her drink and departs, getting into the elevator with Joan and Faye. Each woman dealing with her own pain that no man in that office can seem to understand.

This was not a landmark episode like … all the ones that preceded it this season, but the farewell to Ida, and Bert’s obit, were excellent. The character was not meant to be there long, but she served her purpose when Don didn’t need any Allisons or Megans around.

Ida Blankenship, Astronaut, 1898-1965

– Lang

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“Mad Men” Recap, 408: “The Summer Man”

“The Summer Man” refers to a man waking up, leaving the New York Athletic Club after swimming and announcing that he could smell the warm season, his olfactory nerves lighting up for the first time in a while, and while the corn smell is probably a faint memory of Dick Whitman’s childhood on the farm, the perfume on the girls in their summer clothes is real. Don Draper is not a changed man, but he is a changing man. He is forcing himself to write every day and opening the shades of his apartment for the first time this season — the effect is so bracing, at first I thought he was holed up in a cabin somewhere.

Don laments the difficulty he finds in writing, and how lazy he was as a teenager, writing the bare minimum on essays — five paragraphs, 50 words each, never writing more than 250 words at a time, ever. To my memory, this is also the first time we learn about the extent of Dick Whitman’s formal education. “I should have finished high school. Everything could have been different.” That may or may not be true in the official sense of his accomplishment as an advertising executive, since in the 1950s and 60s it was still possible to scale corporate ladders without a college or even high school education, but Draper might have been different. His lack of a diploma is just a panel in his quilt of illusion, something else that he had to cover up with alcohol. It must be noted that Draper is not exactly on the wagon in “The Summer Man,” but he’s trying, and every sip he takes of a beer, wine or even bourbon in this episode feels like a punch in the gut, but for Don, moderate social drinking qualifies as teetotaling.

Meanwhile, Joey (Matt Long) is pushing the limits of what SCDP can institutionally bear in terms of jackassery. The candy machine in the breakroom steals some money and Joey tries to retrieve a candy bar, only to have the ravenous chocolate dispenser make off with his watch. Joan complains about the noise when Joey, Ken and Stan rock the machine back and forth, and when the twerp mouths off to Miss Holloway, she asks Joey into her office, castigates him and tells him he’s arrogant, to which Joey retorts, “”What do you do around here besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?”

Joey’s been on thin ice for a while, and getting Joan at a point when her husband is shipping off to boot camp is fatal timing. Furthermore, Peggy isn’t terribly thrilled with her old partner in crime anymore — much water has passed under the bridge since their “John/Marsha” repartee in Episode One.

Blankenship is bumbling around more than usual thanks to cataract surgery, and when she tries to deliver booze to Don, he turns the alcohol away and tells her to bring more cigarettes. She tells him that “his wife called,” to which Don replies “she’s not my wife.” Well, “Mrs. Francis” called to tell Don he cannot have the kids because it’s little “Bobby’s” (Gene’s) second birthday.

Joan goes home to her husband, who will be showing up on “China Beach” shortly, performing meatball surgery. He tries to console her by saying she won’t be all alone, that she can “talk to her friends at work.” Yeah, the toolboxes who are torturing her constantly with particularly nasty comments about her sexuality and her status at SCDP. Joan begins to cry uncontrollably, though it’s hard to say if it’s because her husband the surgeon isn’t the hot ticket she thought he would be, or because she’s being treated like complete garbage by a bunch of frat boys.

“More and more every day about Vietnam,” Don writes, which could say as much about this episode as anything else, since it informs Joan’s defense against the aforementioned toolboxes. Don writes that Gene was “conceived in a moment of desperation and born into a mess.” Don’s drinking a beer, but as he writes, in addition to climbing Kilimanjaro, he wants to “gain a modicum of control” over how he feels.

In a meeting with Ken, Peggy and Stan, Don tells the Mountain Dew team that the company thought its illustration of a hillbilly was perceived as a witch, and that they need to start over. Peggy is drinking scotch, and, having been passed a glass of his own, Don takes his own drink — every one of them hurts. Don tells Joan he needs Joey to come on full-time for a couple of weeks to bang it out, and Joan resists — she really doesn’t want anymore quippy bon mots about rape than she absolutely has to hear. As they leave, Don tells Peggy to have “Ray Charles come in here,” and Peggy motions to Blankenship.

Harry Crane is talking to Joey about “Peyton Place,” and how he suggested him as a player on the soap, which Joey interprets as a come-on — how many more minutes before this sniveling narcissist gets the bum rush? Peggy confronts Joey about his incident with Joan, and nothing’s getting through. “Message received,” Joey said. “Is it time to go yet?” Cue Peggy eyeroll.

