Don Draper – Page 3 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Mad Men: Season 6, Episode 6–For Immediate Release

“Just once, I’d like to hear you use the word ‘we’. Because we’re all rooting from the sidelines, hoping that you’ll decide whatever you think is right for our lives.”

After last week’s thoughtful tussle with history, it was back to business with a vengeance for this week’s Mad Men. With Matthew Weiner scripting solo for the first time since the season premiere, this week saw the fortunes of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce on some kind of insane rollercoaster, as Big Decisions were made by sub-cliques among the partners who surely should have checked with the others before making them. As ever, it turned out to be (by a very lucky combination of circumstances), Don and Roger who came up smelling of roses, while the ever-unlucky Pete Campbell saw his stock both at work and at home go plunging.

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Mad Men: Season 6, Episode 5–The Flood

“This is an opportunity. The heavens are telling us to change.”

Usually, in Mad Men, history just rumbles along in the background, its social mores informing our characters’ motivations, its events occasionally prompting semi-important plotlines. Every so often, though, history leaps up and slaps the narrative across the face. Seasons 1-3 were like that; 1 building to Kennedy’s Presidential victory, 2 climaxing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 3 ending with the shock of JFK’s assassination. Last week, I wondered whether this season might be building up to climax with the assassination of his brother Bobby. Instead, it took me by surprise with a Big Historical Event right in the middle of the run – the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.

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Mad Men: Season 6, Episode 4–To Have and To Hold

“If you don’t like what they’re saying – change the conversation.”

This was the first episode of Mad Men this season in which Matt Weiner had no writing credit – and it showed, in a definite change of tone from his usual portent-laden melancholia. Instead, it came off more like the soap opera it basically is, beneath the existential trappings. Appropriate, given that one of the major subplots involved Megan’s work on the fictional soap opera which gave the episode its title.

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Mad Men: Season 6, Episode 3 – Collaborators

“Now I understand. You want to feel shitty – right up to the point where I take your dress off.”

Never a show with a straightforward approach to dialogue or characterisation, Mad Men this week took its usual obfuscation of motive and events to new heights, in an episode directed by Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm. The ep was ostensibly another of those juxtapositions between Don and Don-wannabe Pete Campbell, showing their failings both professionally and socially. But, even more than usual, grasping what was truly going on relied on interpreting the Unsaid as much as the said.

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Mad Men: Season 6, Episodes 1 & 2 – The Doorway

“Midway through life’s journey, I went astray on a straight road – and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.”

It’s time to rejoin the existential angst of the unhappy folk at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, as Mad Men returns for its sixth, apparently penultimate season. After the tumultuous events of last year – Joan whoring herself to a sweaty exec for a partnership, Peggy heading off to a rival agency, and Lane Pryce hanging himself in his office – our heroes are unhappy. For this show, this is not unusual.

The season premiere, appropriately enough, was all about death. We opened with a POV shot of some unknown person being resuscitated from a heart attack. Oh no! Is it Don? Roger? Bert, even?

Since Matthew Weiner’s script immediately cut straight to a Hawaiian beach, that was a mystery to be eked out for a short while. It lent a hallucinatory air to the proceedings, as I began to wonder whether Don and Megan’s idyllic holiday was actually one of the dream sequences the show occasionally does; it’s often so thickly portentous even when it isn’t a dream, it can be hard to tell. Let’s face it, Mad Men is so heavy with portents, the folk from Frank Herbert’s Dune look uncomplicated by comparison.

Don Draper must be the only person whose choice of beach reading is Dante’s Inferno, another portent that made me wonder if this was a near-death experience. But no, as we began seeing things from Megan’s perspective too, that clearly wasn’t the case. Nevertheless, the Drapers’ vacation had a surreal quality to it.

Don, unable to sleep, met a drunken soldier at the hotel bar. As they chatted about their respective combat experiences, Don found himself agreeing to be best man for the clearly doomed PFC Dinkins at his wedding the next morning, before heading back to Vietnam. The whole sequence had such a dreamlike quality, it was hard to tell if it was imaginary until Megan found her husband giving away a bride on the beach the next morning, taking a snapshot of the occasion.

Mention of Vietnam got me wondering exactly when the new season was set. Mad Men never does anything as easy as telling the viewer; you have to work it out from hints in the dialogue, the fashions, the cars etc. Last year, the elapsed time between seasons was easy to work out from Joan’s pregnancy. This year, there was no such easy clue, but the Christmas trees, and the repeated references to Dr Christiaan Barnard’s first heart transplant, gave it away – we were in December 1967.

So, the characters have just been through the Summer of Love, though in typical Mad Men fashion, it’s a very cold winter when we catch up with them. Don, increasingly out of touch with the young, was dismissive of the trivialisation of the word ‘love’, being used to pepper conversations and ad campaigns – “Why are we contributing to the trivialization of the word? It doesn’t belong in the kitchen. We’re wearing it out.”

In keeping with the times, absolutely everyone’s now smoking weed – the creative team at SCDP even sparking up in the office, to very little reaction from Don (“I smell creativity”). Vietnam would now be in full swing, and the horror of the combat starting to come through to the American public – as Peggy discovered to her annoyance.

In keeping with what I’d expected at the end of last year, we spent a deal of time here catching up with Peggy and how she was doing at rival firm Cutler, Gleason and Chaough. Not unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of Don Draper in her work style – she’s confident and thoroughly in charge of her rather timid creative team. She’s also now living with longtime boyfriend Abe, and walking all over him too, which he seems perfectly content with; he too seems permanently stoned.

Still, Peggy obviously misses the SCDP crew; working all night at the office, she spends ages on the phone to old buddy Stan. So it was that Stan happened to overhear everything that passed between her and her boss – Don’s old rival – Ted Chaough. Trouble a-brewing?

Roger, meanwhile, appeared to have got his acid-fuelled serenity out of his system and was spending time with a therapist. John Slattery was as wryly amusing as ever; he manages to keep Roger deep enough to avoid him being just a comical buffoon. We saw both sides in these two episodes, as he too got to reflect on death, in this case his mother’s.

This was announced to him by his tearful secretary Caroline, who he awkwardly comforted while balancing two glasses of gin. The comedy was heightened even more at a supremely awkward wake. In Mad Men, no social occasion ever goes well, and this was no exception. Having to deal with fawning elderly relatives, two ex-wives and his grasping daughter, it was a relief for Roger when the unexpectedly sloshed Don turned up, staggered about a bit and vomited into the umbrella stand, mercifully cutting short his wheelchair-bound aunt’s saccharine eulogy.

