It looks like all the plot machinations in last week’s episode are already paying off (a surprisingly quick turnaround by Mad Men’s standards), and as an added bonus Peggy was back as well this week (apparently the previous episode is the only one not to feature her in it). Well, not much happened with Lane as he was still over in London – but he was included in events thanks to the panicked reports relayed to him over the phone from New York.
Unsurprisingly it turns out Lee Garner Jr. wasn’t even enough of a gentleman to stick to his agreement with Roger that he’d give SCDP a month before announcing Lucky Strike’s move to another agency. Meaning that Roger had his work cut out when it came to covering his tracks – as, Roger being Roger, had neither consulted anybody else in the agency about Lucky Strike’s defection or done anything to actually try and persuade Lucky Strike to stay. The episode started with Ken Cosgrove having dinner with his future parents-in-law (including Twin Peaks’ Leland Palmer Ray Wise – with Pete’s father-in-law also being better known as the dad off of Clarissa Explains It All, there may be a bit of a trend for 90’s TV dads to be making career comebacks as father-in-laws in Mad Men) talking about Trudy’s going in to labour (sort of – turns out it was a bit premature, but Trudy’s mother wouldn’t let the hospital discharge her) while she was attending a horticultural lecture with Ken’s fiancee, when he found out from a passing smug guy from BBDO about Lucky Strike. This lead to a trip to catch up with Pete at the hospital, a panicked phone call to Don and an emergency meeting back at the office. Roger just about managed to get away with it by denying all knowledge, faking a phone call to Garner and then a trip out to Virginia (really a hotel room at the Statler as he wanted to avoid Midtown), so once again Roger managed to save his own skin, but not actually do anything to help anybody else. He may have won back some sympathy points by being rejected by Joan when he confided to her that he already knew about Lucky Strike, and that he was secretly holed up in the hotel room, but then lost them again when we saw him later on with Jane – Jane may only exist as a character to be annoying – she hasn’t been in the series since the Christmas party in episode two – and the vulgar gold dress and tan she was sporting may have aged her twenty years, but seeing how devoted she was to Roger (the binding on the copies of Sterling’s Gold she ordered must have cost a fair bit) does make his affair with Joan, as well as his many disparaging remarks about his wife seem rather heinous. Add this to all the whining he did this episode about how hard his job was and how he had never even wanted to start the new agency (which seems a bit different to how I remember it – after all Puttnam, Powell and Lowe’s plans for the old agency pushed him out completely) and he came off as particularly pathetic this week.
Don was pretty busy this episode as well, starting off with Dr Miller, moving on to Megan when they worked late together and she spent the evening massaging his damaged ego (and counting how many drinks he had had), then going back to Miller when she agreed to violate the confidential nature of her business by letting him know that Heinz were unhappy with their current advertising agency – which Don was particularly desperate about finding, what with the loss of Lucky Strike leading to an inevitable stampede of other clients leaving the company, including Glocoat, despite the fact that Don’s award-winning, sentimental campaign had somehow got everybody talking about a floorwax, for fear the the loss of the agency’s biggest contract would lead to it’s collapse.
To be fair to Don, he did hold out as long as he could against Megan’s advances – a whole twenty seconds – but her offer of no strings attached sex was too good to pass up it seems. Megan may be written to be a bit of a shallow, silly character – what with her going on about her artistic ‘dabblings’ and how much she admires Don, but I can’t help but like her – probably because of her scene with Sally a few episodes back, so I can’t say that I was actually that bothered about her and Don sleeping together, and maybe her good nature will even rub off on him a bit. After all it’s starting to look like he’s losing his mojo again – Don is the master of the motivational, moving speech (just look at his Kodak pitch from the end of season 1) but his advice for the creative staff when facing the potential downfall of the agency was just to firmly tell them to ‘Be successful’.
Pete got much of the blame for Glocoat, owing to his distraction over the imminent arrival of his child – the poor guy was clearly worn out, as shown by him falling asleep at the conference table. Despite all this he still stuck with the agency even when the awful Ted Chaough turned up at the hospital attempting to win him over to his agency with baby gift based bribes and promises that it won’t be all about Don at his agency – it’s not like the Wild West at Cutler, Gleason and Chaough (or, as Chaough was already naming it, Campbell, Gleason and Chaough), oddly I think the odious Pete may now be turning out to be the hero of this series. And all he got in way of thanks from SCDP were a few mumbled congratulations when Megan informed them that Trudy had given birth to a baby girl while he was in a meeting.
Of course the hero thing’s going a bit far – Pete may suddenly be oddly likeable, but he’s never going to be heroic, he’s far too fond of whining and blaming others for that happen – Peggy remains the pretty much teflon-coated heroine of Mad Men – her likeability’s survived her affair with Pete, giving up her baby and even the terrible mistake she made this episode. After a trip to the beach with Joyce and an overly intimate car trip back to the city (which luckily didn’t end up with Joyce crashing the car, as before setting off she was proclaiming how stoned she was), Peggy ended up spending the night with aspiring writer Abe, who only a couple of episodes previously had proved to be a bit of a hypocritical, sexist jerk. Apparently one smooth line from a guy when sitting on top of him (‘Can I quote you on that? I’m learning’) as well as couple of odd compliments (‘You weigh like a pound…. I love your shoulders, you look like you should be in the Olympics’) is enough to win Peggy round to the extent that she’ll start claiming your her boyfriend when people in the office start asking questions. Still it’s nice seeing her happy, and her poor attempts at trying to seem cool and unexcited the morning after, especially considering the misery Stan put her through in the office.
Stan and Danny seem to have become the new comedy double act at SCDP – as if Stan and Jack from On The Buses had looked for a more glamorous career in their younger days – and they seemed to be the only ones having much fun, with Stan gleefully anticipating the sex-crazed women in the office that would be brought about by ‘the fall of Rome’. Starting with Peggy, who’s office based liaison with her now ‘boyfriend’ caused Stan to try his luck with her once again, only to be shot down – ‘Why do you keep making me reject you?’ Peggy responded, not so much in the usual disgusted manner she takes with Stan, but rather in the tone of a disappointed parent or teacher. Stan’s method of retaliating this time was allowing her to go into an important meeting with lipstick all over her teeth. Yes it was quite funny – especially the representative from Playtex trying to discretely inform her of her situation by somewhat suggestively running his tongue across his teeth – but if I was Peggy I would be more tempted to punch Stan in the face rather than just take it with good humour like she did, not only was it personally humiliating to her but it was putting the already troubled company at further risk of losing business. Compared to Stan Freddie Rumsen’s reappearance this episode felt like the return of a particularly warm and cuddly old friend, rather than an out-of-touch boring sexist – even though about half his screen-time this episode was spent at a memorial service for a rival ad-man pointing out now under-represented characters for Don and Pete to try and win over. And what an awful memorial it was too, revolving as it did around various colleagues telling personal recollections of the recently deceased that related back in the most horribly sentimental way to his wife and daughter (the thimble story made me want to retch), still it gave Pete something to consider about the relationship he’s going to have with his newborn daughter.
So all in all, it was a pretty morally suspect episode when you thought about it – one which I don’t think was particularly summed up well by the choice of Jim Reeves’ Welcome to My World as the choice of closing song, although that may be as it brought back memories of the Thompson Holidays advert its been attached to.