Don is having dinner with Bethany (Anna Camp) when Henry and Betty show up at the restaurant to discuss the political future of future New York Mayor John Lindsay with a Republican operative. Betty spends most of the time looking like she’s going to reveal the lizard under all that peaches-and-cream skin, drinking gimlets as if lime is an endangered fruit. Bethany comments that each date with Don is like the first, and that’s especially true since this is probably the first time Don has been paying attention to anything she’s said. On the way home, Betty and Henry fight over her behavior, with Henry saying that Don is “taking up too much space in your life, maybe your heart.” The ensuing fight ends with “Shut up, Betty — you’re drunk.” Exactly.

Bethany, meanwhile, makes Don … “comfortable” in the back of a cab. Afterward, she tells him “to be continued…” and Don writes, “I bet she was thinking of that line all night.” Don is becoming more poetic in his journal writing, talking about the lonely sex lives of the women in Bethany’s apartment building and how he likes sleeping alone, stretching out “like a skydiver.” Last week, this would be seen as a metaphor for Don’s continued free fall, but now it just sounds like a man wanting to be unencumbered by the accumulated baggage of his life.

When Don returns to SCDP, he overhears Faye Miller (Cara Buono) breaking up with her boyfriend — well, that’s certainly helpful. At the same moment, Henry is trying to sneak out in the morning when Betty wakes up and desperately apologizes, batting her eyes, scrunching her forehead and generally looking like Tuesday Weld when she tries to justify her obsession with Don by saying, “he was the only man I’d ever been with.” As Henry leaves, he crunches a few boxes of Don’s belongings in the garage before backing out.

At the office, Joey’s acting like vodka and Mountain Dew is genius — it’s been 45 years, and still no successful bar drinks based on the Dew. Stan tells him, “You’re a haircut, you know that?” Peggy sends him back to the mixology board while Joan tries to make a case with Lane against Joey coming on full-time. Joey starts drawing a nasty picture of what Joan and Lane might be doing in his office. This was a bad move — he left a douchey paper trail. Henry calls Don to tell him to pick up the boxes of stuff on Saturday, since Sunday is Gene’s birthday, because he needs to store a hypothetical boat. Henry is actively trying to deny Don the right to show up for the birthday. Don is pissed and looks directly at his booze bottles before yelling, “Mrs. Blankenship, can I get some coffee!?!”

Peggy complains about losing money in the candy machine, and when Joan turns to get into her change box, she notices Joey’s drawing, taped to her window. Joan tells all the testosterony gasbags in the break room that she can hardly wait until they’re all dying in Vietnam. “Remember, you’re not dying for me, because I never liked you.” Peggy brings the drawing to Don, who at first is impressed with the art — “Are you sure Joey did this?” — but then tells Peggy that if she is suitably upset, she should fire Joey’s ass. “I wouldn’t tolerate that if I were you.”

So Peggy fires Joey’s ass after he balks at apologizing to Joan. When Joey tries to weasel his way back in, saying “We’ll see what Don says about that,” she replies, “Don doesn’t even know who you are.” That’s half-true — he barely knows who he is, and doesn’t like what he knows. Don’t let the door hit you in testicles, Joey.

Meanwhile, Don is making a persuasive play for Faye, who wonders aloud why it’s happening at that moment, to which Don tells her the timing is right. The difference is that Don is paying attention to Faye this time, and she senses it.

Betty and Francine (Anne Dudek) are getting ready for Gene’s party, and Betty tells her about her run-in with Don in the city. “Oh Betty, you have terrible luck with entertaining,” Francine says. Yes, above being a terrible mother and possessing an obnoxiousness that nearly eclipses her pulchritude, Betty is a crappy hostess.

When Peggy tells Joan about the firing while riding up in the elevator, Joan comes back with an unexpected bit of nastiness instead of gratitude, illustrating the bad feelings about strata in the workplace and how Joan must maintain control — if it is perceived by anyone that she lacks the ability to stand her own ground, she believes she will be seen as a “meaningless secretary.” Peggy was doing what she should have done weeks or months ago, but the timing and the trigger for the final decision have left Joan’s ego wounded.

“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him,” Don writes as we see him load up the boxes marked “Draper” that have been placed by the curb of his old home. “If you listen, he’ll tell you about the time when he thought he was an angel… We’re flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.” All this is being said as Henry, fresh from mowing the lawn, takes off his shirt before going in for a shower, much like Don used to when he cut that same grass.

Don may or may not want to be back in Westchester, doing yard work while Betty putters in the kitchen, but he’s yearning for something like it. Before dinner with Faye, he pours one finger of scotch, just for confidence. At Tavern On the Green, he tells her she smells nice, and she returns the gesture, commenting on his “chlorine” bouquet. He tells her that swimming “clears his head,” and he offers up that he’s been “out of sorts,” and that the swimming helps. Miller talks about her father and how he was connected with “restaurant suppliers,” to which Don jokingly puts his finger to his nose — an old expression for La Cosa Nostra. Don is unusually forthcoming with Faye, telling her about Gene’s birthday and how the boy thinks Henry is his father. Faye tells him that all Gene will know about the world is what Don shows him.