It felt strangely out of character (presumably intentionally) for Don to be so out of control on booze. Yes, he’s had his problems there before, but he seemed to get over them. This time, there was little forewarning; after Megan (now a minor soap opera star) left for some filming, he was seen silently sipping whisky while the maid vacuumed. Next minute he was turning up at Roger’s, barely able to stand up.

Don being Don, he was lost in introspection half the time, staring at things with a troubled expression in that way he has. In one of the show’s examples of portentous symbolism, he’d discovered that, while in Hawaii, he’d accidentally switched his Zippo lighter with that of Private Dinkins, and he can’t get rid of it. He tried throwing it in the trash, only for Megan to hand it back to him after the maid found it. Later, he asked his secretary Dawn to get the Army to return it to Dinkins; given this opener’s obsession with death, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that the young man is already on his way home in a body bag.

Don seems obsessed with death. Perhaps he’s still haunted by guilt over Lane’s suicide, which itself reawakened his guilt over his brother’s. We discovered fairly early on (in a joltingly timeslipped sequence) that the victim of the heart attack seen at the outset was the seemingly insignificant doorman at Don’s apartment, Jonesy. As the drunken Don was manhandled home by Pete and Ken, he stopped to slurringly and insistently press Jonesy for details of what he’d seen when he ‘died’ – as it turned out, the old standby of ‘a white light’.

Perhaps this was what inspired Don to come up with an ill-advised pitch to the Sheraton honchos, showing an abandoned set of clothes on a Hawaiian beach. He thought it was an image of freedom; to everyone else, it suggested suicide. An interesting juxtaposition of ideas, if a little obvious by this show’s standards.

Betty at least didn’t seem morbidly obsessed with death, as we caught up with her and Sally watching Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. But she too was acting very oddly. With Sally’s friend Sandy staying over for Christmas, she was obviously none too keen on husband Henry apparently perving at her – but it was a bit out of the blue when she acidly suggested that he should rape her. And that she should watch. Joke it may have been, but this is not the prim Betty we remember – is middle age taking a toll on her sexual tastes along with her waistline?

Taking her unusual behaviour further, she seemed to be forging a maternal bond with Sandy in the way she never has with Sally. Tracking the errant teenager to a filthy commune in Greenwich Village, she then took on the role of den mother to the straggly hippy boys trying ineptly to cook goulash while stoned. She didn’t find Sandy, though – and what was the heavily telegraphed significance of her ripping her coat?

And while Roger may have taken the death of his mother with a sanguine, almost exasperated air, death came back to hit him hard as he was handed the cleaning tools of his just-deceased shoeshine guy – and collapsed in a weeping heap. Of course, this would usually just be a delayed reaction to the death that really should affect him; but it would be quite in keeping for Roger Sterling to be more attached to his shoeshine boy than his mother.

Not many clues here about where the season’s going to go. Everything seems pretty stable at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (nice that they kept Lane’s name on the ticket). Don’s full of introspective angst and middle-aged obsolescence, but when isn’t he? Black secretary Dawn is still the sole representative of non-white ethnicities in the office. And Peggy seems to be doing just fine at Cutler, Gleason and Chaough, despite the unfortunate problem with the Koss headphones account.

Yes, on the surface, everything seemed fine. But then, in this show, that’s often the way. This episode had a doom-laden, ominous tone deriving from nothing out of the ordinary at all; Dinkins’ lighter, Don’s rearranged office and so forth. And the noticeable fixation with death – and what happens after – may be some tonal indicator of what’s to come. For now though, while this was a good season opener and certainly very watchable, it lacked the compelling tone of last year. A low key start, even for a show this low key – let’s see where it goes from here.

Historical events

As mentioned above, the first successful heart transplant – achieved by Dr Christiaan Barnard on 3 December 1967 – got a lot of shout outs. It was also perfectly accurate that Phyllis Diller was fronting the Tonight Show at that point – Matthew Weiner pointed out that Johnny Carson routinely took the holidays off. Not sure who the comedian guest was that made the unfortunate gag about GIs having necklaces made from human ears, but that certainly did become a scandal at about this point.

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

As we’ve moved on from 1966, apparently the Hideous Checked Sports Coats so prominent last year are no longer In. What is In, after the Summer of Love made hippies trendy, is flamboyant facial hair. Ginsberg was sporting a fulsome moustache:

While Stan had gone the whole hog with a massive full-on beard:

Even Peggy’s beau Abe is no longer the clean-cut beatnik we remember, but has morphed into a Frank Zappa lookalike:

No wonder he seemed so stoned.

Roger, for his part, was sporting a style new to him – a none-too-subtle pastel blazer, with two rows of conspicuous buttons:

Tune in next week to see what other atrocities the looming end of the decade will force our characters to wear…

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 13–The Phantom

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 13 YET.

“It’s a great sin to take advantage of hopeless people.”

After the high drama of recent episodes – Joan’s prostitution, Peggy’s departure, Lane’s suicide – the finale to Mad Men’s fifth season felt somewhat more low key. It was a chance for the characters to take stock of where they’d been left by the tumultuous events of the year, both in their business and personal lives. It was notable that, this year more than any, there was no major historical event against which to juxtapose the characters, a sign perhaps that the drama itself is now more important than its context.

One of the things the show has often dealt with is the consequences of its characters’ actions, and this finale seemed to take most of its time in dealing with those. Mad Men’s plotlines never have what you could call conclusions, not really, but there were capstones – and consequences – to many of the subplots laid out this year.

Lane’s suicide has obviously affected everyone at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce very deeply (apart from anything else, they’re presumably going to have to rename the company). Yet, in keeping with the show’s usual dramatic subtlety, it was quite some way into the episode before anyone explicitly mentioned the matter. Initially, we got some sideways references to it: Lane’s empty chair at the partners’ meeting, Harry, Bert, and apparently others being less than keen to move into the office where this unspeakable event had happened.

Don seemed to be keeping it together, but from the very start his guilt seemed to be manifesting itself; initially as a troublesome toothache which he refused to see a dentist about, then increasingly with visions of his dead brother Adam. As noted by many Lane’s suicide (probably intentionally) mirrored Adam’s perfectly. Both hanged themselves after having been rejected by Don, and obviously Don (and the screenwriter) is acutely aware of the similarity.

In moral terms, Don’s treatment of Lane is far more defensible than his treatment of his brother, who he rejected to keep his former life as Dick Whitman a secret. As a partner in the agency who’d been found to be embezzling it and forging the accounts, Lane was clearly in an untenable positions, and Don at least did him the courtesy of allowing him to resign while keeping the embezzlement confidential (though this may have had more to do with Don worrying that a police investigation would turn up his own ongoing identity theft). Nonetheless, Don should have little to feel guilty about concerning Lane.

