Oh, Mad Men! What a happy, satisfying, the-gang’s-all-back-together kind of an episode! I love how Trudy shows up with sandwiches for everyone, and there’s this warm familial sense that we’re all in this together etc etc. It was almost like watching a different show! Except for the part where Don of all people, who apparently has no self-awareness at all, or was just really angry and upset because his life was falling apart, I guess, called Betty a whore.

Is it weird that I feel weird about that? I have been thinking a lot about how people watch Mad Men lately, and I keep coming back to being surprised that a show like Mad Men — slow-moving, full of unlikable characters (the only exception being maybe Joan, and even then she is still kind of a bitch) whose unlikability you’re constantly being confronted with, about social issues and politics — is as popular and beloved as it is. I know people generally like things that are awesome, and if Mad Men is challenging it’s also compelling and funny and emotionally absorbing, but it still consistently surprises me that some people seem to love it despite apparently not having any idea what’s going on. (I.e. I don’t think the producers meant us to read Don molesting Bobbie Barrett as even a little bit of a proud moment, and I still read forum comments like “Woo! Don’s got his mojo back!” after that episode aired. Then I stopped reading forums about Mad Men.)

So, I watched, I laughed, I totally cheered “Joan!” along with everyone else in the room when Roger said “Let me make a call.” It was seriously satisfying to see Don tell Roger how much he meant to him, tell Pete how actually prescient he is, tell Peggy how much he values and understands her talent, to see Harry get the credit he deserves; but at the same time I feel weirdly guilty about it. I’m supposed to get this feeling from, like, Buffy, the show where love saves the world, not Mad Men, the show about how love is just something guys like Don invented to sell stockings. It’s not that I expect Mad Men to be real, even, it’s more like I expect it not to satisfy my cheeseball desires. I expect to be carefully constructed to totally break my heart. I know NY Mag thinks that it “somehow didn’t feel like some ridiculous holodeck of phony caper-ness,” ¹ but I still feel kind of wrong about it. The whole gang just working out of this one hotel room, starting everything anew in some kind of Utopian American Dream blank slate thing — it just seems so much like they were trying to throw me a bone. It feels nefarious; it’s the kind of happy capitalist ending that makes me want to go all Frankfurt school on the whole thing.

Why can’t I just let TV make people happy? I am not usually this weird grad school person who is suspicious of entertainment products that give people good feelings!

I still have a lot to digest before I do a real post about this season, but I’m excited I can finally read all the posts in my feed reader I have been saving up. If you’re not already reading it, I recommend the consistently rewarding Footnotes of Mad Men, both on the Awl and on Tumblr, which is going to be a book I will buy! It does a lot of work making connections and unpacking a lot of the historical context.

Also, Rachel pointed out this Pandagon post on Facebook, and it is probably the best thing I have read about Betty maybe ever:

The conservative reaction to the Draper marriage shows exactly how effective that storyline is in making its point. A lot of liberals, I’ve found, are bored with Betty for another reason entirely. They can’t understand why she doesn’t just pick up and leave already, if she’s so unhappy. We’re on the other side of it—so feminist that it’s hard to wrap our minds around the psychology of someone who isn’t. But conservatives flip the fuck out, get defensive and start scapegoating January Jones, going so far as to argue that her dull affect is evidence that she can’t act, when in fact it’s evidence that the actress is being fearless in her portrayal of someone whose entire personality has been flattened out by boredom. That isn’t easy for an actress, you know. Most actresses have an urge to be sparkling and charming in every role they play, even those that don’t call for it. It’s because Hollywood is run by men, and you can get a lot farther being eye-catching and charming and making men think that they want to be around you. That Jones, who is very beautiful, is willing to be off-putting onscreen is brave. That she spends a lot of time onscreen making you wish she was far away is the fucking point. She’s supposed to make you uncomfortable.

Betty’s always one of the most controversial characters because she’s so unpleasant to be around, and that’s because she is so, so mired in this world that’s almost completely foreign to viewers now. One of the most persistent critiques you read of Mad Men from people who don’t like it (who are pretty few and far between) is that it constantly reminds you you’re in the 1960s and that takes you out of the story. This is pretty obviously the point of the show, and Betty’s Exhibit A in this argument because as much as you feel for her (or not, as the case so frequently seems to be), it is really hard to put yourself in her place or to understand her. It’s frustrating because she’s speaking English and living in a pretty similar world to the one we are now, but she doesn’t really give you any points of common ground. Betty’s the one who makes it the most clear that the past is emotionally incomprehensible; we can see cave paintings and we can read what they represent, but we can’t really ever know what they meant to people.

