Well, this promises to be a short one, on account of it’s a pretty Megan-heavy episode, and we all know how that goes…
So apparently I was wrong about some stuff last week. I guess that having a bunch of women in rotation isn’t a sign that Don Draper is back on his game No, turns out he’s just as lonely and despondent as ever, and has become fixated on Diana, the waitress from last week.
Frankly, Diana’s not that interesting, and Don’s attempts to pull her into a relationship aren’t that interesting, either. She worked much better as a kind of phantom reminder than as an actual human being with a kind of silly backstory. I mean, one kid dies and she abandons the other because she doesn’t want to… what? Feel shit? What is this, Equilibrium?
There’s probably some thematic stuff about how all she wants to do is wallow in her sadness while Don wants to move on but is basically still doing the same thing he always does. But… really, who cares? Diana’s entertainment value is inversely proportional to the amount of effort Don had to go through to actually track her down.
Then again, I suppose spending time with Diana is slightly better than more time with Megan, whose story has more than run its course at this point. I’m not one of those people who has an automatic dislike for her, but the further Megan gets from the world of Don Draper, the less I can be bothered to care.
“Sad actress” is so much less interesting to me than “sad bumpkin turned advertising guy.”
(Though if she decides to dress like a pirate again, all is forgiven.)
But if she does have to show up, at least she brought her hilariously terrible mother Marie with her (and a marginally less terrible sister… have we met her before?)
Better yet, Marie ropes Roger into her madcap scheme to steal all of Don’s furniture (it makes sense in the context of the episode).
And then they have sex, though I probably spent more time than I should have trying to figure out where exactly they did it. I mean, the floor, obviously. But probably also the balcony. I don’t know if you guys have had balcony sex before, but believe you me, it is something else.
The only thing better is awning sex. But obviously, there’s a pretty big risk factor with that…
THIS WEEK IN “UGH, HARRY CRANE!”: Harry can’t even be bothered to show up on time for his creepy attempt to sleep with Megan. And then, as icing on that shit-flavored cake, he preemptively blames the victim with Don.
Man alive, that guy sucks.
Thanks to Harry’s smooth moves, Megan comes back to Don’s apartment early and catches Roger and Marie post-coitus. So there is a small amount of amusement in the idea that even years after she left, the men of Sterling Cooper and Associates are still making her life miserable. But not nearly enough to make this episode not feel like a serious drag.
This was a particularly dour installment of the show, with very little of the humor that makes all the misery and existential suffering go down so smooth.
Though there was Pete Campbell in golf clothes, the gif that keeps on giving:
AUTHORS’ NOTE: Couldn’t find any gifs of Pete in his golfing outfit. For shame, internet! Anyway, here’s Pete getting punched in the face instead:
Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out what’s happening with Peggy this season. Last week she stood by as Joan got drooled over by a bunch of cartoon wolves; this week she gets hit on by Mimi Rogers and gets annoyed when she finds out Stan did too. At the very least, she did seem to take a certain amount of pleasure in raining on his parade.
I don’t know what any of it adds up to; I only know that Annie Hall would have been much better if Mimi Rogers was Annie and Peggy and Stan took turns being Woody Allen.
Which is probably not the takeaway they were going for. But the heart wants what it wants. And it wants to not see Megan or Diana ever again.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
-Well, it was nice to see the Rosens again, I guess…
-I know Matt Weiner said no spinoffs. But BETTY FRANCIS: THE COLLEGE YEARS? Come on dude, how can you just leave that money on the table?
-It is actually hilarious that when the price went up, Marie’s first move was to try and call Don to give the movers extra money for moving LITERALLY ALL OF HIS SHIT.
-“The Manson Brothers”… never change, Meredith.
LINES THAT PROBABLY HAVE SOME THEMATIC IMPORTANCE:
-I didn’t write it down, but Pete’s speech about how ‘you think you’re going to start your life all over again, but what if you never get past the beginning?’ was super on the nose, even for this show…
NEXT WEEK: A lot of people at a lot of different desks!