But that’s not how it works when somebody you’re close to kills himself, and the visions of Don’s brother may have more to do with reminding us that he really should feel responsible in that case. It’s a mark of the show’s attention to detail that they were able to hire Jay Paulson to return as Adam after having dispatched the character in the first season. He’s a distinctive enough actor for me to have recognised him immediately as the ‘phantom’ of the title when Don started seeing him out of the corner of his eye, tentatively asking, “Adam?”

These two manifestations of Don’s present and ongoing guilt finally came together as Don relented and wen to the dentist to see about his toothache. Knowledge of the show’s style meant that, as Don went under the gas and closed his eyes, then opened them again, I realised instantly that we were into one of the show’s ‘dream’ sequences. So it proved as Adam turned up, not to berate Don but offer a sad smile and another parallel to Lane: “I lost my job. Because I’m dead.” An unpleasant purple weal around his neck was proof enough of this, and Don pleaded, “Don’t go”. To which Adam’s response – “Don’t worry, I’ll hang around. Get it?” indicates that we’ll likely be seeing more of Don’s increasing burden of guilt when the show returns.

It doesn’t help that Lane’s death, along with a resurgence in business from Mohawk Airlines, has done the company pretty well financially. His life insurance payout is massive, and SCDP are the beneficiaries – shades of Death of a Salesman, which were further emphasised when Don insisted on paying $50,000 of the settlement to Lane’s widow.

The scene of Don visiting Mrs Pryce, and awkwardly trying to offer condolences only to be rejected coldly, was one of those supremely uncomfortable scenes Mad Men does so well. Embeth Davidtz as Rebecca Pryce has had almost nothing to do, acting wise, beyond a blithe ignorance of her husband’s misdeeds; now finally, she got a chance to show her acting mettle. As the only other thing I’ve ever seen her in was the 1993 Evil Dead sequel Army of Darkness, I was pleasantly surprised by how good she was here. Keeping the traditional British restraint about grief, she coldly told Don, “It was wrong of you to fill a man like that with ambition” – probably the most succinct analysis of Lane’s downfall you could get. And she outright told Don that she knew this to be just an attempt to salve his own conscience, and that as far as she was concerned, it did nothing to alleviate his guilt. Ouch.

As this is Mad Men, and everyone has to be having a horrible time, Pete Campbell was doing pretty badly too. Pete’s one of those characters that, while impossible to like, I still can’t help feeling sorry for; as mentioned several weeks ago, absolutely nothing works out for him. His tragedy is that, like Don, he seems to have everything he should want, but like Don, it’s never enough. It’s ironic that this is the one way in which Pete truly is similar to his ‘hero’ Don.

This week, we got a resolution – of sorts – to his attempts to have a passionate affair a la Don, with fellow commuter’s wife Beth. After seeing Beth on the train, he was powerless to resist her invitation for a meaningless shag in the same hotel where she’d stood him up. Then she revealed that this would be the last time it would happen – she was off to have her depression treated (not for the first time) with electro convulsive therapy, and experience had taught her that she would likely not even remember him afterward.

This led to a rather heartbreaking scene as Pete blagged his way in to visit her at the hospital, only to discover that she’d already had the ECT and (apparently) really had forgotten who he was. Cue a long and surprisingly moving speech from Pete as he detailed the travails of the ‘friend’ he told Beth he was there to visit – actually, of course, a summation of his own emptiness and lack of fulfilment. It was delivered brilliantly by Vincent Kartheiser, who constantly manages – for me, anyway – to keep Pete straddling the line between loathsome and sympathetic.

At least one thing seemed to work out for him, though. Ending up in a fistfight on the commuter train with Beth’s husband Howard, he unwisely baited the no-nonsense conductor who broke up the fight, receiving a black eye for his trouble. Turning up battered at home led wife Trudy (Community’s Alison Brie, who we don’t see nearly enough of) to concede that his desire to rent an apartment back in Manhattan was probably a good idea. But what’s the betting that it’s not going to make him any happier?

At least we got a welcome return for Peggy Olson. I wouldn’t expect her to have left the show for good; after all, the very first episode began with her first day at the agency, and she’s been a crucial character since. Here, we saw that life at Cutler Gleason and Chaough may not be much better for her. Ted Chaough dragooned her into taking up smoking so she can work on a prospective Philip Morris account, and it’s no surprise that she followed her old boss’s example once again when times are hard – she went to the movies.

Where, as chance would have it, she met Don himself, also taking refuge from his troubles as he recovered from his tooth extraction (it must have been terrifying for him when the dentist told him he couldn’t smoke for 24 hours). Their scene together was touching; despite Peggy having only left a couple of weeks ago, they hugged like old friends who hadn’t seen each other for ages. The real chemistry between Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss was again in evidence as both feigned happiness, avoiding the subject of their current worries. At least Don’s regret over her departure was expressed; he seemed bitter and sad but proud when he told her, “that’s what happens when you help someone. They succeed and move on.” I doubt we’ve seen the last of Peggy (she was highlighted significantly in the closing montage); but I wonder where she’ll be when the show returns. Back at SCDP, or turning into a capable rival for Don elsewhere?

Thankfully, the often-too-perfect Megan was getting a serious dose of her husband’s usual sense of angst and futility. Her acting career is noticeably failing to take off (and her mother is none too sympathetic), and like Don, she took refuge in brooding and getting drunk. Jessica Pare is a perfectly capable actress, but I can certainly understand many people’s objection that Megan has little depth as a character beyond acting as a foil for Don’s insecurities. Here, finally, that mask of wholesomeness was nicely cracked.

After one of her friends begged her for an in with Don to be cast in a new SCDP commercial, Megan basically stabbed her in the back by trying to get the gig herself. Don was initially reluctant but eventually conceded, and in one of the episode’s last scenes, we saw that Megan had got the job. Terrific, perhaps, but a total abandonment of her earlier principled stance that she wanted to succeed on her own merit. She may be finally getting work, but it’s only because of her husband rather than her ability, and she betrayed a close friend to do so. Welcome properly to the world of Mad Men characters, Megan. (And that’s before you even consider that her mother is yet again entwined in the ‘understanding’ arms of Roger Sterling!)

The ep – and the season – concluded with one of its trademark musical montages, this time set to Nancy Sinatra’s hit of that year, ‘You Only Live Twice’. As usual – a highly appropriate choice – Don manages to both recall and subvert the archetype of James Bond as he walks away from Megan’s film set into the darkness. Hanging out at a bar, he was approached by, yet again, a shyly attractive young lady. And her friend. And his unspoken answer to their question – “Are you alone?” – was the cliffhanger on which this season left him. He’s spent the year trying hard to move away from the ‘old’ Don, only to find the consequences of his actions pushing him back into that role ever more. Will he have the strength to resist?

