Welcome to another episode of Paul Kinsey theatre, to borrow a line from Ken Cosgrove. It was the turn of the bigheaded, hypocritical bohemian wannabe to have his own storyline this week, and a very entertaining one it was too. Starting out with a drag featuring re-enactment of his idea for a hairspray advert in Don’s office, Kinsey’s story was one of jealousy, elation, despair and the general pitfalls of working in a creative industry. After Peggy improved on his commercial idea immeasurably with a few brief suggestions, leading to a jealous confrontation between the two, Kinsey pulled an all-nighter, drinking heavily and having a mysterious encounter in the break room with the even more mysteriously named janitor Achilles before hitting on the perfect idea for his Western Union Telegram campaign. Unfortunately he was so drunk that he then proceeded to fall asleep on his office sofa and woke up not remembering a thing about it – other than the fact that it would have been perfect. This lead to an amusing scrabble amongst the many papers in his office in a desperate hunt to find it, not very ably assisted by ditzy Lois who’s most useful suggestion was ‘Where did you last put it?’, still it’s nice to see that she’s still in the office even if she has been demoted to being Paul’s assistant – in Sterling-Cooper chewing gum at work will get you fired, but they have no problem with mutilating a man’s foot with a ride-on lawnmower. Surprisingly when he told Don about this Don was rather understanding, marking a change to the general grumpy demeanour he had in the office this episode, and musing on Paul’s misfortune caused Peggy to extrapolate a good campaign idea for Western Union, which Don improved further – the close up on Kinsey’s face as he watched the two work on the idea was fantastic, his expression being a mixture of jealousy, self-loathing and absolute awe.
Of course with the end of the series in sight, there were actually far more dramatic developments going on elsewhere. For one Don’s affair with know-it-all teacher Miss Farrell (who, creepily, even Don calls Miss Farrell) might indirectly lay the foundations for his own undoing. And surprisingly it wasn’t because she was bold enough to come up to him on his morning train into work, but rather because of the arrival of her down-on-his-luck epileptic brother. After agreeing to drive the guy to his new lodgings/place of work in the next state, Don listened to his impassioned pleas and let him out of the car early in the middle of nowhere. Something of the experience caused him to get to reminiscing about his own dead brother and dig out his secret box of memories from his past life, but then he forgot to hide the key when he finished thanks to baby Gene disturbing him, meaning that Betty found it when doing the laundry (although I’m surprised that she didn’t leave that to Carla to do like she does with absolutely everything else in her household) and came across his box of secrets. You’d think that with so much potentially damaging information in there Don would hide it in a better place, or at least not make sure that everything was so well labelled and organised so as anyone could easily piece together the details of his past life, but he didn’t and so now Betty knows. The closing scenes of the episode were interesting by showing Betty’s mute response to the revelation, such as where she got ready for Sterling-Cooper’s anniversary gala, pausing to look thoughtful in the bathroom while wearing her extravagant evening frock – a big part of Mad Men’s success is its many scenes of beautiful people, looking beautifully melancholic in beautifully mundane places – and where at the gala she had to hear Roger’s glowing testimony for Don knowing that it was all a lie. That’s not to say that Betty was entirely innocent this week either, once again she passive-aggressively and somewhat childishly tried to get the attention of Henry Francis, this time by using an unexplained anonymous phone call to the Draper household as an excuse to call him.
A couple of conversations earlier on in the episode also made the Sterling-Cooper anniversary gala seem like a big lie, but for other reasons. The first was between Roger and Bert Cooper, generally moaning about the process of getting older, something which happens especially fast in the advertising game – as Bert noted he had been in the company for 40 years, the average life expectancy for someone in the business – but also featuring an odd outburst by Roger about the Drapers. Not only is he clearly still unhappy with Don’s behaviour, and his fast rise to power (a significant part of the evening was to bestow Don with an award for his work), but he had a cryptic and seemingly unprovoked pop at Betty as well, possibly once again the result of jealousy – as he said the Drapers looked like the couple on the top of his wedding cake, whereas he’s now divorced and remarried to a woman who his mother is convinced is actually his daughter. The other conversation was a transatlantic one between Lane Pryce and Saint John Powell back in London, where Saint John informed Lane that the main aim of the gala was to make Sterling-Cooper seem like an enticing prospect for potential buyers. At least Lane’s wife will be happy at the news that Sterling-Cooper is to be sold off, she made a reappearance this week in which she whinged (in a very reserved ‘English’ manner that only seems to exist in American TV shows) about how she disliked living in New York and wanted to go back to London.
And that’s about it for this week’s instalment, next week’s will I expect be full of high-stakes drama what with Don’s secret being out of the bag, and Sterling-Cooper facing an uncertain future once again. Apologies by the way for assuming that last week was the end of Conrad Hilton – although he didn’t feature this week, he was mentioned on occasion, although I’m actually rather disappointed that we didn’t get to spot him at the Sterling-Cooper gala, wearing his best Stetson as Don promised Roger he would.