Episode 7: “Red in the Face”

I think these two images pretty much sum things up.

The Chip and Dip

Pete & his Gun

That and when Pete walks up to Don and Roger, asking “Did I miss anything?” and Roger tells him he didn’t, and he’s all “Goodnight, Paul.” The camera stays with him and Don as they walk out, since we know what Pete’s reaction will be. It’s a nice smirky bit that leads into the whole Don-and-Roger rivalry bit which isn’t really my favourite. I like that Mad Men isn’t afraid of bodily functions — and I think this puking will be kind of echoed by Betty’s later puking in Don’s new Caddy — but it’s not my favourite. This episode is all manliness sweepstakes, so of course Don wins, but Pete is actually way more interesting while he’s losing. As is Peggy’s reaction to the whole thing, which I still find strange. Was it somehow a hint to the pregnancy thing? She does go straight to the snack cart after.

Episode 8: “The Hobo Code”

So this is the one with the flashbacks to Don’s youth (via Don getting stoned at Midge’s house: “I feel like Dorothy. Everything just turned to colour.”) where he learns through the Hobo Code that his father is a bad man. Uh, he might already know that though. The first time through, it obviously provides amazing insight into the Secrets of Don, but this stuff, especially since Don’s mystery past turns out to be such a red herring later on, is kind of boring. The Adam story plays well on rewatch — because it ties into other stuff about Don and his family — but the whole thing is that Don Draper is kind of this ultimate postmodern subject. He got dealt a terrible hand, but then he grabbed on to the first chance he could to shed his old self and become a shiny new self. The seams show every now and then, but I’m totally getting ahead of myself. Thouh this is the episode that Bertram Cooper tells Don to read Atlas Shrugged.

The part of the episode that only gets better with age is the stuff with Pete and Peggy. It starts with the sound of Pete’s shoes echoing on the shiny floor of the Sterling Cooper lobby; Peggy catches the elevator with him; they start talking in the office, before anyone else is there. Then they bone on Pete’s office couch and he pulls her ponytail. The janitor hears them, but it’s okay, because in the 1960s, black people didn’t really exist.

After all the unspoken tension between them, it’s kind of refreshing to see them getting to act out the things they were wishing for. I love the way Peggy smiles a little when someone comments on her torn shirt: “I’ll have to start keeping a spare.” It’s great, because it’s not really a girlish thing; when you think someone keeping a spare shirt at the office, you think of Don and his drawer from the first episode. She doesn’t see herself as one of the girls, she sees herself as one of the men. It takes her awhile to make other people see that, though.

I did love that Don goes to bat for Peggy’s work in the meeting. Don’s speech is worth reproducing because it is insane:

You’re a non-believer. Why should we waste time on Kabuki? [...] Listen, I’m not here to tell you about Jesus. You already know about Jesus. Either he lives in your heart, or he doesn’t. Every woman wants choices, but in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box. She’s unique. She makes the choices and she’s choosing him. She wants to tell the world “he’s mine.”

He follows up Ken’s compliment with the following, also worth remembering for when ew get to Bobbie Barrett: “Ken, you will realize in your personal life that at some point, seduction is over and force is being requested.”

It is probably a good time to point out that Don realizes Midge is in love with her douchebag beatnik friend after he sees them through a camera; he saw his life through a camera in “Marriage of Figaro,” and didn’t like what he saw, and cameras will be important again in “The Wheel.”

The great, great scene in the episode is the party at PJ Clark’s, of course. Everyone’s having a great time doing the twist or whatever, and Peggy dances over to Pete, all smiley and bright and confident. “Dance with me,” she says. “I don’t like you this way,” Pete says, ie, he doesn’t like her happy and confident and successful. You see her realize this, realize the way Pete sees her, the way he wants a Peggy who’ll look up to him, not a Peggy who’s busting through glass ceilings. She rejoins the throng, wiping a tear away as she dances. HEART-BREAKING.

Episode 9: “Shoot”

So “Shoot” is mostly about Betty’s issues with her sense of herself totally being wrapped up in being beautiful. McCann-Ericsson is trying to woo Don from Sterling Cooper, and offers Betty a job modeling in their Coke ads. It works because January Jones really does look so much like Grace Kelly.