It’s been a great season, which was a relief after having waited nearly two years to see it. Matthew Weiner has, as ever, kept the show’s slow burning moodiness and character depth, so that truly dramatic events, when they come, are all the more shocking for it. It’s sad that we won’t be seeing any more of Lane, who really came into his own this year in terms of deep plotlines both humorous and sad, and Jared Harris deserves a nod for his likeable performance over the last three seasons. And I’m glad to see that Peggy’s departure from SCDP doesn’t mean her departure from the show. Let’s hope that we don’t have to wait as long for the next season as we did for this one!

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 12–Commissions and Fees

SPOILER WARNING – THIS REVIEW DISCUSSES MAJOR PLOT POINTS . DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 12 YET.

“What is happiness? It’s the moment before you want more happiness.”

This week in Mad Men, nearly everyone was having a bad day – some worse than others. This was signified by a number of exchanges in which world-weary characters actually declared, “I’ve had a bad day.” Well, that’s not unusual for this show, but this instalment seemed to up the ante. After last week’s dramatic power house of an episode, this one felt more low key, the character arcs and plot development ambling along sedately – until a massive shock brought it all to an abrupt halt with the departure of the second major character in as many weeks.

Perhaps it was the winter setting – snowflakes visibly falling outside every window – but from the beginning there seemed a palpable sense of gloom throughout. There was the usual sense of existential angst and inertia at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, with the events of recent weeks hanging sullen in the air. Despite securing the prestigious Jaguar account, nobody’s happy – and indeed the subject of happiness (or the lack of it) was a recurring theme in the episode, with many of the characters dwelling on it at various points.

Initially, the most unhappy (as usual) was Don, for a number of reasons. He’s obviously still smarting from last week’s deal with the devil that enabled Joan to gain a partnership by means of actual prostitution. He’s not just angry with the rest of the partners (“Should I just leave the room so you can vote without me?”), but plainly with Joan too for lowering herself to those standards. It probably doesn’t help that at the partners’ meeting Joan proves herself awesomely capable, signifying that this is a position she should have been given a long time ago.

But he’s also unhappy that, for an American ad agency, the account for a notoriously unreliable British luxury car is pretty middling stuff. This becomes clear in a meeting with Roger, as Don declares, “I don’t want Jaguar, I want Chevy!” Perhaps Roger is less ambitious than Don; he’s involved in yet another meaningless affair with a too-young girl, and recognises that it’s not making him happy but thinks it’s the best he can do.

Don, however, is having none of it. He honestly thinks Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce isn’t trying hard enough, and is still smarting from his recent chat with the Ed Baxter, head of Dow Chemicals and father in law to the usually principled Ken Cosgrove. Baxter, played by the marvellously slimy Ray Wise, had told Don that many major companies would never work with him because of the anti-smoking ad he put out to save face over losing the Lucky Strike account.

Don being Don, Dow is thus obviously his ultimate challenge – even Roger refers to it as “the Moby Dick of accounts”. But Don seems to feel that SCDP has been resting on its laurels (despite the Jaguar account) and it’s time to go hunting that white whale. This he does in a meeting heavy with hidden meaning after Roger has placated the surprisingly hard nosed Ken. Ken will put up no resistance – providing he can be “forced” onto the account and Pete Campbell will have no involvement at all. This was a bit of a revelation; we know Pete’s hard to like, but it was a surprise that even the usually mild Ken would be so ruthless towards him.

With that sorted, Don and Roger are free to meet with Baxter and the finance and marketing supremos of Dow. More than anything, this scene set out the themes of the episode. Don thinks that Dow’s current agency are just coasting, and that the company’s complacent for being satisfied with 50% market share. He’s projecting of course – he’s not happy with everything he has, so why should Dow Chemicals be? Addressing the idea of happiness head on, he comments, “what is happiness? It’s the moment before you want more happiness.”

If anything, that’s the philosophy of the show in a nutshell. Don’s reaching, ambitiously, like the very embodiment of the American Dream. And yet, however much he achieves, it’s never enough – the dream is hollow, no matter how nobly we strive. It’s heavily significant that he’s expressing these sentiments to Dow Chemicals, whose involvement in the Vietnam War was so crucial; the script even spelled that out by having him comment on the history of napalm, one of their most famous products. The implication was that Don’s ambition lacked any principle. He’s prepared to be a gentleman about Joan Harris, but he has no compunction over advertising a company that produces such a horrible weapon. I wonder if Don votes Republican?

Don also has to put up with Sally, herself as unhappy as usual in her relationship with her mother. Sally was being as wilful and spoilt as usual, refusing to go on Betty and Henry’s ski trip and preferring to foist herself on her harried father. Betty, typically, is fine with that – anything to get the burdensome Sally out of her hair, and ‘coincidentally’ to make things awkward for Don.

But with Don busily preparing for his meeting with Dow, and Megan off to another audition, Sally has to be left alone in the apartment on Monday morning. It was no surprise that she secretly arranged a trip to the Natural History Museum with sort-of-boyfriend Glen, who absconded from his boarding school just to see her. Their scenes in the museum, nicely played by Kiernan Shipka and Marten Weiner, were interrupted as Sally had the shock of discovering her first period. Mad Men delights in putting all its characters through the wringer, and in Sally’s case the shocks and depression are nearly always to do with her burgeoning sexuality.

Surprisingly, though, when she ran off and deserted Glen, it was Betty she ran to and not Megan. Even more surprisingly, Betty for once acted like a caring mother, soothing Sally’s worries, and holding her on the bed. Perhaps the evidence of Sally’s imminent womanhood has given Betty a sudden facility for empathy, based on her own experiences. But she still can’t resist playing one-upmanship with Megan, smugly pointing out over the phone that it was Betty that Sally ran to, and not her stepmother.

Lane Pryce at least started the episode feeling good – he’s been invited to join the fiscal committee of the prestigious American Association of Advertising Agencies. But this is Mad Men, and no-one’s allowed to stay happy for long. In Lane’s case, his fall from grace came surprisingly early on, as Bert Cooper, having stumbled on the cheque with Don’s forged signature, furiously asks Don why he’s given Lane the Christmas bonus that the partners were supposed to foreswear.

Don, of course, knows that he never signed such a cheque. Even mired in his usual angst, he’s a smart and shrewd man, and works out immediately what’s going on. Cue an agonising scene in his office as he demands the resignation of the weeping Lane, to whom the appearance of respectability is everything. Jared Harris crumbled magnificently as Lane for his last episode, venting all the despair that his character has been prone to for the last couple of years.

