Come on, Don, keep it in your pants!

I just about loved this episode, right up until the point where Don starts canoodling with his not-even-that-hot-big-toothed secretary after she whorishly plants herself in his office after hours. I am always on Don's side — heck, it was even easy to root for him when he was screwing other women while he was married, because his wife was a big nutcase—but he's really gone too far with this one. So, he had a fight with the adorable and sweet Fay. Don't care. No excuse. Especially because the fight started after he asked her to help him out of a jam at work by feeding him "unhappy clients" from other agencies for SCDP to steal. Don learns after the Lucky Strike ordeal that Glo-Coat is leaving him too. Remember the commercial with the cowboy kid and the floor wax that Don won a Clio award for? Yeah, they don't want him anymore. And he's not happy. (Cue throwing his Clio across the room.) Still not an excuse. Poor Baby can find new accounts without dragging the best woman he's ever had in his life into the mess. Fay gets angry about the request, deservedly, and storms out. Don has often had arguments with people in which he's an asshole but, for some reason, it's still tempting to not only agree with him but join in his stubborn anger against the other person. Not this time, Mr. Suave. What was he thinking? The entire time I was watching the rather cringe-inducing scene, all I could think was, "Stop it, Don, come on, you can still stop this!" But despite a few teases, he protests TWICE, he branded yet another secretary with his Don Draper Stamp of Approval.

Give me a freaking break.

This is making me too upset, so let's talk about the parts of the episode I loved:

  • The dropping of the Lucky Strike bomb early in the episode. Courtesy of Ken Cosgrove hearing a rumor at dinner, the first 10 minutes  reveals the Lucky Strike news to all of the SCDP partners, who meet shortly after in a frenzy to confront Roger about the rumor's truth. And despite Roger's fake phone call to Lee Garner Jr. (I really enjoyed his little trick of holding down the button), SCDP is already screwed. The confirmation that Lucky Strike has moved to competing ad agency BBDO sends the group reeling, and considering their other options. It's a sign of the prosperous times that not many of them seem concerned about finding work elsewhere, just about losing their newly built agency.
  • Vincent Kartheiser as father-to-be Pete. How great was he in this episode? He struck such a great balance between man who is about to lose everything (his agency) and man who is about to gain everything (a family). I have never loved Pete more than I do this season, and I'm glad to see he's getting plenty of face time with both Trudy and his SCDP partners.
  • Peggy and Gabe. I like them for each other; age-appropriate, intellectual, sexual. Although I think that if a man told me he liked my shoulders because they look like swimmers' shoulders, I'd be offended. But he made up for it with those cute yellow shorts. Also loved her Playtex pitch; her lipstick-stained teeth made her even more endearing. (And slimy co-worker Stan who tried to kiss her even more of a jerk.)
  • "Is this a last hire, last fire sort of thing?" — that little SCDP new guy Danny. Ha!
  • Roger's slump. Ok, I don't like this so much, but it makes for great drama. Anyone else notice that practically all of the accounts on the SCDP Chalkboard of Accounts were courtesy of Pete Campbell? With the loss of Lucky Strike, poor Roger is becoming downright irrelevant. I do wish the show had given us a bit more notice that he wasn't paying as much attention to Lucky Strike as he should have been; it's hard to agree with everyone at SCDP that he dropped the ball, and with Bert Cooper's "Lee Garner Jr. never took you seriously because you never took yourself seriously."

Thing I hated:

  • My long-awaited Roger/Joan love affair has ended way too quickly. Again, I'm not really sure why. I feel like a lot was dumped on Roger on this week just for the sake of it. What's changed with Joan? She realized he's conniving because he lied about the Lucky Strike thing? Though Roger might have deserved it, after his "You sleep in that now?" comment. (Ok, that was actually pretty funny.) In any case, I'm worried for Roger's health. He looked utterly, hopelessly miserable, even surrounded by his pretty young wife and his newly published memoir. Sterling's Gold. (Um.) Sorry Roger, but I'd feel pretty downtrodden if that were the title of my memoirs, too.

In the end, Fay gets Don the meeting he asked for, with prospective client Heinz (a "vinegar sauce" company). Oh, Fay. I'll chalk this one up to you being a very nice lady, and not to you being so hopelessly infatuated with Don that you would do something to jeopardize your career while Don is screwing a secretary in his office. Honesty with Fay has been Don's best policy so far this season; will he keep it up and tell her about his fling du jour? And, more importantly, what the heck is going to happen to SCDP? Overall, this was a great episode that entertained and simultaneously set up a bunch of stuff for the rest of the season to work with.

See you back here next week for "Blowing Smoke," the episode before the finale!

This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2010.