Faye is charmed, finally, thanks to Don being sober (ish) and vulnerable enough to actually listen and take interest in what she has to say, not her blond hair and outward charm. “Kindness, gentleness and persuasion win where force fails.” She wants him, but Don actually waves her off. “Because that is as far as I can go right now.” That’s not what she expected, but this is “The Summer Man.”

I think we understand that Don wants to be better — that much is obvious when he actively beats the guy in the next swim lane over at N.Y.A.C. He shows up at Gene’s party to show him who dad really is. Betty comments that she and Henry should not be threatened by his unexpected arrival, that “we have everything.” But the look on her face, as he’s bouncing Gene in the air, is that “we had everything.”

We also understand that Don is designed as a tragic figure — he is, after all, the man falling from the building in that opening title sequence. But after the fall, he is shown in repose, on a couch, surveying his kingdom. With “The Summer Man,” we see that at his heart, despite feelings of inadequacy (and realistically, those will likely get worse if he ends up with Faye and her Ph.D), he wants to land well.

– Lang

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“Mad Men” Recap: 407, “The Suitcase”

“The Suitcase” moves our storyline several months into the future: it is May 25, 1965, the night of the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight, and it seems everyone at SCDP is betting on Liston, even though in his previous fight against then-Cassius Clay in February 1964, Liston stopped the fight in the seventh round, claiming injury. But anyone outside of the advertising business who keeps claiming they’re “the greatest” is going to get their fair share of bad feelings, and Ali’s then-recent conversion to Islam took care of the rest. But two minutes into the fight, Ali hit Liston, but he didn’t seem to hit him that hard. It was a fight that was widely perceived as being thrown. Don Draper, meanwhile, is going down for the count in “The Suitcase,” but there are indications toward the conclusion that he might yet live to fight another day. But to extend the boxing metaphor as far as I am willing, “The Suitcase” was a knockout.

Harry’s selling tickets to the fight, and the attitude around SCDP is mostly pretty nastily pro-Liston — everyone is still referring to Ali as “Clay,” and Ida Blankenship makes the kind of bad racist joke that makes you wonder about the wisdom of the ancients. With the hindsight afforded by history, you have to wonder about all this confidence in Liston, given how badly he performed in his previous fight with Ali, but a large section of the population would have placed spite bets against Ali back then, even if his opponent was Danny Siegel. Speaking of Danny, he, Peggy, Joey and Stan perform a proposed Samsonite ad for Don that would theoretically star Joe Namath, the University of Alabama star who had just been drafted by the New York Jets. The ad play, involving a kind of suitcase scrimmage, is supposed to be funny but is more whimsical than actually humorous, and Don’s not happy. He also doesn’t think Namath should be used, since he considers using celebrities a “cheat” and besides, Broadway Joe had yet to play his first pro game. So they’re sent back to the drafting board.

It’s Peggy’s 26th birthday (she’d be 71 now, for those keeping score at home), and Duck Phillips calls after having sent over some business cards for a new firm he’d like to start with her. Of course, Duck made an ass of himself at the Clio Awards earlier in the year, and he seems to have lost his job because of that and is hitting the booze in a way that makes Don look like a poster child for temperance. She can hear the ice clinking in his glass and tries to gently pass on his idea, but Duck becomes belligerent when she accuses him of drinking. He eventually admits he is “falling apart.” After Peggy has to hang up, Duck even spills ice on himself while tipping the glass — the man is preserved in 80 proof.

Blankenship tells Don he received an urgent phone call from “a Stephanie” in California, but Don is avoiding the obvious: Anna is either dying or has passed on. Roger begs Don to come with him to Lewiston for the fight, mainly because he’s stuck with on-the-wagon Freddy Rumsen and his AA sponsor at Pond’s, and Roger desperately needs a drinking buddy. Don declines to work on the Samsonite campaign, and if Don’s working late, everyone’s working late, damn it, especially Peggy, who is supposed to meet Mark for a birthday dinner at Forum of the Twelve Caesars, which was the big, ostentatious place to eat in Midtown back in the 1960s, and served food with ridiculously lavish names like “Pheasant of the Golden House on a Silver Shield of Gilded Plumage Roasted with an Exquisite Sauce.” Trudy stops by SCDP mainly to make Peggy feel bad about being 26, unmarried and without child, but the work that has sidelined Peggy from matrimonial and maternal bliss will consume her more as the Draper Monster insists that she stay and finish Samsonite. She calls Mark at the restaurant (they have one of those elite phones with long cords) and informs him that she’ll be 15 minutes late, and we learn that he has invited her evil mother and sister along as a surprise. Somebody doesn’t know his girlfriend very well.

