roger sterling

Mad Men s3e7: Seven Twenty Three

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“Young people give us energy, don’t forget that.”

One of my favourite episodes right here. I know I’ve said that at least 100 times, but this episode is fucking fantastic. The structure, the concurrent storylines, all of it; aces. There’s some glimpses at how desperate Don is at his core, how much of an isolationist asshole he can be when he feels even the slightest bit threatened.

Conrad Hilton shows up unexpectedly at Sterling Cooper, and Don is fashionably late per usual. The buzzing junior execs are worked up into a froth, then shooed away. Hilton points out the lack of family photos in his office Don’s real connections to the world, while sitting in his chair behind his Important Man(TM) desk. He then gifts Don the New York hotels as a start.

Betty is having some sort of ladies’ meeting about the reservoir, and links up with Henry Francis, the silver fox from My Old Kentucky Home who was borderline creeping on her while sauced on martinis. Henry and Betty decide meet for lunch to discuss the reservoir that Saturday afternoon. As she hangs up the phone, she checks Don’s desk drawer almost as a reflex. Still locked.

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incredible, iconic Betty look.. || image courtesy of Pinterest

They have a nice lunch, where Henry orders the foul midcentury staple of apple pie with cheddar cheese. Walking to the car, they spot a fainting couch in an antique shop window. Henry explains the story behind the couch’s silhouette, revealing that he used to work as a mover before becoming an attorney. Betty buys this whacking great couch as a form of furniture protest on Don, who had one-upped her interior designer with one end-table swoop.

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image courtesy of ApartmentTherapy

While Betty has a flirtatious Saturday afternoon with Hank Frank, Don is at a school-related eclipse viewing party with Sally’s forever parched teacher. Oh yeah, and it turns out Carlton stares into the sun, shocking nobody.

Don and Miss Farrell make friendly conversation, then she faux calls him out for being one of those bored philandering suburban men, when the reality is that.. it was just a pleasant conversation? It seems like she’s trying to take control of their interaction, but it comes off as super fucking tryhard. Eyeroll.

Speaking of thirst, Duck is really trying to court Peggy over to Grey with an Hermès scarf. Shit is mad classy, but she ain’t into it; he calls her bluff by inviting her to The Pierre for a meeting, so she can return the scarf to the Hermès people in person.

Don’s contract, or lack thereof, is a hot topic. Connie needs him to have a contract in order to work together, and Lane agrees with the pragmatism behind it.. along with pressure from Hilton’s herd of lawyers. Bert puts his foot down and emphasises that the contract is important to Sterling Cooper as well as Conrad Hilton to drive the point home.

“I met him once. He’s a bit of an eccentric, isn’t he?

Ah, the irony of Bert Cooper calling someone an eccentric..

Roger tries to talk Don into signing the contract, tempting him with his name on the front door; no avail. Stonewalled. Sneakily, Roger rings the house and chats to Betty about Don signing the contract in a roundabout way. She’s flippant and frosty on the phone, but the wheels are turning. Jackpot, but also a major dick move on Roger’s part.

And it’s bad timing again for Peggy. After that irritating conversation Don had with Roger, she tests the waters re:Hilton under the false guise of work needing approval, and Don is prickly at best. Apoplectic about the contract hammer coming down, he takes it out on Peggy in an attempt to reassert control. Maybe he sees her as an extension of himself and is thus hard on her, but nonetheless it’s another major dick move.

At the Pierre, Duck dangles the opportunity of a new gig at Grey in front of her, then makes his real intentions known. It’s probably one of the grossest come-ons I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been witness to a lot of vile things..

Peggy: “What are you doing?”

Duck: “I was just thinking about all the times I walked by you and didn’t even notice. How is that possible?”

Peggy: “What do you want from me?”

Duck: “I want to take you in that bedroom, lock the door, take your clothes off with my teeth, throw you on the bed and give you a go-around like you’ve never had.”

..

UGH NO, CAN WE FUCKING NOT WITH THIS SHIT

nope

Ahem. Peggy’s previous experience banging dudes has been with young guys, perhaps guys who didn’t know what they wanted, or the first thing on how to please a woman. So I guess Duck seems appealing? VOM. Apparently he also ‘loves the morning’.