Don at least has the sensitivity to keep Lane’s crime confidential, and gives him advice on what to tell his wife. He’s projecting again, seeing echoes of his own history – “I’ve started over a lot. Believe me, this is the hardest part.” But Lane isn’t Don; his facade is far more fragile. It doesn’t help that when he gets home, he discovers his wife has bought him a very expensive present – with his own chequebook. In a supreme display of irony, It’s a Jaguar XKE. Having spent the afternoon trying to drink away his despair, Lane does the only thing left to him – he goes and pukes in a corner.

It was a blackly humorous moment, but not the blackest. Lane’s gradual unravelling was interspersed throughout the episode, and it came as no surprise to find him ultimately preparing to commit suicide by gassing himself with the exhaust of that very same Jag. Except, in a moment of unexpected humour that cleverly undermined this poetic gesture, the Jag, typically, wouldn’t start. Even in the circumstances, it was impossible not to laugh as poor old Lane poked about the engine hopelessly, holding one lens of his snapped glasses to his face. Even suicide won’t work out for him.

At least for a while. The final scenes of the episode were truly shocking, as Joan, suspicious of Lane’s locked office door, gets Pete to peer through his adjoining window. After the abortive Jag attempt, Lane had gone to the office and hung himself. Even the usually composed Joan was weeping, while the men looked like they’d been kicked in the balls. Real life, in all its horror, had intruded on the office of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, a singularly unusual experience.

Don and Roger, returning from the meeting with Dow, found the office eerily deserted, with only the shocked (surviving) partners left. Typically, it was Don, with his sense of decency, who demanded that Lane be cut down despite Pete’s protestations that it was a crime scene that shouldn’t be interfered with. This was shown in shocking, unpleasant detail; previously the director had shied away from actually showing Lane’s dangling corpse, and I’d expected it to remain unseen.

That just rendered it all the more shocking when we saw Jared Harris hanging, grey-faced, from his office door. Don, Roger and Pete looked genuinely sick as they cut him down; Harris has said that these were genuine reactions, so presumably Jon Hamm, John Slattery and Vincent Kartheiser were seeing this grimly realistic tableau for the first time. For Don in particular, the look of horror was especially redolent. Not only is he presumably feeling guilty at having provoked Lane’s desperate actions, this isn’t the first time he’s felt responsible for a suicide by hanging; way back in the first season, his (ie Dick Whitman’s) half brother died in the same way, after Don’s rejection.

It was a startling and shocking end to an otherwise low key episode, the sudden horror all too real from my own experiences of suicides. Jared Harris has been great as Lane, and the episode rightly gave him plenty of good material in his last performance. In a script so heavily freighted with references to unhappiness, it was fitting that one of its worst possible consequences should provide the climax. Don was perfectly right in the way he dealt with Lane’s crime; but I’m sure that will be cold comfort to him. The episode ended with him at least being able to make one person happy, as he let Glen drive the car back to boarding school. It felt like a small crumb of comfort in a very bleak penultimate episode. But then, this is Mad Men; bleak is what they do.

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 11–The Other Woman

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 11 YET.

“Don’t fool yourself. This is some very dirty business.”

With just three episodes left this season (including this one), Mad Men continues to impress, this week presenting one of the most powerful, heartrending instalments the show’s ever done. With perhaps a tighter focus than usual, this week’s episode directly addressed one of the themes that’s been ever-present throughout the show’s run – the gender politics of its 60s setting, and in particular the thoughtless, unjust treatment of women that even good men – like Don – just don’t understand.

The script focuses almost exclusively on the travails of Joan, Peggy and even Megan to make its point. Not that the male characters are absent; indeed, they get as much screen time as the women, with some telling character points of their own. But they’re primarily there to demonstrate just what a bad lot in life women – even massively capable ones like Joan, Peggy and Megan – got in 1966.

It was an angry script by writer Semi Chellas (with the usual input from showrunner Matthew Weiner) that accomplished its aims fairly straightforwardly, but not without some real dramatic inventiveness. Ostensibly, the ‘story’ – fitting neatly into the show’s current arc – was about the progress of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s bid for the Jaguar account. But in every way, the story was used to reflect the injustice to which women were routinely subjected at the time.

The script set out its stall fairly early on, with a business dinner between Pete, Ken and Jaguar Dealers’ Association head Herb Rennet. Herb, a slimy, pudgy sort of fellow, doesn’t mince words; he’ll give them his vote, conditional on the promise of a night with the ‘stunning redhead’ who showed him around the office – Joan Harris. Initially, this looked like the sort of thing the show often does, setting up the inherent sexism of the period for being knocked down fairly quickly. We know Pete’s a spineless, unprincipled wanker, but surely even he would baulk at pimping out the formidable Joan for a fast buck?

But no, despite Ken’s immediate reaction of “no way”, Pete not only didn’t rule it out, but made a hilariously hamfisted attempt to make this indecent proposal to Joan as ‘indirectly’ as he could. At this point, the plotline was still funny enough to provoke laughter, with Pete’s clumsy attempts at obfuscation more than matched by exactly the kind of frosty looks you’d expect from Joan. But the humour rapidly began to dissipate as Pete took her at her word – “you couldn’t afford it” – and convened a partners’ meeting to discuss exactly what they could afford to offer her.

As I say, the script had stopped aiming the idea at humour, and what replaced it was outrage. To be fair, Don at least had the decency to walk straight out, saying that if this was what it took, he didn’t want the account. But none of the others had the decency to rule out the idea – not Lane,who recently tried to kiss Joan, not Roger, who’s actually fathered a child with her, not even the usually principled Bert Cooper. Dazzled by the promise of a prestigious auto account, they were all prepared to ask a woman they’d worked with and respected for many years to prostitute herself to further their business.

Lane at least did seem to demur, which almost gave him a shred of decency; but it was clear that he was terrified of offering Joan the prospective $50,000, since he’s already fraudulently obtained that on company credit to pay off his own tax debts. That plotline, clearly hanging over Lane’s head, was what encouraged him, via a conversation made almost entirely out of obfuscation, to give her the idea of asking for a partnership instead. Let’s be clear – Lane wasn’t against pimping out this woman he has feelings for. He just didn’t want it to happen if it revealed that he’s been embezzling the company. That’s far from a high-minded declaration of principle.

Even then, I couldn’t see Joan agreeing to do this. She’s been one of the most self-assured, capable, principled characters on the show since it began. Surely she wouldn’t agree to sell her body in order to further her career? And yet the script gave us a plausible scenario as to why she would give in to the idea of sleeping her way to the top. With her husband divorcing her, her baby to bring up, and now her refrigerator breaking down with no money left to fix it, she’s at her wit’s end. What’s being suggested is horrible – but pragmatically, can she afford to reject the idea? So she went to Pete, and forthrightly declared that she’d do it – in exchange for the 5% partnership, and no negotiation.