Peggy has more ideas, but Don’s shooting them down like skeet and trying to find an Ali-Liston angle as a he grumbles “Muhammad Ali” under his breath. Roger calls to beg Don to come to the fight — he just sneaked out for a drink — but who’s kidding who? That’s like a six-hour drive. Then Mark calls again to complain that an hour has passed and he’s stuck with Peggy’s miserable family at an ultra-expensive restaurant. Peggy tries to escape, but the Draper Monster attacks, complaining that she should have grown out of the whole birthday celebration thing by now. She calls Mark back and they have one of the worst breakups imaginable: over the phone, while he’s sitting at dinner with her family. Cringe.

That’s when Peggy goes back and a kind of World War III breaks out in Don’s office, with Peggy accusing him of forcing her to work on a concept late mainly because he stole that “Cure for the Common Breakfast” crap from Danny, and further accuses him of running with the Glo-Coat concept for which she apparently provided the early inspiration and never thanking her for her work. By this point, Don’s screaming at her, “That’s what the money’s for!”

Peggy goes away to cry, only to have Don call for her when he discovers a Dictaphone tape from Roger’s memoirs, in which he describes the early days of Sterling Cooper and how Bert Cooper’s secretary, Ida Blankenship, was the “queen of perversions.” Yes, the ancient Ida Blankenship was apparently the Joan Holloway of her day, and poor Bert Cooper is a gelding. Yikes! They share a laugh and then spend a couple of hours drinking and eating, actually talking like friends, and they discuss the rumors that surround Peggy and Don — the subject of much of Stan’s venality in the previous episode. Don claims he never made a pass because of office decorum, but Peggy then mentions the whole Allison fiasco as rebuttal, to which Don says, “You don’t want to start giving me morality lessons, do you?” They talk about Peggy’s baby: apparently, Peggy’s venal mother thinks Don was the father, because he was the only one who visited her in the mental ward.

Then they return to the office and after the rocket-ship ride up the Time-Life elevators, Don runs to the bathroom and yaks up everything. And really, that was one of the most visceral-sounding vomit sessions I’ve ever heard in TV or film — glad he made it to the stall rather than going full-splat like Roger and his martini-soaked oysters. Meanwhile, Peggy sees Duck sneaking into the office, ostensibly to leave a steaming brown present in Don’s office. Peggy points out that it is, in fact, Roger’s office and tries to get Duck out of there, but Don, still reeling from the retching, calls Duck out. Duck might be drunk, but he didn’t just vomit his guts out, and after a brief and ridiculous fight that makes the Ali-Liston rematch look like the Thrilla in Manila, Don says “Uncle.”

Don asks Peggy to pour him a drink. She asks, “How long are you going to go on like this?” His response is about as laid-bare as Don/Dick gets at the office (well, until the next scene). “”I have to make a phone call, and I know it’s gonna be bad,” he said. Then he rests his head on Peggy’s lap and passes out.

There is likely some fairly inconsequential debate going on about what happens next: Don wakes up and sees the ghostly image of Anna, carrying a suitcase. She smiles at Don, turns and disappears. I’m certain there are some fans of the supernatural who would like to believe that Don was actually being visited by the angel or ghost of Anna, but Don went to sleep deeply intoxicated and worried about the phone call. Anna was at the very tip of his brain, and so his dream reflected his immediate anxiety. He wakes up at dawn and calls Stephanie, who informs him that Anna died, and asks Don if she can live there in San Pedro for a semester. He agrees, hangs up and starts crying uncontrollably. Don tells Peggy that Anna was “the only person in the world who really knew me.”

Peggy replies, “That’s not true.” Yes, indeed.

Peggy goes to her office to sleep for a bit before being loudly awakened by Danny, Joey and Stan. She goes back to Don’s office, where he’s showing her a Samsonite storyboard based on the Ali-Liston fight. She has problems with it, to which Don asks, “Why are you sh–ting all over this?” Peggy then tells him, “It’s very good.” Don holds her hand for a moment, then tells her to go home, take a shower and “come back with 10 tag lines.”

Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss: this is your 2011 Emmy reel. Another great episode from a superb season, “The Suitcase” is establishing one thing above all: Don Draper will probably do exactly as Faye Miller suggested earlier and get remarried within the year, but the most important relationship he will have in his life after the death of Anna Draper is with Peggy Olson. In the “previously on ‘Mad Men’” montage, we were reminded of Don visiting Peggy in the hospital and seeing her at her most vulnerable. Now, the score is even. A cynic might say that they each have something on each other, but in the offices of SCDP, where most communication is done superficially and people are identified by their conquests both business and sexual, no one knows one other better than Don and Peggy.