Once Don gets home, Betty grills him about his contract. She pushes back on Don and his “I have all the power, they want me but they can’t have me” garbage; as if she wouldn’t understand how that works. And on top of that, she got more information from Henry in an hour about his job and life than Don has ever given her in years of marriage. She’s getting more confident.

Like a pedantic manbaby, Don bounces. He drives off into the night, shattering his rocks glass in direct contrast to Red in the Face where he makes absolutely certain that Roger returns the glass to Betty. Wanting to indulge his transient fantasy, he picks up some young 20-somethings. They’re looking for a ride to Niagara Falls to get married; the 22 year-old guy is 1A, headed to Vietnam. Is any of it real?

Ah, drugs. Don pops a few pills, and hallucinates that his father Archie is in the motel. The hitchhikers are slow dancing, and are wondering when the fuck Don is gonna drop so they can rob him already.

Archie: “Look at you, up to your old tricks. You’re a bum, you know that?”

Don: “No, I’m not.”

Archie: “Conrad hilton? You wouldn’t expect him to be taken so easily! You can’t be tied down.”

Don: “That’s right.”

Ahh, then the guy pops Don on the back of the head, and he falls to the floor of the Knights Inn. This is a real place in Hackensack NJ, by the by.

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image courtesy of Tom and Lorenzo

Conrad Hilton might not be so spot on about young people giving us energy here. The next morning, an exhausted Don shows up at the office all fucked up. Thanks, hitchhiking assholes. His pipe dream transient fantasy has failed him. As he strolls into his office, Cooper is sitting in the big seat behind his Important Man(TM) Desk, and serves him with some ice cold realness.

Bert: “Would you say I know something about you, Don?”

Don: “I would..”

Bert: “Then sign. After all, when it comes down to it.. who’s really signing this contract anyway?”

HARSH. But, don’t get it twisted; Cooper ain’t wrong. 7/23/1963, the date Don signs.

“What do you do? What do you make? You grow bullshit.”

Mad Men s3e6: Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency

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“I bet he felt great when he woke up this morning.”

Reconcile! The British are coming! Potential dual position in London and New York for Don? Kenny rolling into the office atop an actual John Deere riding mower?? All around an intriguing episode where nothing is as it seems.

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image courtesy of BurnThisMedia

The British are coming for an inspection, around July 4th nonetheless. Nobody knows the purpose of this visit, but it’s reverberating as a Big Deal(TM). Could Don be courted for some crazy dual position in London and New York? Don’s casual conversation with Betty later that evening, discussing a potential jet-setting life together in London over chicken salad, is the most relaxed we’ve seen them as a couple on the show thus far. Flirtatious, even; Betty happily opens his beer, they appear to be interested in one another.

Bert is tired of Roger and Don’s manpain fight bullshit, and forces them to kiss and make up over a close shave.

“Part of the problem with Mona.. is that one day, she just started judging people. I’ll tell you right now Don, I don’t like being judged.”

Fair enough, Roger. Message received.

The PPL visit happens around Joan’s last day at Sterling Cooper. Looks like Greg has convinced her that he’ll be the alpha in their household, but it turns out he was not selected for the lucrative resident doctor position like the proper fuckup he is. Turns out he’s a shit surgeon and is super dramatic about this outcome, choosing to go dark on his wife ignoring their dinner plans to booze it in a bar alone for ~12 hours. Manpain central, and as she shuts off the lights for the night, Joan looks positively fed up.

PPL has arrived, and here’s Guy MacKendrick! He’s some young, stupidly charismatic asshole with great teeth in the Don Draper grey flannel suit uniform, but without the mysterious depth. Feelings in the office are ghostly and tense. Turns out that PPL wants Guy to come in and run the show, effectively replacing Lane (who will reluctantly be shipped off to Bombay), and thus keeping Don in a holding pattern.