The prospect of a character you’ve come to like having to stoop to such depths was truly horrifying, but even then, I found it hard to believe she’d go through with it. When Don found out what the other partners had agreed to in his absence, he hotfooted it straight to Joan’s apartment to play Knight in Shining Armour and talk her out of it. But, as if to prove that Don’s good intentions don’t matter a jot, and that he doesn’t really understand the position Joan’s in, he was too late.

Not that this was immediately clear. At first, it seemed like he’d arrived in the nick of time, and Joan was having second thoughts. But then, Don’s pitch to the Jaguar panel – not coincidentally describing the XKE in the most misogynist terms of femininity – was cleverly intercut with the sequence of Joan having visited the loathsome Rennet the night before. It was heartbreaking to see the self-loathing on Joan’s face as she turned to allow him to undo her bra.

Even then, the intercutting of the sequence kept us guessing. Surely Joan would have second thoughts, politely tell the pudgy car dealer she couldn’t go through with it, and leave? But no, as Don came to the climax of his pitch (tellingly, it was “Jaguar – at last something beautiful you can truly own”), we realised that Joan had gone through with it after all. As she lay naked in bed with the less than attractive Rennet then turned away from him in discreet loathing, it was hard to hold back a tear. And then we went back to the scene of Don arriving at the apartment, realising then that he’d arrived after Joan had gone through with it. No wonder she was about to take a shower.

Was Joan right to do what she did, from a pragmatic viewpoint of a much overdue furtherance to her career? It’s hard to judge, given the presumably accurate portrayal of the attitudes of the time. Certainly, her expression at the partners’ meeting – when Jaguar confirmed their acceptance of the proposal – was all steely business, feeling suppressed. But her telling exchange of looks with a horrified Don showed there was more under the surface than just pragmatism and acceptance. It was a masterful performance from Christina Hendricks throughout, and given Joan’s bonding with Don last week, I wonder if the two are about to have a long, soul-searching chat again.

For all Don’s well-intentioned chivalry though, the far more lightweight (but still angry) plotline about Megan’s audition showed that he’s just as much of a sexist dinosaur as his colleagues. He may not want women to debase themselves (not that this has always bothered him), but he just doesn’t get that the women he knows might want to succeed on their own terms, without his ‘gentlemanly’ help. Certainly when Megan reveals that, should she get the role, she’ll be off touring for months on end, Don’s immediate reaction is to abandon his previous tolerance and forbid it outright. Megan’s angry assertion that he only allowed her to follow her dream because he expected her to fail looked dead on the money to me.

I’m still doubtful over Megan as an ongoing character. As commented on this blog a couple of weeks ago, she’s often seemed too perfect, lacking the flaws of the rest of the characters and acting more as a foil for Don than a person in her own right. But Semi Chellas’ script made me genuinely feel for her. First she had to endure the realisation that her husband had no confidence in her abilities (despite that he still wants her advice about the Jaguar pitch). Then, in a brief but telling scene, it became obvious that her audition callback was less about her acting ability than the shape of her rear end. And for all that Don was ready to be the Comforting Husband, you got the impression that he still didn’t understand.

But when it came to Don Just Not Getting It, this was small fry compared to the episode’s other big storyline – his treatment of Peggy. In the stress and furore of recent weeks, he’s been consistently treating her more like a doormat than a protege, and this week she’d finally had enough.

The last straw came when, having pitched a brilliant proposal to Chevalier LeBlanc perfume in Ginsberg’s absence (and after having refused to be described as his subordinate), Peggy found Don’s first reaction to be that he’d hand the idea straight to Ginsberg as soon as he was finished with Jaguar. And then, to add insult to injury, he took Peggy’s aggravation as a sign that she just wanted the account to get a free trip to Paris. Peggy, to her credit, immediately decided that she was worth more than that, and went out looking for better opportunities with the competition, where she might be recognised as worthy on her own terms.

Not surprisingly, Don’s old nemesis Ted Chaough was more than willing to make her an offer – in fact, he was prepared to exceed her original demand by $1000 a year. It’s nice to hope that he did this out of recognition of her abilities (and that probably was a factor), but given the way we’d seen women treated throughout the episode, my first thought was that he was making the offer just as a way to stick it to Don.

Peggy’s been an integral character to the show since episode one, and initially I didn’t believe she’d leave SCDP. But in a shock moment, leave she did. And as if to cement the episode’s portrayal of the well-meaning Don Just Not Getting It, his initial assumption was that she was just fishing for a raise, which he was more than prepared to give. He finally Got It when it became clear that, no matter what he offered, his former protege was off to pastures new; as he realised, and both reflected that this was really the end for them, the scene became genuinely tearjerking.

Don’s voice cracked as he refused to let go of Peggy’s hand, his face crumpling; Peggy herself had tears rolling down her otherwise controlled face. It was a hugely emotional scene, brilliantly played by both Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss. As Peggy walked out of SCDP for the last time amid furious partying, unnoticed by all (except, significantly, Joan), it became clear that she really was going. And perhaps now is the right time for that. As has recently become clear, she’s basically already become Don, albeit a female version, and the show doesn’t need two of them. Nonetheless, she’ll be missed.

An incredibly powerful episode overall, that gave Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss in particular a chance to shine, and made me mark Semi Chellas as a writer to look out for. It’s easy for a man, if he’s liberal, to intellectually grasp how badly women were treated in the 60s; it’s quite something else to make him understand it on an emotional level. By rubbing our faces in the injustice suffered by likeable characters we’d known for some time, this episode succeeded at doing just that to an extent that I don’t think even Mad Men has managed before.

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 9–Dark Shadows

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 9 YET.

“I’m thankful that I have everything I want. And that no one else has anything better.”

Less portentous and existential than last week, this week’s Mad Men still offered another slice of angst in the lives of a selected few characters. Don’s increasing insecurity (not to mention Peggy’s) in the face of new young competition came up, along with the repercussions of Roger’s recent decision to end his marriage. But the lion’s share of the episode belonged to the little-seen-recently Betty and the way her own unhappiness is blighting the lives of everyone around her, including Don and especially Sally.

January Jones was on formidable form this week as Betty, increasingly frustrated with her unsuccessful attempts to lose weight after ballooning between seasons. Having established that her chubbiness is a result of psychological unhappiness rather than illness, Betty’s taken to attending Weight Watchers, then in its infancy as a New York-based therapy group. It has to be said, none of the women in Betty’s group looked particularly fat by today’s standards; a knowing comment, perhaps, on the increasing levels of obesity since the 60s?