– Lang

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“Mad Men” Recap: 406, “Waldorf Stories”

Don Draper always excelled at being who he needed to be. It was a survival instinct that went back to the days of the Great Depression, when Dick Whitman learned the hobo code, that important way of finding out where a drifter would be welcome. These days, he is drifting more than ever as his Clio victory turns into a lost weekend and his alcohol abuse finally catches up with his duties as both a creative genius and father. One of the prevailing themes of “Waldorf Stories” is the arbitrary nature of success, or as Don says shortly after picking up his Clio for Glo-Coat, “You finish something, you find out everyone loves it right around the time that it feels like someone else did it.” Of course, when you’re Don Draper and Dick Whitman, someone else is always part of the equation.

“Waldorf Stories” begins with Don and Peggy interviewing Danny Siegel (Danny Strong) for a job at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Danny is clearly an overmatched cheesehead who allegedly has Roger Sterling in his back pocket and has delusions of being the cure for the common advertising executive. In fact, his entire portfolio consists of variations on that hoary old “cure for the common whatever” construction, which was apparently dead as dirt even in 1965, and Don Draper cannot get this twerp out of his office fast enough. He won’t even recommend a lunch destination to Danny — he fobs that task onto Ida Blankenship who loudly declares, “I don’t work for you!” Don then proceeds to Roger’s office, where he’s dictating his scintillating memoirs — vanilla was the preferred ice cream flavor in the Sterling household, apparently because it didn’t stain. Don compliments Roger on the Danny joke, and Roger informs Don that Danny is Jane Siegel Sterling’s cousin, and if SCDP doesn’t give the homunculus a shot, it’s going to cost him a Jane consolation gift in the range of $500 to $1000.

Then we get a superb flashback to a time around 1955 or so, when Roger’s hair wasn’t completely sterling and he was buying a gift — a fur — for another woman in his life, and the salesman at the fur shop was Don Draper, a young hotshot who wanted to break into the ad game. Don is an expert mover with the furs and mentions that he does all of his store’s advertising — that poster with the beautiful blond, the future ex Mrs. Draper, was his work — but beyond the pelt, Roger isn’t buying what Don is selling. The scene cuts to a hotel room where Roger is not presenting the gift to Mrs. Sterling, but to Joan Holloway, who in the mid-’50s was rocking an appropriate Marilyn Monroe-style ‘do. And inside the fur box is a portfolio, including a spec ad for Play-Doh: “Open a can on a rainy day.” Classic Draper, but Roger complains that this move was an overstep.

Back in 1965, the executives from Life cereal are delayed, which means the bar is open — amusingly, Joan tells Joey he can make his own damn drink. Peggy learns that Joan is being brought to the Clio Awards to get everybody hot and bothered. Irritated but not as irritated as she will be later, Peggy goes into new art director Stan’s office, where he’s trying to impress Megan by showing her the political ad he did for Lyndon Johnson, a never-aired attack ad against Barry Goldwater featuring a Klan rally. Peggy already hates Stan — he remarks that the fact that it never aired makes it less impressive. When she complains about his obvious flirtation, Stan cuts her down as being prude and asexual. He’s a real peach, that Stan.

We now cut to the Clios held at that art-deco midtown monument, the Waldorf-Astoria, where Don and Roger get their drink on and Cosgrove and the scion of the Birds Eye frozen food company show up, and a stray comment seems to indicate that SCDP might be merging with Cosgrove’s firm, which makes Pete turn purple and plaid with rage. Emcee Wallace Harriman (“Days of Our Lives” veteran actor and father-of-a-famous-actress John Aniston) is presiding when he is interrupted by a ragingly drunk Duck Phillips, who is promptly escorted from the banquet hall. Don quips, “I feel like I’ve already won.”

Back at the office, Stan and Peggy are trying to bang out the Vicks campaign that Pete brought over. Stan, who is allegedly the art director, fancies himself a creative director and is jackassing around the room, trying to make Peggy just take notes while he “speechifies” the whole Vicks thing. Peggy needs to bring a bag of hammers down on this guy.

When floor waxes are announced, SCDP is victorious for the Glo-Coat ad, and Don accepts the award with ebullience and handshakes. Well, word comes from Joan that the Life cereal people have unexpectedly arrived at the offices, and Don decides they need to strike when the iron is hot and stirring his fifth or sixth drink. The whole gang races back to the Time-Life Building, where the Life guys are downing their own round of scotches, and Don, fighting back a bad case of the booze belches, delivers the tagline: “Eat Life By the Bowlful.” It’s a good campaign — kids will love it because it’s a big bowl of stuff, mothers will love it because they’re aware that their children are growing up fast — carpe diem and all that. Well, the good folks at Life think that’s too intellectual of an approach and that stupid people just won’t get it. So Don starts spitballing a bunch of terrible off-the-cuff ideas (uncomfortable television alert: watching flop sweat from Don Draper has to be one of the worst) until he spits out “Life: The Cure for the Common Breakfast.” This horrendous Danny Siegel bit of hackery is a sure-fire hit with these boobs, and everyone is happy except Peggy, who tries to pull Don aside and talk about his plagiarism. Instead, Don consigns Peggy to hell in a hotel room with Stan, where they are to hash out the Vicks campaign or else.