This restructure is presented to Lane as some sort of faux reward for being a cog in the machine. Natch, Lane is not at all pleased to hear this news, as his wife and son have just gotten settled in Manhattan; but his concerns are belittled. “Don’t pout. One of your greatest qualities is that you always do what you’re told.” Really fucking demeaning, but Lane takes it in stride. You get the vibe that he’s heard all this before, he’s accustomed to it.

There’s a bigwig meeting about the reorganisation. According to the overhead projector, Guy is the new COO, Roger is left off of the diagram entirely (an alleged oversight), and Harry is the only one who gets a promotion. Mess. Meanwhile, Don doodles the American flag.

Guy delivers a heartfelt and hollow toast to Joan, who weeps. Her life is a mess, and Sterling Cooper offers her a valuable and vital respite; and soon enough, it seems she won’t even recognise the place. And in the midst of this nightmare, Conrad Hilton’s office rings Don, much to his total surprise. When Don vaguely recognises him upon officially meeting, he feels a little dumbfounded.

“Apparently you don’t have long chats with everyone.”

Peggy, in limbo between the worlds of the steno pool and the copywriters and not wholly fitting into either just yet, yearns to be a meaningful part of Joan’s last day. “I don’t want you to think I never listened to you, but it’s just.. we can’t all be you.” Poignant and true.

These women could not be more different, but they fight the same battles and want some of the same things. Peggy imagines that Joan is off to get what she always wanted in life, but Joan is beginning to have second thoughts; this is a massive change, and she secretly wants stay in the workforce. Joan is a woman who’s admired and revered in that office, she’s great at her job; and Peggy longs for that sort of status someday as well.

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image courtesy of Uproxx

There’s a lot to say, but it’s cut short by a fucking hot mess. Smitty is on that John Deere mower riding it around the goddamn office.. and then, dolt Lois mounts it which is of course a complete DISASTER. Bye bye, Guy’s foot. Joan saves the day with a tourniquet, ruining her dress in the process; but she manages to save his life.

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image courtesy of AMC

Roger finds it all pretty funny. “Right when he got it in the door.” Secretly relieved that this shit is over and he’s relevant again at the agency, Roger nonchalantly moves forward. And hey, Lane will remain in New York! Deus ex machina at work; Don, Roger and Lane are all silently relieved. The status quo is restored.

“Believe me, somewhere in this business, this has happened before.”

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image courtesy of DigitalSpy

Don and Joan share a moment at the hospital waiting room. You can sense there’s a deep history there; they’ve worked together for so long and seem at ease with one another. As the PPL guys show up, they lament that Guy’s career was tragically cut short; he’s lost a foot, he’ll never golf again. Love that dry British wit, but good fucking god. Lane senses the depth of what’s gone down, and knows that PPL will find another way to ship him off somewhere else.

“I feel like I just went to my own funeral.. and I didn’t like the eulogy.”

At home, Betty tries to relate to Sally about baby Gene. Sally seems scared of the new baby, refusing to be around him. Betty makes up a sweet little story, and gifts her a Barbie doll from her baby brother;  Betty emphasises that he wants to be her friend. Close-up on side-eye Barbie as Betty leaves the room.

Turns out Sally is completely terrified of baby Gene, believing he’s a reincarnated version of her dearly departed Grandpa Gene. Don spots the Barbie doll in the bushes outside the house, and innocently places it back on Sally’s dresser. When she wakes up late in the night and sees the dead-eyed Barbie staring back at her, she starts screaming at the top of her lungs in fear. “He’s not supposed to be here anymore.”

Blaming Betty, Don is pissed that she named the baby after her father, a man whom he did not like and vice versa. She retorts, “It’s what people do, Don. It’s how they keep the memory alive.”

After the midnight hysteria quiets down, Don has a nice parent moment with Sally, showing her that there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to baby Gene.

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image courtesy of TomandLorenzo

“This is your new brother. And he’s only a baby, and we don’t know who he is yet, or who he’s going to be.

And that is a wonderful thing.”

Touching, really. Who is this baby? Where will he go, what will he choose to do with his life? How their relationship evolve over the years? There’s only room for love at this point. Solely love and hope can exist at this juncture, and those are two of the most important things in life.

“Well, that was strange.”