Betty’s nostalgia for her time modeling in Italy makes a lot of sense: on the one hand it goes right in with her sense of self-worth being tied up in ornament, because at this point her beauty actually had some utility, and on the other it was also something that was all hers, probably the most freedom she ever had. (Remember how she told her therapist that her mother disapproved, despite the fact that she’d spent Betty’s whole life telling her beauty is her job.)

My favourite Pete bit, as the boys are sitting around, speculating on what kinds of offers Don’s getting from McCann. “I hear he makes 30,” someone says. “He’s not ten times better than me,” Pete scoffs. Everyone is noticeably quiet for a second.

But mostly, let’s get back to how crazy Betty is. Here is an example: little Sally comes in crying because their neighbour with the pigeons threatened to shoot their dog. After she leaves, Betty turns to Don: “Did you see those big tears? I really want to get a picture of her crying one day.”

Though we knew Betty had issues with beauty and normal human feelings before, but this was the moment where you kind of have to go, oh — “I really want to get a picture of her crying one day”? Her daughter. Crying. Picture. Betty is crazy!

Don decides to stay at Sterling Cooper when it becomes clear that this thing that Betty is really excited about and makes her feel special is really just a ploy to get him to come sell TWA with them. And Don is actually a little grossed out about that, because, and I think we’re realizing this for basically the first time, he really does care about her. This is definitely the first time you see him treat her with tenderness, not just as a possession. Don’t get me wrong, it’s obvious Betty’s both a prop and another job to Don, but it’s tangled up with actual caring about her and also with the sense that he’s not as close to her as she wants because he’s “different” and has to always be an outsider.

You can see this in the way he talks to Betty when she tells him she doesn’t want to work anymore. “I would’ve given anything to have a mother like you. Beautiful and kind, filled with love. Like an angel.” This tribute to her maternal gentleness prompts Betty to have a David Lynch moment, as we hear soft old-fashioned ironic pop music and Betty pulls out a BB gun and starts shooting at that asshole’s pigeons.

No one fucks with Betty Draper.

In more general blog housekeeping notes, I do want to point out that my tumblr actually still gets regular updates, though most of them are just pictures of stuff I like. so like, lots of Gossip Girl and Mad Men, and occasional clips of Anderson Cooper being adorable.

Anyway, recaps/thoughts:

Episode 4: “New Amsterdam”

This is mostly a “Pete” episode, which is always a bit of a challenge to me as a viewer since Pete’s such an unlikable but really well-drawn and well-acted character. Most of the talk about the great acting on the show focuses on the sexier or more relatable characters, but I think Vincent Kartheiser’s work throughout the show has been great. Pete’s such a shit, and Kartheiser plays him so unshrinkingly. This is also the first episode where you start to feel kind of bad for Pete, since he wants so badly to actually be considered on his own merits, but it’s not clear that he actually has any (yet), and his name is getting him through life more than he’d like. (Though it later turns out that Pete is actually a bit more perceptive about the future than, say, Don or Roger – like the Kennedy stuff, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

The main threads of the story are about Pete trying to buy an apartment Trudy wants and at the same time working on entertaining a client from Bethlehem Steel who’s in New York to approve a campaign. Neither of these things really goes his way – his parents won’t help him with the apartment, and Don’s mad at him for not pre-selling the client on the work they’d already done. Pete and Trudy wind up getting the apartment through her parents’ largesse. The contrast between the jovial restaurant meal shared with Trudy’s parents and Pete’s cold meeting with his folks in their house, furniture already covered for their switchover to the summer house – his mother in a Christmas sweater because that’s all that wasn’t packed – is a nice contrast between Trudy’s family life and Pete’s. Meanwhile, while basically playing pimp to Mr. Bethlehem Steel (which, now that I think about it, I realize is pretty much his job, which, ew, and also, his dad has a point), Pete pitches his slogan idea that Bethlehem likes better than Don’s concept. It’s sort of sweet for Pete after his fight with Don (where he says something like “I have ideas, you know” and Don replies with “Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich!”) The only other salient point about this fight is that it’s clear that even Pete thinks the idea that he’s “good with people” is absurd. But of course, after the whole meeting debacle, Don very quietly tells him to put all his belongings in a cardboard box, and Sal tells him “You picked the wrong time to buy an apartment!”