Pete confronts Lane about this possible merger, and the news for our weasel is slightly worse: Lane is bringing Cosgrove (and his Birds Eye account) into SCDP. Pete goes from purple and plaid to white-hot fury upon learning that his arch-enemy will be joining them, but Lane puts the smooth language on Pete and manages to mollify things, telling Pete that “Roger Sterling is a child” and that “”We can’t have you pulling the cart all by yourself.”

Our heroes are raising the gross domestic products of Kentucky, the Soviet Union and Scotland at a Clio aferparty, where Don puts some not-very-smooth moves on Faye Miller, who tells him “I think you’re confusing a lot of things at once.” Faye might be interested in Don in the way that Don is interested in Faye, but she’s too smart to let him know that. She also is probably more interested in him as a subject. Who is Don Draper?

Well, this is who he is tonight: he’s the kind of guy who attracts a Carole Bayer Sager type who just won a Clio for a jingle, and it’s words and music at the man cave. Meanwhile, Roger is getting morose and Joan is letting him know it. What does Roger do? “I find guys like him,” he says. So we flash back to 1955 and Don has cajoled Roger into martinis at 10 a.m. Roger is still resistant to hiring his fur salesman, but really what we’re seeing is the beginning of one of the great enabling friendships of the mid 20th century.

Back at the hotel, Stan is perusing Playboy while Peggy is trying to actually work. Stan claims he is one liberated pseudo-hipster who can get inspired by some serious nudity, while Peggy insists that he wouldn’t be so enthralled if the naked ladies could make eye contact with him. When Stan continues to assail Peggy for being stodgy, she starts taking off her clothes. And there she is in the altogether, forcing Stan to reveal his pudginess and work with a real live nude. She’s a modern woman, our Peggy, and Stan is a cro-mag with a tumescence issue. Eventually, Stan is forced to say uncle, because Peggy is doing a fine job of staring at him in just the right way to make it impossible for Stan to think about cough drops.

In other sex news, Don is with the Carole Bayer Sager type back at Che Draper, and in a neat edit, he wakes up to an angrily ringing phone while lying next to another woman, a blond named Doris who served him three plates of fries before going home with our big souse, who was apparently so drunk he introduced himself to her as “Dick.” The anger on the other end of the line matches the ringer: Betty is way ticked off because Don forgot about picking up the kids during his blackout lost weekend. After mumbling an apology, he tells Doris he has a commitment, excuses himself to the bathroom while he waits for her to leave, then pours another drink and falls asleep. He is then woken up by Peggy, who has a few choice words for him about stealing Danny Siegel’s stupid campaign. He will have to make it right.

Back at SCDP on Monday, Don/Dick is offering Danny a freelance fee so he can use his “Cure for the Common Breakfast” spiel for Life. Danny tells him “I don’t need money. I need a job.” Don is so exasperated with the situation that he capitulates and hires him. Between Joey and Danny, the average IQ just dipped about 10 points at SCDP.

Finally, back in 1955, we see Don meeting up with Roger in the downstairs lobby of the old Sterling Cooper, but Roger is tired of this fur guy bugging him. The problem is, Don tells Roger that he hired him during that three-martini breakfast they had, and “Waldorf Stories” ends with Sterling accepting this story and Don wearing a goofy grin as the elevator door closes. Now, I’ve watched this episode three times, and I’m pretty sure that Don faked his way in — no job was offered, drunk-offered or not. The line between what Don did and what Danny did is pretty thin, but Don had talent out of the gate. Danny just watches a lot of TV.

We’ve seen it before, but one of the real highlights of “Waldorf Stories” is Jon Hamm’s performance as the young, more wide-eyed Don Draper. They’re not falling back on make-up to establish the 20-something, fresh from stealing his identity Draper — Ham just plays Don with more energy, eager-to-please and without the weight of his industry and fabricated life on his shoulders. But “Waldorf Stories” also represents a new low for an anti-hero who was scaling the depths anyway: when Betty called and started doing her harpy routine with him, he didn’t jump to attention, drive to Westchester and pick up the kids. No, he was still drunk, and parental obligation was just not registering. At the same time, his constant drinking interfered — for the first time, I believe — with his judgment and creative prowess. Like a soused Man of Steel who felt invincible, he decided he could sell a client while completely wasted. As Bob Dylan famously sang, it’s not dark yet… but it’s getting there.
– Lang

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“Mad Men” Recap: 405, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”