Mad Men s3e3: My Old Kentucky Home

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Ah yes, the episode where Roger Sterling (very uncomfortably) slaps on blackface for his Derby Day garden party to serenade Jane with a racist song. Awkward and shocking as fuck.

I like that Don and Pete are the two horrified people bearing witness to this mess, while everyone else seems bemused. Don pops off, as he does, to seek out more booze and a moment of silence away from all the tryhard noise surrounding him. He meets an older gentleman in a white tux jacket behind the bar, mistaking him for the barman.

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image courtesy of Tumblr

They have an exchange about feeling out of place at fancy events, an ingrained understanding; way more than we’ve ever seen Don share in the series thus far with just about anyone, perhaps save for Rachel Menken. Fitting that it’s shared with a complete stranger.

Connie: Who are you hiding from?

Don: I am at work .. disguised as a party.

Connie: I’m at work disguised as a wedding. I hate other people’s weddings.

Don: Why’s that?

Connie: Make me nervous, All those expectations. And these poor kids in here– whew! That is a match made in the boardroom. When I was a boy, There was a mansion on the river I used to paddle by in my johnboat. The twinkling lights, violins, girls giggling about something... it’s different inside.

Don: Where are you from?

Connie: San Antonio, New Mexico, before it was a state. Don’t ask me that– old.

Don: You look fit.

Connie: You ever see “A Midsummer Dream” with Mickey Rooney?

Don: “A Midsummer Night’s dream”?

Connie: By golly, you’re prickly! I’m republican, like everyone else in there, but somehow, no matter how expensive my cufflinks, I feel like I’ve got the head of a jackass.

Don: Where I grew up, there was a roadhouse. It boasted live music– that meant a drum, a bass, and a player piano with nobody at it. I parked cars. Fancy people would go there. They’d get loud, they’d get drunk, But they wouldn’t let me use the toilet. So when nature called, I’d open up a trunk and relieve myself.

Connie: You didn’t.

Don: I was 15. There’s probably some kid out there doing it to us right now.

Don and Connie have this experience in common. And like Don, Connie is a climber of the social ladder rather than being born with a silver spoon. But that exclusionary feeling pervades; this feeling of being out of place despite the fact that they wear the proper costume, say all the right things, swing in the swanky circles, but it still just ain’t right. Rachel Menken nailed it in Season 1, and Connie is nailing it here and it resonates. Out of place.

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image courtesy of Tumblr

Meanwhile, Peggy is at the office working on Bacardi. She smokes marijuana (for the first time!) with Paul Kinsey, Smitty, and Kinsey’s cartoonishly handsome Patrick Bateman-esque Princeton drug hookup. Kinsey is unwillingly revealed to be a vaguely uneducated Jersey boy by nature, headed to Princeton on scholarship and putting on airs ever since. He’s insecure about who he really is and is consistently sort of a dick as a reflex.

Enjoying her experience and realising it’s helping her work, Peggy stands up to her judgemental secretary Olive, and gets on with it. She’s being open to new experiences, and doesn’t want to end up like the aforementioned secretary; wringing her hands over her college-aged son, and coming to the office on a Saturday because her husband is taking a trip to the dump.

There are some great scenes with Sally and Grandpa Gene peppered into this episode. Their relationship is sweet, it’s nice that she has an adult figure in her life who treats her (relatively) as an equal; it’s probably the most individual and encouraging attention she’s ever gotten in that house. Sally’s bonding with her grandfather, reading passages aloud from Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire before bed each night. Metaphorically speaking, Gene is pretty prophetic when he tells Sally “just wait.. all hell’s gonna break loose”. The Sixties are about to get pretty real.

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image courtesy of Mad Men Wikia

Sally swipes a $5 bill from his billfold, as kids tend to do when they want to push boundaries. There is panic and a search of the whole house, turning up nada; eventually Sally can’t take it anymore and “Finds It” in the dining room. She’s expecting the worst from Grandpa Gene, but he goes easy on her. I think he’s secretly relieved that it was actually taken and he’s not losing his entire damned mind just yet. As Don and Betty were on their way out to the aforementioned soirée, they were dismissive of his dismay at having his cash pilfered; they, along with Carla, treated his concern as if it wasn’t real. So having some validation must feel good for him at the very least.