But then! We get a first meeting with Bert Cooper, who is always the voice of harsh realities in an already cynical world. “Don’t fool yourself, there’s a Pete Campbell at every agency,” he explains, to get the entrées into the society clubs and so forth, and this makes Pete impossible to fire. Don obviously hates this, but Roger keeps the power in that relationship where it’s supposed to be by telling Pete that Don’s the one who saved his job. I like Cooper a lot as a character – I love all the quiet bits with his Japanese affectations (I don’t think anyone’s ever talked about the taking shoes off before you go to his office, but it’s such a great, telling little business you see every time we wind up there); and I love all the little Ayn Rand bits and stuff. Robert Morse’s work – beyond the novelty of having Mr. How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on the show – brings so, so much to the show.

The episode closes with Pete and Trudy meeting the co-op board (or whatever the 1960 equivalent is) for their new building. “Wait until I tell my husband there’s a Dykeman in the building,” the woman says excitedly. Pete looks out on the city his family used to own as “Manhattan” plays: “We’ll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too…”

Pete’s sort of an odd one in the show’s universe. In a way, he’s tied to the past, in that he’s obviously gotten lots of privilege from coming from the “old guard,” but he’s also one of the “kids,” and he’s often the most savvy (often in depressing ways) about the future.

This is an unsettling episode, because it’s also the one where Betty meets little Glenn Bishop. This is one strain of Mad Men that I totally still don’t get. I do understand that part of it is that Glenn’s response to her is one of uncomplicated (though slightly creepy) admiration, and Betty needs that, but seriously? A lock of her hair? I just…don’t get it. There’s a weird huskiness in her voice when she sends him up to bed after that makes me really uncomfortable and sad.

Episode 5: “5G”

So, “5G” means two things – it’s Adam Whitman’s apartment number and it’s also the sum total amount of money that Don uses to buy the disappearance of his little brother.

This is actually not my favourite episode in general, but it has some wonderful moments, and it’s obviously a major advancement of the plot, as it gives us some major information about Don’s past, which still seems like it’s going to be a big deal when you’re watching this. And it is, in terms of us finding out What Don’s Deal Is, but not actually in terms of how it affects his life. The more I think about it, the more I think all the secrecy is as much about Don needing to have a secret life as about anyone in his life caring about Don’s past. Roger’s interested, because he’s his friend, and he’s always pushing for details; Betty’s interested, because she wants to know her husband. But other than that, no one really gives a crap where he grew up besides Don.

I love that Midge calls Don’s office and gives her name as Bix Beiderbecke and Don has no idea who that is.

The part of this episode that I actually love is the part where Ken publishes a short story in the Atlantic Monthly and Roger compliments it like this: “The story itself was not much to my liking, but I think it showed an uncanny understanding of what most people like.” And everyone else in the agency – failed artists with novels or screenplays in their desk drawers – completely loses it. Especially Pete, who gets Trudy to try to sell his short story to an old boyfriend who’s in publishing. Key detail to remember for future episodes: Pete’s story is about hunting. (Trudy: “I don’t understand why the bear is talking.”)

The other part that I like a lot is Peggy freaking out when Betty shows up for the family photo and Peggy doesn’t know where Don is. In my notes, I described this as “cutesville,” and the exchange between her and Joan, where she confesses to Joan that he gets calls from this woman, and then realizes she should never have told Joan. “I’m the worst secretary in the world.”

The end of the episode is the bit where Don shows up at Adam’s apartment with a mysterious briefcase (which the shot emphasizes as he heads over there). There’s an element of sinisterness in the whole exchange as Don tells his brother that his life “moves in one direction: foreward.” But his voice softens as he tells him to make his own life, and you can read a tiny bit of hesitation and vulnerability in his voice – which, again, is a first glimpse, for someone who sets himself up as tough and modern as Don. Don’s not going to kill Adam, of course, at least not with a weapon. He does, in a way, it turns out, kill him with money. But we don’t know that yet.

Episode 6: “Babylon”

“Babylon” is epic. It’s still one of my favourite episodes, so funny and fast and heartbreaking and beautiful. I think it, along with “The Wheel,” holds many of the keys to the whole show.

