This week the return of Lucky Strike scion Lee Garner Jr had dramatic repercussions for all concerned at Sterling-Cooper, starting with Pete who spent half his time in the episode having a coughing fit after being forced to smoke a cigarette. But what caused most of the kerfuffle was Lee’s drunken pass at Sal while they were looking over the edit of the new Lucky Strike commercial. Sal’s subsequent polite rejection caused Lee to contact Harry Crane with an ‘it’s him or me’ ultimatum and so as not to risk a $25 million dollar contract, Sal was forced out. So it seems we’ve reached the climax (or not in Lee Garner Jr’s case) of Sal’s storyline, I couldn’t help but feel a little unsatisfied with how it turned out, but then I would have liked to have a whole episode about it, which isn’t how Mad Men works.
A large amount of the blame for this could be laid with Harry, who was never anything more than spineless throughout the episode, from his response to Sal and Lee’s difference of opinion over how the advert should be shot (‘I think that we should give the client what he wants’) to his neglecting to raise Lee’s drunken phone call with any other member of staff, or even Sal himself. And so now Sal finds himself cast out into the cold, despite Don’s assertion that ‘you’ll be fine’ somehow I doubt he will, as his nervous phone call to his wife from a cruising hotspot suggested (this was a rare lapse in subtlety from Mad Men’s part I thought, the guys spotted in the background all fitting very clearly into gay stereotypes), hopefully this won’t be the last we see of him – even if it is, it’s been a fascinating journey following him from his first suave, confident appearance in his first episode, through to the numerous misunderstandings with other men, a marriage based on fondness rather than sex and this series’ self-preservation based paranoia. All over something that still hasn’t even actually been mentioned by name – the closest we’ve got now is Don lumping Sal in with the predatory Lee, and gay men in general with the contemptuous phrase ‘you people’.
The one thing that the whole messy business brought to the surface is just how much of a hypocrite Don is. Barely minutes after he was lambasting Sal for his alleged impropriety he was out cruising the streets at night to make a call on Sally’s slutty teacher again (an affair which hopefully won’t last long, as despite her prototypical modern woman’s admiration for Martin Luther King and night-time solitary jogs, her ridiculously self-assured and overconfident manner also makes her rather insufferable company). But therein lies part of the beauty of Mad Men, it’s never afraid to show just how appalling its characters can be.
Speaking of appalling, Betty was once again too busy to pay any attention to the kids, this week devoting all of her efforts to trying to get off with Henry Francis, risking everything to do so despite the fact that they’d only ever met three times. This culminated in the Draper home being the setting for an impromptu fundraiser for Governor Rockerfeller’s troubled election campaign. Which Henry decided to skip, prompting Betty to go down there and in a childish fit of rage throwing the box of the night’s takings at him – apparently he thought it best that Betty came to him as she’s already married, but surely he could have actually mentioned that to her before she decided to throw a benefit on his behalf. Betty’s self-centred naivety also managed to upset Carla (not that she showed it what with the demands of looking after Betty, Don and the kids not allowing her the luxury to do so) by her declaring that the bombing of an African-American Church in Birmingham, Alabama was a sign that the time’s not right for civil rights, something equally as disgusting to present day ears as Don’s ‘you people’ comment.
Conrad Hilton also didn’t get the most flattering of portrayals in this episode. From his late night nuisance calls, going on about his belief in hard-work and god, which marks him out as incredibly different to his famous granddaughter, and his desire to spread the Hilton brand all over the world, and even into space (which Don presumed he was speaking about metaphorically), to his nonsensical reason for turning down Don’s campaign, which he admitted himself was witty and modern, but didn’t feature his apparently serious desire to put Hilton on the moon. Shame that by this point Don had Peggy, Kurt and Smitty working flat out on the campaign, even if their contributions weren’t up to much – Don referred to Kurt with the witty putdown of ‘the more I understand you the less I am impressed by you’. But at least it meant that we’ve seen the back of Connie and his old-timey faux pearls of wisdom, it’s just a shame that Sal had to go as well.
So what did you think of it, do you think that Sal will be back or has his storyline run its course? Will Betty and Henry’s affair have a happy ending or is he just using her, will Carla ever lose her patience with the Drapers and will Don ever not manage to be suave and charming despite the disgusting things he says and does?