Either way, Weight Watchers doesn’t seem to be making Betty any happier. Despite her strict diet of burned toast and grapefruits (plus fish five days a week, to her husband’s annoyance), she’s still not losing much weight. And when Betty’s unhappy, she takes it out on those around her. As has so frequently been the case in the past, those first in the firing line are daughter Sally and ex-husband Don.

Despite occasional cordial relations with Don, it’s clear that Betty’s never really got over the breakup of their marriage. This was made abundantly clear as she stopped by Don’s swanky new penthouse apartment to pick up the kids. You’d think the palatial mansion she lives in with Henry would be enough to keep her happy, but no, she’s clearly salivating with jealousy at Don’s hip furnishings and view of the Manhattan skyline. As if that wasn’t enough, she catches a glimpse of his new model wife Megan getting dressed, with that perky figure Betty herself no longer has.

We kept returning to Betty’s increasing frustration throughout, and it finally boiled over when she found young Bobby’s drawing of what appeared to be a harpooned Moby Dick (a symbol for Betty’s fruitless quest for happiness perhaps?) Discovering the rather sweet note from Don to Megan on the other side of the drawing, Betty’s jealousy and annoyance led her to try and torpedo the perceived happiness her ex and his new wife lived in. In doing so, she once again found herself using poor old Sally as a weapon, ‘innocently’ asking why her daughter’s family tree didn’t include Don’s (ie Dick Whitman’s) first ‘wife’ Anna.

That’s a nasty tactic by any means. Sally was plainly unaware of her father’s tortuous history, and it would be pretty complicated to explain to an adult, never mind a twelve-year-old. So she immediately blew up at Megan (another effect Betty was aiming for, perhaps) for lying to her. Stuck in the middle of an obviously bitter row between Don and Betty, poor old Megan couldn’t really deal with this.

It was only when Sally overheard Don and Megan having a flaming row over the matter that she realised what so many children from ‘broken homes’ have before her – she was being used as a pawn between two bitterly estranged people trying to hurt each other, with no regard for her own feelings. Again, Kiernan Shipka’s performance was astoundingly mature as Sally played an absolute blinder; when ‘innocently’ asked by Betty how her questioning of Don had gone, she simply shrugged and made out that it had been no big deal at all. I couldn’t help laughing and exclaiming, “well played, Sally!” That’s how much Mad Men draws me in sometimes.

Back at the office, we had two big plots going on. Don found his alpha male status increasingly threatened by the talent of young Ginsberg, and Roger tried comically to adapt to acceptance of New York’s Jewish community in order to screw over Pete Campbell by nabbing another account.

Of these two, the Roger storyline was the more obviously funny; you can always rely on Roger for a few laughs. Witness his frustration at having to secretly bribe yet another copywriter in his attempts to damage Pete, and his awkward attempts at acceptance of Jews. Ginsberg handled it well though, and Roger’s enough of an old smoothie to still manage to charm his Jewish potential client.

This was in no small part thanks to the help of his now-estranged wife Jane. There was a comical moment when Bert Cooper (who we don’t see often enough), found out that Roger had separated; he looked at his watch and harrumphed, “what, already?” But Roger needed Jane (she’s Jewish, remember) to show the clients how accepting he is. She certainly charmed wine magnate Rosenberg’s handsome son Bernie – I wonder if that will go anywhere in later episodes?

Perhaps not, because she ended up back with Roger. It’s clear since their acid trip that she’s not as sanguine about the end of their marriage as he is; now we realised that he’s not entirely over it either. So he dragooned his way into the new apartment he’d bought Jane so she could be free of the memories in their old one, and took advantage of the presumably drunk Jane to have his way with her. The man’s incorrigible, and certainly doesn’t learn lessons.

It was a bitter conclusion to an otherwise amusing plotline, as a repentant Roger was told by the tearful Jane that he’d just made her new apartment as painful to be in as her old one. One of the things that makes Roger likeable despite the horrible things he does is the obvious fondness behind his thoughtlessness; we saw last week how fond he still is of former wife Mona, and it now seems Jane is another he bears no ill will towards. Whether she feels the same is uncertain. But she knows Roger. He does what he does because he has no thought for the consequences of his actions; and based on the last five seasons, he’s unlikely to change any time soon.

Don, as usual, had the slightly more serious storyline. Stumbling over Ginsberg’s copybook on his way out of the office, he realised how talented the younger man was – talented in a way that Don himself doubts he is any more. So he stayed in the office (missing Betty’s awkward visit to his apartment) running through some frankly hokey sounding proposals for something called ‘Sno Balls’ (these might be a real product, but as a non-American I’m completely unaware of them).

After figuratively sweating blood over it, Don came up with a half decent proposal, but in the pitch meeting, Peggy and Rizzo seemed to prefer Ginsberg’s. Ginsberg himself probably compounded the problem with his amusing surprise that Don still “had it”. And with that, the fight was on – not that Ginsberg even knew. Don was threatened, however much he denied it, and after being frustrated in his every attempt to gain the upper hand, resorted to the downright sneaky tactic of simply leaving Ginsberg’s proposal in the cab when he went to pitch to the clients.

I don’t think we’ve seen Don resorting to this kind of underhand strategy out of desperation very often before. It led to a marvellous two handed scene in the elevator (increasingly where characters in the show go to have frosty exchanges). Ginsberg, having realised he’d been screwed over, nettled Don with his own youth and potential: “I’ve got millions more ideas. Millions of them”, following that up with a zinger: “You know, I feel sorry for you.” To which Don coldly came back with, “I don’t think about you at all.” But that wasn’t an argument-winning line because Don – and the viewer – knows that it’s a lie.

So if there was a theme at all in this week’s angst-ridden drama, it was denial. Betty’s denial of her own obvious unhappiness; Don’s denial of his obsolescence; Roger’s denial that he still has feelings for his ex-wives. And even Pete’s denial that his affair with Howard’s wife is over – in one of the more comical scenes, he fantasises that she’s come to the office wearing a fur coat and little else. Lucky he’s got that couch in his office, he plainly needed a lie down.

A few historical notes anchored the show in 1966. Megan was clearly running lines from classic gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows, which began in June of that year. Given that it ran for five years and is fondly remembered as a cult show, Megan’s assessment of it as “crap” is amusing. After all, it must be well-remembered to have inspired the title of this episode! Elsewhere, Henry’s obviously annoyed that New York City mayor John Lindsay isn’t running in the 1966 State Governor race; that went to Nelson Rockefeller for a second time. Rockefeller would later go on to be Vice President under Gerald Ford. As Henry crossly comments, he’s backed the wrong horse in sticking with Lindsay.