Joan and Greg have a dinner party, hosting some of his hospital bros to earn brownie points. Turns out being married to a dignified and worldly woman like Joan is the best thing going for him, as it turns out (shocking nobody) he’s a pretty shit surgeon. This vile idiot wants to keep her in a very specific Wife(TM) box where he’s the alpha, the boss. Greg hates being reminded of the fact that she’s smarter than he is, that she has this whole other life aside from him and great experiences; he admonishes her to entertaining their guests by playing the accordion and singing a French song, which she nails completely.

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image courtesy of AMC

Back at the Derby Day garden party, Pete and Trudy show off their admittedly awesome dance moves. Everyone’s yapping about their kids or soon to be kids, and Trudy definitely feels a little left out; so they make up for it in dance form. It’s nice to see Pete enjoying himself too!

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image courtesy of ONTD and my own idiocy

Towards the end of the party, Roger walks over at precisely the wrong time as Jane drunkenly grabs at Don wondering if he doesn’t like her. She also blabs that she’s so happy he and Betty got back together, and Betty is naturally mortified. This little scene is a nice role swap of when Don walked in on Roger coming onto Betty in their kitchen in Season 1; here, Roger is pissed. He believes it’s due to the fact that he’s conspicuously happy, Don retorts that everyone just thinks he’s a fool. Later, he sees Roger and Jane slow dancing, as if they’re the only two people in the room, totally content. Maybe Roger’s not a fool.

The episode ends with Ben Webster’s “Memories of You” wafting through the air as Don and Betty share a private moment out in the garden, probably one of the more intimate moments we’ve seen on the series between them as of yet. But hey, that guy Henry might be on her mind..

And oh fuck, is ‘Connie’ actually hotel magnifico Conrad Hilton????? Insert faux-perplexed face here.

Mad Men s2e13: Meditations in an Emergency

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Season 2 finale. Lots to unpack, lots to talk about. We find ourselves around The Cuban Missile Crisis, putting the end of this season in October 1962.

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image courtesy of Imgur

Betty awaits her doctor in his homey practice, perched perfectly upon the exam table. She looks fraught with nerves, and he confirms her fear; she’s pregnant. Jail sentence, dread. She expresses that this is a bad time, yet the doctor remains encouraging. Once she starts telling people it will feel right, yadda yadda yadda. She and Don are estranged, so this is literally the last thing she needs right now. Bets splits as soon as he runs out to find the space heater.

It’s a touch of bedlam at Sterling Cooper, everyone has to turn their numbers in early. Harry, Kenny, Sal and Kinsey pull the demoted Lois off the switchboard to get the scoop — Sterling Cooper has been sold to PPL! Lois is very dramatic in delivering the news. Transatlantic. Merger time.

Betty is at the stables, riding out her feelings. Once she dismounts her horse, she sees Don approaching her. Shocked, she maintains her cool. The most he’ll ever admit – “I was not respectful to you”, he sincerely expresses that he wants to be together again; Betty is relieved to have her suspicions confirmed, no matter how cagey that vague admission was. Borrowing a line from Helen Bishop, it hasn’t been all that different without him; Betty keeps her distance. Wise move.

Big difference from the Season 1 finale, which ends with Don longing for a warm family moment and mourning the loss of what he’d ultimately fucked up. Maybe now he feels the bona fide loss and actually wants the reality of a family, a connection.

As a nervous Pete imparts the bad news of Clearasil pulling out, Duck appears unfazed. Instead, Duck shares that he will be their new overlord post-merger. He wants Pete to replace him as Head of Account Services, and they share some fairly large glasses of gin. Pete is advised to keep it under his hat.

Don heads into the office, a sight for sore eyes. He sees Peggy’s new office and haircut, and a big ol’ pile of correspondence. True to form and entirely outraged that Don’s back in town as if nothing happened, Pete is wondering why in the hell he left him high and dry at their hotel in LA. Don spins it like he knew what he was doing instead of being impetuous, and Pete buys his compliments in his handling of meetings; Don expresses confidence that Pete is now ready to move on up. Music to his ears, twice in one day! A thing like that.