The title for our latest “Mad Men” episode comes from a sociological screed about Japanese culture written by Ruth Benedict at the behest of the U.S. Government and published in 1946 at the dawn of the United States’ occupation of Japan. Considering that the bulk was written during the war, the chance that any meaningful on-the-ground work was done in the research phase of “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword” is unlikely. But beyond what was apparently some fairly prejudicial mumbo-jumbo, the takeaway for our anti-heroes at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is that the Japanese businessmen possibly bringing the Honda motorcycle account to Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) are part of a “shame-based society” as opposed to our own “guilt-based society.” Of course, this is broad-brush stuff because, as we’ll see in this episode, shame is a major motivator in how Betty Draper (January Jones) goes about her parenting, and it does form the foundation for Don Draper’s climactic clever maneuver against Cutler Gleason and Chaough.

As Episode 405 opens, Don (Jon Hamm) receives a call from The New York Times’ advertising reporter, who is doing some press release reporting on the idea that CGC is always in SCDP’s “rear-view mirror,” that they just nabbed Clearasil after SCDP had to drop the zit cream because of a conflict with the more-lucrative Pond’s account and that they are now competing directly over Honda. Don claims not to know who Ted Chaough is, but we all know this game. CGC doesn’t really come off as serious competition in this episode — more like carrion birds feasting on SCDP’s roadkill. But at the meeting table, the threat is taken seriously and the importance of landing Honda is apparent to everyone involved except Roger Sterling (John Slattery). Roger, the World War II vet, is dead set against courting Honda, since he served in the Pacific and, 20 years later, still hates the Japanese and, at least in this case, seems perfectly happy with SCDP’s dependence on Lucky Strike and Lee Garner Jr. Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) tells Roger that “the war is over,” and while it’s been some time since we, as viewers, have been invited into Cooper’s office, we know the guy has a serious aesthetic leaning toward Japan, what with his shoji doors and everything. Roger, it seems, is going to be an issue, since he apparently hasn’t met a Japanese stereotype or insult he didn’t like.

Don, meanwhile, is taking Bethany (Anna Camp) to Benihana of Tokyo (a business-and-pleasure field trip that will probably be about as enlightening as Ruth Benedict’s book), and so Phoebe (Nora Zehetner) is babysitting Sally and Bobby at Don’s man cave — she brings her nursing equipment for Bobby to play with, but Sally is extremely displeased that Don is abandoning them to go on a date. After Don leaves, Sally goes into the bathroom and hacks off a good portion of her hair in emulation of Phoebe’s close crop. Apparently Sally thinks that short hair will make Daddy notice her and she asks Phoebe, “Are you and Daddy doing it?” Phoebe is, of course, apoplectic and knows exactly how this is going to play when Don comes home.

At Benihana, Don and Bethany are getting their lesson in Japanese cutlery use and Bethany is complaining about her hair smelling like fried food when Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm) shows up to do his own research and give Don a kick in the ribs. Don is clearly irritated — he tells Bethany that Ted is a “fly I keep swatting away,” but that isn’t near the irritation Don experiences when he goes back to the man cave (still no sex from Bethany, who is apparently the mother of one of the authors of “The Rules” and is holding out until she theoretically becomes the next Mrs. Don Draper) and discovers Sally’s new ‘do. As predicted, Don goes off on Phoebe and hands her some money with a “severance” package. Then Don takes Sally and Bobby to Betty and Henry’s chamber of horrors, where Betty greets Sally’s hair with a whopping slap in the face. Betty’s always been a bit of a Mommie Dearest, but in seasons one through three, she was more passively Hellish. These days, an active nastiness is taking over, with Betty taking out her hatred of Don on the children she had with him. Henry convinces Betty to take Sally to get the hair fixed (Hayley Mills is all the rage anyway) and let her go to her planned sleepover, to which Betty tells him, “You’re soft.” Well maybe, but Tony Stark would be soft compared to Betty these days.

Back at the office, the partners who are willing to conduct commerce with Japanese companies are meeting with executives from Honda, and everything is going swimmingly until Roger shows up and starts making dark jokes about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and blatantly insulting the men. This scene had my skin crawling: I lived in Japan for two years when I was in the military, and not only are new residents cautioned about making hateful comments like these, the rule is that you just don’t talk about it. No drunken apologies for Fat Man and Little Boy — just shut up, sailor. Anyway, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Roger has scuttled any chance SCDP had of landing the account, and Pete blows up at Roger for what he sees as a personal attack sabotaging Pete’s potential success, and Don is forced to not only intercede when Roger tries to physically attack our young weasel, but actually defend him.