And finally, this week’s Hideous Checked Sports Coat count – low. It’s November, so everyone’s switched to Hideous Checked Overcoats:

But for a bit of variety, the head of Betty’s Weight Watchers class has a Hideous Checked Housecoat:

More eye-watering 60s fashions amid the existential angst next week…

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 8–Lady Lazarus

“It’s so simple when it’s someone else’s life, isn’t it?”

In a week when I’ve failed to get an interview for a job I’ve actually done before, Mad Men’s existential angst, and particularly Don Draper’s increasingly obvious obsolescence, seemed particularly redolent for me. This week’s was a somewhat lighter affair than the sturm und drang of recent episodes, with a less compressed timescale and focus; more , in fact, like the high quality soap opera it really is. But even a comparatively frothy episode like this one, written by series creator Matthew Weiner, had plenty of moments of acute and often painful character observation.

We got to see more of the Don/Megan dynamic this week, a recurring motif this season as Don looks increasingly antediluvian next to his young, with-it new wife. Trying to find some music for a Chevalier Blanc ad campaign that would satisfy the clients, Don was baffled by the trendy stylings of the Beatles: “When did music get so important?” He had, in fact, no grasp of contemporary music at all, and it’s telling that for anything ‘new’ he has a default plan – “I’ll ask Megan, she’ll know.”

But Megan, it turned out, was less than happy with her new role as cultural zeitgeist barometer for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. She may be a talented copywriter, but she doesn’t like the job. She thinks, in fact, that it’s pretty worthless in the overall scheme of things, and has been secretly going back to her original ambition – acting. This became clear after she spun two separate lies to first Peggy then Don, to cover her attendance at an audition.

The tenacious Peggy was the first to find out the truth, in a scene where Elisabeth Moss made her seem terribly fierce. Dragging the facts out of Megan in the women’s bathroom, Peggy was shocked that Mrs Draper would want to do anything else than copywriting. It’s an interesting insight into Peggy’s character, and one that came up previously in her late night chat with Dawn; having struggled so hard to get where she is, she makes the erroneous assumption that every woman wants the same thing. It’s almost a distillation of some of feminism’s more tyrannical directives, that a woman can’t be happy unless she’s struggling to be where a man is. Thankfully, I think feminism has more or less moved on from that kind of assumption these days, but then, Peggy’s in 1966.

So naturally, Peggy was furious that Megan would so carelessly toss away a career that she herself has struggled to achieve for years. It made for an uncharacteristically bitchy relationship between the two, though in truth that’s been brewing since Megan so effortlessly snagged the Heinz account. It seems, basically, to be jealousy of someone who got such an easy break into the business and then has the affront to be genuinely good at it. Can it be that Peggy too is beginning to feel the bite of younger people snapping at her heels?

If we once thought Peggy might be a bright future for the agency, Pete Campbell always looked like the promise of a dark dystopia. Thankfully, his general ineptitude made him seem less of a threat. So it proved again this week, as he embarked on what, for most characters, would be a torrid and scandalous romance with the wife of his philandering morning train buddy.

But this is Pete, and Don Draper-style affairs never work out for him unless he pays for them. Hence, after one night of torrid passion, his incessant badgering of the oddly philosophical Beth seemed to totally put her off. She didn’t want to talk to him on the phone, she was totally freaked out when he turned up at her house with her husband on a totally contrived pretext, and she failed to show up at the illicit tryst Pete organised, leaving him once again fuming at his lack of success. But as the episode ended, with the two of them leaving the station in separate cars, she drew a little heart at him in the window mist. Might he not have failed as utterly as usual? One crumb of comfort – at least he’s finally passed his driving test, though he appears not to know what a Stop sign means.

Don, meanwhile, spent the first half of the episode in blissful ignorance of his wife’s impending career crisis. When she finally told him, he spent the rest of the episode in denial about it, pretending everything was fine. And yet it clearly wasn’t; Don’s never seemed so ill at ease than when discussing Megan’s departure with Joan, who seems to be becoming the office Wise Woman (if she wasn’t already). As if his discomfiture wasn’t enough, he had the misfortune to almost stumble into a massive Existential Metaphor, as his call to the elevator resulted in the doors opening on the yawning chasm of the empty shaft. Even Don seemed to recognise the enormous significance of… whatever this represented, looking as disturbed as a character in a particularly traumatic Twilight Zone.

Don being Don, all this pent up emotion had to result in an explosion at a not entirely appropriate moment. And so it proved, as Peggy, substituting for the now-absent Megan in a pitch to Cool Whip, flubbed the crucial line that was meant to be the big ad hook, and Don blew up in her face in front of several General Foods employees. But Peggy’s going from strength to strength these days, and she gave as good as she got, telling him that it wasn’t her he was angry with (as was obvious to everyone but Don). Don, in return, told Peggy a few hard truths – Megan left not because she disliked the job but because she disliked the kind of people that did it. People like Peggy. It was a heavy scene masterfully topped off with a genuine belly laugh, as the GF employee sternly told a visibly astonished Don something I don’t think he’s ever hear before: “I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in here.”

Actually there were quite a few laughs this week, reflecting a script that was as frothy (and yet tellingly artificial) as Cool Whip. Roger, often the source of much of the show’s humour, wasn’t around much this week, but his old rivalry with Pete surfaced as he presented the younger man with a complimentary set of skis from a client. “Are they going to explode?” Pete enquired nervously, making me laugh so hard I almost spilled my tea. Still, beware Roger bearing gifts; who knows what his motive is there? Later, bugged by Don’s incessant calls to the office where she was working late, Peggy made the unfathomable decision to pretend to be a wrong number: “Pizza house!” (yelped in an unidentifiable accent).

And to top things off, after a couple of weeks’ absence, the eye-burningly hideous checked sports coats were back in evidence, courtesy of Stan and Ginsberg, who seem to have affirmed their acceptability as office wear at SCDP:

However, even they couldn’t compete with a new style of hideous sports coat, as worn by the flamingly gay member of the Chevalier Blanc group, which seemed to be made out of a deckchair:

I guess the Summer of Love is almost upon the denizens of SCDP – as was made abundantly clear by a final montage of the gang’s angst, soundtracked by the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. As with the recent use of ‘Time is on My Side’, a perfectly apposite choice, and one flecked with irony; earlier, Don had been discussing how the Beatles never allowed ads (or TV shows) to use their work. Which used to be true. And this week’s episode of the TV show Mad Men ended with a Beatles song. For an episode so heavily freighted with philosophy and symbolism, that was so meta it was perfect.