Getting the PPL merger news from Roger, apparently his little manpain jaunt to LA netted him $500k. Holy schnikes! That’s almost $4 MILLION today in 2016. What the fuck?

Betty is at the salon, which is currently filled with very nervous ladies. She somberly shares her news with Francine, who can recommend a lady doctor to take care of it if need be.

Heading into the city, Betty drops the kids off at Don’s hotel, declining his invitation to have dinner with them as a family. Lingering in front of a department store window display, she wanders in Manhattan with the mystery of Don.

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image courtesy of Imgur

Shopping bags in hand, she takes a seat at a bar, orders a gimlet. A young proto-Don pays for her drink; she shoos him away initially, but later she corrals him into having a fuck in a vacant back room. A little role reversal; Don is playing family man with the kids, enjoying a meal and their company while Betty is an anonymous person at a bar, banging a rando. It’s the end of the world, after all.

Back in the world of Catholicism, Peggy is being admonished by Father Gill in the church basement. He’s laying on this guilt bullshit pretty strong, and Peggy stands up for her own personal beliefs– “I can’t believe that’s how God is”. It’s plain that she’s made peace with herself in her own way, Padre. Step aside.

Friday morning at Sterling Cooper, news of the merger is flitting around. There’s canapés in the fridge (fancy ones), the conference room is signed out all day.. everyone is on edge because of the news on TV and inside the office.

Confiding in Don, Pete drops the bomb that Duck is set to be the President of Sterling Cooper under PPL’s gaze. Let that marinate for a bit.

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image courtesy of Imgur

At home, Betty receives a letter from Don.

Dear Betty,

I’m sitting in The Roosevelt looking at the backs of Bobby and Sally’s heads as they watch TV. I’m not letting them change the channel, because watching the news makes me sick, and they can see it.

I think about you, and how I behaved, and my regret. I know it’s my fault you are not here right now.

I understand why you feel it’s better to go on without me, and I know that you won’t be alone for very long, but, without you, I’ll be alone forever.

I love you.

-Don

In the big meeting with the PPL guys, Duck expresses ~quelle surprise~ when Sinjin states Duck will be prez over at Sterling Cooper once the merger is complete. He makes a bizarre speech, yapping about media buying, pinpointed with incredible accuracy; Cooper correctly points out that Duck failed to mention their clients at all. Time to drop some bombs.

Don: “What? I think it sounds like a great agency, and I think Duck is the man to run it. I just don’t think I’ll be a part of it.”

Sinjin: “You don’t want to be a part of it?”

Don: “If this is the agency you want, Duck is the man for the job.”

Duck: “This is what I’m talking about, artistic temperament..”

Roger: “Don, is this really necessary?”

Duck: “It is. Because he loves this room, and hearing his own voice, and saving the day.. except this time he’s got to get with a team. You can either honour your contract, or walk out that door with nothing and start selling insurance.”

Don: [pauses] “I don’t have a contract.”

Roger: “We’re close! We didn’t think we needed one.”

Don: “Gentlemen, I sell products, not advertising. I can’t see as far into the future as Duck, but if the world is still here on Monday, we can talk.”

Once Don leaves the room, Duck makes a fucking mess of things and completely embarrasses himself in front of the PPL guys. Don gets under his skin. As Sinjin asks Duck to please excuse them, he knows it’s all over for him as prez. Adios, Duck! “He never could hold his liquor.”

Peggy is finally lulled into confession of sorts, sitting with drunkenly pleasant Pete in his office surrounded by panic. He confesses his love for her, expressing that she’s perfect, that he wants to be with her. Trudy doesn’t really know him. File under Things Men Say. She drops the bomb and tells him that she had his baby, and she gave it away.

This is the first time this is candidly said aloud on the show, by the way. It’s been alluded to, referenced, but never actually acknowledged by Peggy’s character or any of the other characters in such stark terms.

