Well, they are who we thought they were: a bunch of numb-nuts taking notes at their client presentation…
Surprise, surprise: stuff sucks at McCann-Erickson. The misogynistic idiots there don’t know to be scared of Joan; they straight up forget to give Peggy an office; and after all these years of trying to catch the great white whale in Don Draper, all they want is to turn him into another cog in The Machine.
If there was any kind of justice, Sterling Cooper would run these assholes into the ground.
I know it’s not going to happen; McCann-Erickson is our soulless corporate future. They’re The Machine, and The Machine always wins.
But, man alive… these dudes suck so bad.
We all know by now that the end of Mad Men is going to be a whimper and not a bang. The show as we know it essentially ended last week, and what we’ll be experiencing from here on out is the house lights coming up and the drunken crowds filing out of the party, into the harsh light of day.
As such, I’m not quite sure how to quantify this episode of Mad Men as an installment of television. It’s unfocused and choppy, and we already know nothing that happens here is going to mean much of anything in the long run. Which, y’know, isn’t really all that long….
But time is running out, and every minute spent with the Sterling Cooper crew is a straight up treasure. Even if they’re suffering at the hands of those aforementioned numb-nuts.
Not that everybody realizes how bad it is just yet. Pete takes to McCann-Erickson like a duck to water. So does Ted, what with him being a sheep and all. The change in environment seems to have made Meredith hyper-competent, though Betty thinks she’s still an idiot. Even Harry is on cloud nine, geeking out over their technological resources and letting Roger’s insults slide right off like… water off a duck’s back.
(I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but today’s recap will be going all in on the duck imagery.)
But they were never going to conquer Don Draper.
Instead, they killed him.
Suppose I buried the lead there, didn’t I?
Don Draper is dead.
Not literally, of course. Although come to think of it… yeah, literally: Don Draper has been dead since the Korean War.
But this version of Don Draper, for all intents and purposes, ceases to exist the moment he walks out of that meeting for what will eventually become Miller Lite.
The slight reward for our frustration at seeing our beloved characters batted around is Jim Hobart’s increasing frustration at what he’s inherited. All glad hands with Don and Joan, his cheery uncle routine can’t stand up to Don’s extended absence and the threats of a Joan that would just as soon not have to spend her time getting catcalled and pawed by misogynist shithead co-workers.
After the slight false hope that Joan might make a go of it (having a couple of McCann-Erickson creative types try to horn in on her accounts was a bit of fun), we were shown that everything Joan feared was going to come to pass: she’s undermined at every turn by her junior partner Dickbag (no need to learn real names here) and hit on by the guy she goes to for help (who we’ll call Sleazebag).
Then when she gets fed up and tries to extort Jim Hobart into paying her full contract to get rid of her (an electric scene that almost tricked me into thinking Joan would pull out the victory), she only manages to get half. Which is a “happy ending” that feels depressingly true to life.
Boy is the Joan stuff rough this week. Watching Joan try not to cry when Dickbag tries to put her in her place; her slow, dawning realization that Sleazebag is a Sleazebag; Roger telling her he can’t protect her.
In happier events, Roger slowly becomes the phantom of the opera and Peggy gets into tentacle porn.
Peggy finds herself stuck at the old building when McCann-Erickson forgets to get her an office. She stumbles upon an organ playing Roger (not a euphemism), who gifts her with an old painting belonging to Bert Cooper.
You know, this one (NSFW unless you work at a super progressive aquarium):
Then he gets Peggy drunk and they wax nostalgic. Or, in true Roger and Peggy tradition, Roger waxes nostalgic while Peggy complains about how little fun she’s having. Then in even truer Roger tradition, he gets Peggy drunk.
Peggy takes Roger to task for wallowing in nostalgic melancholy when this whole mess is his fault to begin with. Roger smartly counters that it’s business, never personal. Even when you stupidly can’t help making it feel that way.
Then Roger plays the organ while Peggy skates around the empty office, which is how every scene in every show should end, up to and including the evening news and reruns of Gunsmoke..
And so the next day, in the kind of fist pumping moment that shows approaching their end usually save for their finales, a slightly hungover Peggy walks into the offices of McCann-Erickson, wearing sunglasses and carrying a big-ass picture of a sexy octopus, defiant as fuck.
Oh, man; they’re going to destroy her…
Which leaves us with Don, who, almost as soon as he appears in the episode, checks the windows to make sure they don’t open, lest he become the guy in the opening credits. While Jim Hobart tries to flatter him with a bunch of meetings and smooth talk, it’s already pretty clear that it’s only a matter of time before Don runs again.
Which is delightful: Jim Hobart has wanted Don Draper for the past 10 years, and gets to experience roughly two hours of it before Don disappears, possibly never to be seen again at McCann-Erickson.
I mean, I’d be a lot more amused if Don wasn’t going after friggin’ Diana, but we play the cards we’re dealt in this world.
Look: I get the Diana thing. I do. We all do. It’s not some subtle thematic territory Matthew Weiner is working in here. And it’s a perfectly valid story with which to bring Don’s journey to some kind of thesis point.
It’s just… her?
Nothing against Elizabeth Reaser, who I’m sure is a very capable actress. But whoever told her to play her mystery woman like Droopy Dog made a terrible mistake, and now Don looks like a dumbass for going being so obsessed with her.
Hell, even the ghost of Bert Cooper thinks this is a narrative dead end.
Oh, yeah, Cooper’s ghost shows up in the passenger seat of a bleary-eyed Don, getting incensed that Don would think he’d ever read Kerouac, and trying to talk Don out of this meandering plotline.
Of course, Don can’t listen, because if you’ve spent this much time pining, you have to see it through, otherwise the audience might think their time is being wasted.
Which is how Don ends up on the front doorstep of some lady’s house, impersonating a sweepstakes rep in an attempt to track down his mopey-assed dream girl.
(To be fair, a refrigerator full of beer sounds like an amazing contest prize. Pity it would have been Miller Lite…)
It’s cool to see Don thinking on his feet when the husband sees Don’s deceit for what it is and he immediately “reveals” himself as a debt collector. And the only reason this lie gets called out by the husband is because he’s already seen what she can do to people.
Again: her…?
You’d think between all that and a spectral, hectoring (let’s call it “spectoring”) Bert Cooper, Don would be smart enough to walk away. But that’s Don for you: when it comes to these sorts of things, he’s a dog with a bone.
(Again: Not a euphemism.)
(Then again, it might be…)
(The new hotness, apparently…)
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
-Well, Shirley at least gets a happy ending: she gets another job. Plus, she describes Roger as “entertaining.” No dummy, she…
-I’m not sure how to process “Happy Betty.” The very idea of a warm and smiling Betty Draper (and who isn’t smiling because something terrible happened to someone) seems absurd. And what kind of nerd gets so excited about studying.
-At first the guy making all the long distance phone calls in the empty office was Dinkus. But it turns out, no, it’s that other dude I never really cared about.
-I wonder if that great scene between Joan and Don in the elevator is the last scene they’ll have together…
-TED CHAOUGH UPDATE: Ted Chaough is amused when people walk out of meetings. It’s hard to beat skating Peggy for moment of the week, but Ted’s knowing smile was a real close second…
NEXT WEEK: Henry Francis is mad, you guys…
