Can I get a little Napalm on the side?

This episode got ripping and rolling right from the get go, Megan (Dons wife) finally lands a more significant acting role in her day time soap opera but the catch is that it’s a love scene and she is dreading having to tell Don about it.  The irony of course is that Don is cheating on her with the neighbor upstairs yet she is scared to tell Don about a scene where she kisses a man for a minute which in the late 1960’s would be considered more than most could handle on American television.  Speaking of the affair Don is having with the neighbor, he tells her to take off her cross on her necklace and he asks, “Do you pray for me when I leave, pray for me to come back”.  She says, “I do pray for you, I pray that you find peace”.  Very interesting moment in the show as Don just turns her cross around to the back of her neck and carries on with his business with her.    

To add more wackiness to Megan’s work situation her and Don have dinner with her director and his wife, the conversation goes from the Vietnam war to how Don and Megan had met one another and then they propose that Don and Megan came back to their apartment so they can, “get to know each other better, and conduct an experiment”.  The look on Dons face is really quite priceless as he puts out his smokes and allows his wife to politely decline the offer from these late 60’s swingers. That scene was creepy and funny all at once. 

Joan Harris makes her biggest appearance thus far in the new season, one of the fan favorites of the show Joan welcomes an old friend from back home and they go out for a night on the town.  They have a good but somewhat odd and immature night out on the town and wake up in the AM and have a conversation about how well Joan has done in New York City on her own and that how becoming a partner in a Madison Avenue advertising firm was an amazing accomplishment for a woman. Her friend talks about her success in Mary Kay but how that doesn’t compare to Joan’s success.  The irony is that Joan even as a partner of a company is still not treated equal and as she remarks is still treated like a secretary. 

As usual Mad Men writers do an excellent job at outlining the issues of the time, the inequality in women’s right in the workforce, the Vietnam War, the racial divides in the country.

What about Harry Crane and his pitch to Dow Chemical?  He has a great idea to rebuild Dows reputation which was getting hammered at the time because of the Napalm they were making and selling to the United States government that was being used on woman and children in Vietnam only to bust into a meeting later and go off about how Joan didn’t deserve her partnership and how he did deserve one.  From a business perspective he looked like a childish idiot, from an entertainment perspective it was quite comical.  We shall see how this develops, perhaps his head is getting big and he will leave Sterling Cooper Draper Price. 

Lastly my favorite part of the episode was the pitch to Heinz ketchup by Don and then as they walk out of the room they run into Peggy and Ted Shaw (the competition).  I loved how Don lingered back and listened thru the door as Peggy did her pitch to the Heinz executives.  She used a line she learned from Don, “if you don’t like the conversation, change it”, as she laid out a very impressive campaign that was more impressive than her mentors campaign that was presented before her.  Don listens thru the door and then walks away, later they both find out they didn’t get the account and that they even lost an account because of the pitch.  I really hope this pitch Don heard from Peggy snaps him out of his funk and gets him back to doing some creative work. Until next week………..