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image courtesy of WordPress

Pete is stunned and has no idea how to react. He’s a captivating character for a million different reasons, but I love that he knows who he is, yet tries to valiantly escape it every single day. He’s had a privileged upbringing, not unlike Betty, and is trying to escape that inalienable truth along with his picture perfect marriage and absurdly domineering mother. He craves no expectations, no baggage due to his name, and sees that clean slate of sorts in Peggy. Turns out there’s mad baggage there too. Sorry not sorry, Pete.

Betty rings the office, wanting Don to come home. Just as the threat is neutralised, she lets him know she’s pregnant. They share a somber moment together, he reaches out his hand and she grabs it. Fade out.

“To not thinking about things.”

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image courtesy of MadMenWikia

Welp, that’s another season in the books. Thank you for reading and following along! You can see my reviews for all of these first 2 seasons over here. Next post will come after a brief hiatus. Gotta let Season 2 marinate. Happy Halloween, and seeya soon!

Mad Men s2e12: The Mountain King

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“The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are alone.”

One of my favourite episodes right here, my god. Roger and Bert wrestle for a bit over the PPL merger, but come to an agreement. Meanwhile, Don disembarks from a San Pedro bus, the Pacific Ocean greeting him. Where in the fresh hell is he going?

Betty catches Sally smoking a cigarette in the bathroom! The horror.

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image courtesy of BurnThisMedia

Natch, Betty is more concerned with Sally burning the house to the ground rather than the fact that she was, you know, smoking an actual cigarette, but whatevs. Locking her in the closet as a temporary punishment, Sally shrieks that Don left because of Betty, because she’s “stupid and mean”. She doesn’t understand why Betty won’t let him come home. Looks like the idea of separation without telling the kids isn’t so hot, Bets. Kids are smart little people, they catch on to things..

Aaaaand, flashback! Picking right up from The Gold Violin, Don is at his shit apartment with the blonde woman; he’s been found out. She’s his wife — the real Don Draper’s wife, that is. He quietly tells her that he died, and that he’s sorry. That they got mixed up at the hospital, “I just had to get out of there”. He introduces himself as Dick Whitman, and she is Anna Draper.

“Well Dick, what do I do with you?”

Back to the present day, a door opens and that same blonde woman is behind it. Looks like he’s visiting Anna in California! Some weird kid is in the midst of a piano lesson at her house, rapping away at ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’. Don introduces himself as Dick, and right away, seems different than the guy we know from New York. Calmer, happier, a little more genuine.

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image courtesy of Fanpop

Almost immediately you can tell that he and Anna share a deep bond. She’s loving and sincere to him; Don is shaken and sad, not his usual bulletproof exterior. Unlike his home in Ossining, here he is welcome to have a shower and a lie down. No judgement from Anna’s end of things.

Infuriated that Trudy booked a meeting with an adoption agency behind his back (while receiving praise from Hildy), Pete loses his whole entire goddamned mind when he gets home. They have a yelling argument about it, he screams out “HELL’S BELLS, TRUDY!” .. And then he launches a fucking whole roast chicken dinner out the window!

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Who on God’s Green Earth does that?? What a complete fucking lunatic. Iconic Pete Campbell outrage.

Collateral damage from the dinnerpocalypse, Pete’s father in law buzzes him at the office to let him know Clearasil is now under review. Pete ain’t happy about it and can see right through him, totally flies off the handle at Tom, tells him to pull Clearasil anyway. Probably for the best.

Adding to the “Greg is an Asshole Manbaby” report, he gets all butthurt that Joan tries to take control and give him a good bang. Ugh. It’s also implied that her sexual history is a problem for him, double ugh. More on that to come.

Post-shower and nap, Don and Anna chat on the porch. Anna is pretty much the only link to his past at this point, to who he really is. Don can be himself around her, let his guard down. He can say things he would never say to Betty. He can admit fault, he can talk about how he really feels without fear of tarnishing the image he’s so carefully curated.

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image courtesy of BurnThisMedia

Anna has always felt that they met so that both their lives could be better, which is a lovely way to look at things when it could have so easily gone south. At one point, Don is fixing a chair for her, unlike the one he failed to fix at Casa Draper.. which Betty ended up destroying. And it’s revealed that Don mailed that copy of Meditations in an Emergency to her as well.