And now things get a tad uncomfortable, even by “Mad Men” standards, as Sally sits on a couch at her sleepover and watches “The Man From UNCLE” while her friend Laura snoozes away. She gets a little, shall we say, flushed at watching David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin, hikes up her pajamas and is promptly caught by Laura’s mother, who yells at her and takes Sally home. Needless to say, Betty is unsympathetic, mainly because word will get out that her daughter’s some kind of fast floozy (shame, anyone?). Betty tells Henry about it, and they decide Sally needs professional help because, as Betty tells Sally, you’re not supposed to do those kind of things, not in private or in public. Of course, Betty made utilitarian use of a washing machine in season one, but that was different, right? Right?

Back at SCDP, the men haven’t received the customary gift from Honda, which Far East scholar Bert interprets as a sign that SCDP is expected to bow out of competition for the account. It should be pointed out at this juncture that Honda went into this brouhaha with ground rules, including a proviso that none of the competing agencies could spend more than $3,000 on developing a proposal and that no finished work could be presented. At first, Don proposes that SCDP should just shoot the moon and create a spot, but bean-counting Lane puts the kibosh on that idea. In the middle of all this, Betty calls Don, tells him about Sally’s little indiscretion and informs him that she’ll be taking her to a child psychologist, and in short order Betty starts blaming Don for everything because of what she perceives as a constant stream of nubile Manhattan flesh parading through the man cave. Don shoots back, telling her, “You brought another man into your house.” Betty justifies it by playing the marriage card, but in Sally’s eyes, that doesn’t amount to much. Henry’s an interloper who’s making an unholy two-backed beast with Sally’s mom, whether the State of New York recognizes the union or not.

So anyway, Don’s got a shame-related idea that might not win SCDP the motorcycle account, but could allow them to save face: make CGC think that SCDP is producing a TV ad, which will force Ted Chaough to produce his own spot, thereby violating the spirit and the letter of the competition. What follows is a great deal of stagecraft, with Joan offering a directorial job to a helmer who they already know is under contract to CGC and having Peggy wheel around a Honda motorcycle in the hallway. Word gets back immediately to Chaough, who comes up with a spot involving a motorcyclist driving through subway stations and then whipping off the helmet to reveal — gasp! — a beautiful “California” blonde. Peggy and Joey then rent out a soundstage across the hall from where CGC is shooting, and Peggy does donuts with the motorcycle, just to make noise.

Don and Faye Miller (Cara Buono) share the bottle of sake that Chaough sent over as a nastygram, and Don wonders aloud why normal human beings always feel the need to share their emotions — apparently Don isn’t just being guarded: he really doesn’t know. Faye tells him that it makes them feel better, and over the course of drinking the rice wine, she reveals that she’s not really married. The ring is a flim-flam thing that helps Faye avoid distracting or complicating conversations (like, for instance, this one) with brooding chauvinists at client firms. Meanwhile, Betty goes to see Sally’s new psychologist, “Dr. Edna” Keener (Patricia Bethune) who seems more interested in the twisted mind of Betty Draper than in her 10-year-old daughter. Betty tells Dr. Edna that she thinks Sally did this to punish her, and so when the doctor schedules Sally for four days a week of therapy (gah!), it’s obviously because of the solipsist/narcissist sitting across from her.

Fresh from unveiling his lame-ass ad, Ted Chaough gloats to Don, who he thinks doesn’t stand much of a chance since Don is clearly traveling light. In the meeting room, Don withdraws from the “bake-off” and hands the Honda guys a $3,000 check, telling them that he and his firm did not feel right competing when others in the running did not follow the rules and, by extension, the Honda executives received the presentation from CGC without rejecting it outright as a violation. The Honda executives have, in fact, been shamed thanks to Don’s clever little jujitsu against Chaough, who we presume will soon be reduced to drinking Aqua Velva out of a brown paper bag on Avenue A. The result? SCDP saves face, and while they will not be selling motorcycles, Honda informs them that they will be first in the running to do ads for Honda’s entry into the car business.

There was a lot of fun to be had with “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” mainly because the “bake-off” added a note of whimsy after three episodes of Don’s “Days of Wine and Roses” spiral, but it also brings up a fair number of questions about where things are going in Betty Draper’s world. After Sally’s “UNCLE” situation, Betty actually revealed to Henry that she’d gone to therapy “years ago,” telling him she “was bored.” It seems Henry got sold on the Betty Draper concept when he saw her in the showroom and never bothered to look under the hood, so to speak. As she continues her transformation into the mother and, eventually, wife from Hell, Henry looks more and more temporary. Don, meanwhile, confided with Faye Miller that he always feels “relieved” when he drops the kids off at Betty’s, but he misses them. Because Betty is such an important character on the show, there stands the possibility that, if Don doesn’t marry Phoebe, Bethany or Faye by season’s end, Don and Betty will later reunite for a resoundingly bad, hateful and sexless remarriage, just in time for Sally and Glenn to run away to Woodstock.
– Lang

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“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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