So there are all these threads that start on Mother’s Day. We get a montage of a very un-commercial-like breakfast being prepared – orange juice concentrate being glopped in a pitcher, cigarettes being put out, etc, before Don falls on his back and has a flashback to young Don meeting his brother for the first time. There’s a fantastic shot where the camera pans from young Don, looking back at the stairs, to old Don. I love this moment, because it has the past and the present looking at each other, which is a really great metaphor for, you know, what is going on with the whole show.

Key Don quote that will come back to get him later, re: Betty’s inability to get over her mom’s death: “Mourning is just extended self-pity.”

So Don’s work challenge that brings up confusing thematic issues related to his personal life this week is selling Isreali tourism! So he calls Rachel, who busts him on calling her because she’s the only Jewish person he knows.

“A country. For ‘those people’ as you call us. Well, it seems very important.” “Why aren’t you there?” “My life is here… I’ll visit, but I don’t have to live there. It just, has to be. For me it’s more of an idea than a place.” “Utopia.” “Maybe. They taught us at Barnard about that word, ‘utopia’. The Greeks had two meaning for it: ‘eu-topos’, meaning the good place, and ‘u-topos’ meaning the place that cannot be.”

There are a bunch of different meanings in that distinction, some of them diegetic, some of them non-, and they all kind of layer on top of each other: personal, political, romantic (capital and small r), nostalgic.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there! “Babylon” also has the beginning of Peggy’s ascendancy as copywriter and total advertising killer. There’s the whole scene, with the “brainstorming,” where the rest of the “girls” are all giggling and trying on lipstick and Joan is playing her role, being on display on the looked-at side of the two-way mirror, while the boys are on the other side, playing their roles, and doing the looking. She knows Roger’s there, she knows they’re all watching, she knows exactly what’s going on. The difference between her and Peggy is, Peggy knows too, but she’s not going to participate. She doesn’t want to be just another colour in a box. She’s not being calculating when she tells Freddy that, she’s not a “dog playing the piano,” she’s just not an idiot and by not pretending to be one, lucks into someone noticing. (As we see next season, this was the easy part.)

When Joan tells Peggy the news, she asks if she should go thank “them”: “No need. They wanted me to tell you. They were very specific about it. Well, you know what they say. The medium is the message.”

The next time we see Joan, Roger is giving her a depressingly symbolic caged bird. We switch back to Don, fending off accusations of being a sell-out, by Midge’s lame friend Roy: “How do you sleep at night?” “On a bed of money.” This isn’t true, Don doesn’t sell lies because he’s cynical, he sells them because he wants them to be true, but Don would never say that, because he doesn’t even know it himself probably.

The show closes with a good example of the cheap TV device of drawing parallels through musical montage – as “By The Waters of Babylon,” a folk song written especially for the show plays, we see Rachel thinking of Don (and maybe of Zion), we see Betty putting lipstick on Sally, we see Don’s eyes misting at the song for reasons we can only guess a, and we close on Joan and Roger leaving the hotel separately, a long shot emphasizing their distance. The music cuts out and we’re left with desolate car noises.

Anyway, that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped watching. I’ve watched and watched and watched. I took Frank O’Hara’s collected poems out of the library after they used Meditations on an Emergency. But I’ve kind of never really felt equal to writing about it – I just have so much to say about it, and I think it says so much for itself.

But I’m rewatching it, and this time I will write out my thoughts more. I will, in all posts, be talking about stuff that’s happened up until the end of Season 2, so if you haven’t been watching the show, my posts will not be a very good primer. You should watch the show though, it’s a good show. (In Canada you can watch every thing for free at the ctv website; I do not know if there is any streaming version available to US audiences?)

Or, if you like rewatches that are about fun, not serious art shows being grad schooled to death when they are basically already doing all the stuff grad schooling usually does, like gender analysis and Making Points About America, and you are in America where the website works for you Tara is doing a 90210 rewatch at her work that is funny.