“I have been watching my life, it’s right there.. and I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can’t.”

Don doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be or what he’s supposed to do, or how to mend things; so he wanders.

Flashback to the Christmas Eve right after Don and Betty met, Don is in California with Anna. Don speaks of Betty in the lavender haze, talking about how she’s so beautiful and happy. “I just like the way she laughs, and the way she looks at me.” He expresses gratitude to Anna, how if it weren’t for Don, his entire life in New York wouldn’t be possible.

Anna reminds him that meeting Betty and having a family is a chance at a whole new life, a really positive thing for him. She is over the moon that he’s found love, but she’s got to grant him a divorce first.. just a minor snag! Ha.

Peggy’s Catholicism-infused Popsicle pitch goes perfectly. Virgin Mary-esque artwork depicts a holy mother granting a snapped popsicle to her kids, two equal pieces, love, all that jazz. She knocks the pitch out of the park. Don who?

Betty rings Sara Beth to yammer about Sally, but really she’s ringing about her pot stirring. She brings up the stables, and their conversation turns to Arthur. Acting as a confidante, Betty prods her for more information, then turns it on SB playing the morality card when she pieces together that they had a bang. SB is devastated that Arthur is set to be married that weekend and is absolutely sick over it; Betty relishes in it a tiny bit.

“No one made you sleep with him!”

DAAAAAAAMN. Way harsh, Bets. Guess that friendship’s over!

The gargantuan Xerox machine has finally outstayed its welcome as Peggy’s officemate. Time for something better. At the end of the day, Peggy asks for Roger’s blessing to move into Freddy’s now vacant office, feeling deserving of it due to the Popsicle success. “You young women are very aggressive. There are 30 men out there who didn’t have the balls to ask me!” Amazing. Her wish is granted! Moving on up.

Joan’s fiancé Greg meets her in the office to head off for a dinner date. Vexed by Roger knowing that she doesn’t like French food, he strangely feels the need to assert himself as the alpha male in her life, and the one in control of their relationship. And in one of the most upsetting and shocking scenes on this show, he pins Joan down to the floor of Don’s office and has his way with her right there on the carpet very much against her wishes.

She tells him very clearly to stop, but he rests on the idea of “this is what you wanted, right?”, referring to the other night, showing her who’s really in charge. Gross. As she submits and stares off into the distance, it’s utterly chilling. Where is that perfect life she had envisioned for herself, marrying a doctor and living happily ever after? Greg is seriously so fucking vile, a truly subhuman trash heap. After she spruces up, they head off to dinner, roses forgotten on her desk.

Don yaps with some car guys, expressing an interest in building custom cars, working with them. There’s something about that all-American blue collar life that magnetically draws him, and he’s flirting with staying out in California. Maybe he can reboot his life out there. He introduced himself as Dick, trying it on for size. Again, his demeanour is different than the Don we’ve seen, he’s more at ease; a happier guy on the outside.

Kinsey is back, turns out Sheila dropped him a few days into their trip down south, shocking nobody. He and the junior execs are all pissed about Peggy’s new office, especially Harry. Tough titties, Harry.

As Peggy is moving into her new office, Joan lets her know the nameplate will be changed out ASAP, and chats about her wedding a bit. She seems envious as Peggy is moving up the ladder, and Peggy seems wistful that Joan is getting married.

In Ossining, Betty tries to have a more adult conversation with Sally about what’s going on at home. She speaks to her simply, that she and Don are “having.. a disagreement. And he went away.” Betty admits to Sally that she doesn’t know where Don went, which is pretty unsettling. Just then, Betty notices she’s lady bleeding.. not good.

Congratulating Peggy on her new digs, Pete confides in her that Don disappeared in Los Angeles. She expresses worry while Pete wants to talk shit, which is pretty typical. I feel like she reminds him to be less of a dick sometimes. Tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

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image courtesy of EW

And there goes Don, ruining a pair of khakis and a perfectly good leather belt in the Pacific Ocean.

“Let Roger Sterling have what he always wanted– to die in the arms of a 20-year old.”