Anyway…

EPISODE 1: “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”

This is the first episode of the show, where we see Don Draper talk to a waiter, have sex with a lady, insult another lady whose business he was supposed to be trying to win, and ingeniously save the Lucky Strike account at the last minute. We also meet Peggy Olsen, “the new girl,” who gets sexually harassed by Pete Campbell, who has his bachelor party that night, and shows up drunk at her house. Rather than turn him away, Peggy makes the genius move of boning him in her tiny Brooklyn apartment. It will take her some time to realize that the birth control pill doesn’t kick in the day you start taking it. My favourite scene, of which there are many possibilities, is Don and Rachel having a drink. Don gives her all his posturing “I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there is none” speech, and Rachel doesn’t buy it for a second. Her observation: “it must be hard, being a man, too.” My second favourite is Joan’s advice to Peggy. I always remember how she tells her to really evaluate her features, and be honest, but I always forget how she prefaces that advice by telling her to do it naked with a bag over her head. She makes it sound so stern and sensible, but it’s such a horrifying Also, I want to reproduce Don’s big speech about what advertising does: “Advertising is based one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? It’s the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance, that whatever you’re doing, is okay. You are okay.” I want to think about the need for reassurance, and why Don understands it as a human need.

EPISODE 2: “Ladies Room”

This episode doesn’t just focus on the ladies, but it does have key scenes in the ladies room at the beginning – Betty’s hands going numb putting on lipstick, our first real chance to find out anything about her, and the end, with Peggy, who straightens her scarf and silently seems to promise herself to not be one of those women crying in the washroom. It is also week one of Betty’s therapy, in other words, week one of Don calling her therapist to find out what she said, which would be so illegal now. The first two episodes are, I think, what people think of when they talk about Mad Men as just reinforcing this kind of “look at how terrible things used to be” kind of complacency – but if Matt Weiner had wanted to make a show that was about how awful 1950s Eisenhower America was, he probably wouldn’t have mentioned the Nixon-Kennedy election in the first episode. There are other hints, of course, that things are going to change, particularly in Peggy. After sleeping with Pete in week one, Peggy spends the whole rest of the episode fending off the advances of the various office lotharios – including Ken and, actually slightly more convincingly, Paul, who talks to her like she’s a real person. The scene where we learn what Peggy’s really about (though I had no idea how much this was showing us the first time around) – is when she complains to Joan about the constant sexual harassment. “You’re the new girl, and you’re not much, so you might as well enjoy it while you can,” Joan says, thinking she’s being mean, but Peggy takes it as assurance that this will go away. She slips into the bathroom, standing at the mirror where they’d seen someone crying earlier on – you think you know what’s going to happen, but then she sees another woman crying and she steels herself and straightens her scarf. Elizabeth Moss communicates so much with that one look.

EPISODE 3: “Marriage of Figaro”

Aaah, so much happens here. I think, based on the images I used in my “Mad Men is my new favourite show” post, that this was the moment that I went from liking the show to loving it. The first half of the episode focuses on Don, with his broken cufflink, going to see Rachel Menken’s store, the one he’s supposed to be advertising. She gives him new cufflinks and shows him the roof, where her only childhood friends the guard dogs are kept. In light of later revelations, I find it interesting that Don is moved to kiss Rachel when he finds out she didn’t have a mom. He relates to her outsiderness; she mentions her sense that he seems to know what it’s like to be on the outside in Episode 1; it’s clear here (and from what we know about Don now), that this is what so moves Don about Rachel. The second half of the episode is little Sally Draper’s birthday party. Don walks around filming his gross neighbours – who slap other people’s children, hit on divorcees when their wives are in the next room, and tell gross sexist jokes while the ladies are present – watching his life through the camera’s lens. The scene cuts between a full soundtrack of party noises to just the opera score (I’m pretty sure it’s from The Marriage of Figaro, but I’m not good on opera) and the sound of Don’s movie camera running. I want to remember this sequence of Don filming the suburban neighbourhood party he’s desperate to get away from when I get to “The Wheel.” Don drinks some more (we see him drink a lot this week) and watches the kids play the most depressing house ever (“You dented the car!” “I like sleeping on the couch!”) before he mercifully gets a reprieve to go pick up some cake. But he can’t bear to go back, so he just drives off and sits under a bridge, reappearing after the guests have gone, after being served some Sara Lee from the freezer of Helen Bishop, divorcee and obviously the smartest person at the party, including Don. He shows up, tellingly, with a dog for his daughter, which I never connected to Rachel’s comments about “sometimes a dog is all a girl needs” until now. Duh. This episode doesn’t start on Don though, it opens with the image of the famous Volkswagen “Lemon” ad, which he’s sneering at when someone recognizes him as “Dick Whitman.” It’s an early hint of the way things are going to be with the show – the first two episodes mostly seem to set up how things are right at that moment, but this is the first inkling that the Sterling Cooper way is not going to last forever. Also, that Don Draper thinks everything is a construction because he is a construction.