Different things put different smiles on different faces

Wow, what an excellent episode Sunday night.  Let me get right to the meat and potatoes of this week’s show, Don and Peggy will be reunited at a new ad agency!!!!!!  It really was the last thing I thought would happen but it makes so much sense, Lane Pryce is deceased and Cutler from Cutler, Gleasan and Chough is sick with cancer so they had to do something and what a great fit it is.  So in a moment in a dark bar in Detroit, sipping a few old fashioned the long time rivals being Don Draper and Ted Chough formulate the plan to merge the two firms and also lock down the Chevy account at the same time.  A real automobile account being what Don has always wanted in his career.  It’s good to see Don happy and getting his creative skills back to use. 

How about good old Roger Sterling, he strategically carries on a romance with a stewardess and gets tipped off by her when high level executives are stuck in the airport for long waits or delays.  He then shows up to the airport, buys the unsuspecting mark a drink and has his girl get him on the flight wherever it may be going so he can get his foot in the door on the ad business.  The maneuvering by Roger with his airport girl is how he got Don the meeting with Chevy.  What a clever move by Roger, its great see Roger back in some action, selling and doing what a good account man would do back in 1968. 

Then comes the public stock offering that Bert Cooper and Pete Campbell were working on, the deal may or may not have fallen apart with the news that the agency lost the Jaguar account and the Vicks Chemical account.  The agency loses the Vicks account because Pete runs into his father in law of all people at a New York City brothel, his father in law tells Pete he’s despicable for being there and pulls his business………interesting.  And the jaguar account goes away when Don tells the slimy guy from the dealers association over dinner to basically go find a new agency.  Don never liked that guy, the way he asked to be set up with Joan for a night so he would vote in the agency’s favor at the pitch meeting.  What a slime ball, good for Don.

Peggy does get an apartment with her hippie boyfriend in not such a good area of New York.  She gets kissed by her boss Ted Chough and continues to fantasize about him later in the episode.  There are always lots of relationships that start at work, this won’t be the 1^st or last that’s for sure.  The look on her face when Don was in Ted office and they told her about the merger was great. 

The best is yet to come this season, is the new agency going to be Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Gleason and Chough?  Check out the sneak peak of next week’s episode, we see Peggy is back and Ted is working in the new office with his new team. 

 http://www.amctv.com/mad-men/videos/next-on-mad-men-episode-607

A Glimpse Into the Day when A Great Man was Struck Down

This week’s episode starts off with Peggy looking at a new apartment for her and her man, a continuation of the theme from this season that Peggy has become a very strong woman that’s on her own and a force in the Madison Avenue ad business. 

As Don and Megan walk thru the apartment complex lobby they run into there friendly neighbors, the Rosen’s who are on the way out of town for the weekend to Washington DC.  Don, clearly mesmerized by this woman asks not once but twice as to where they were going for the weekend as Mr. Rosen pokes at Don as he walks away to his car stating for a 3^rd time that they’re going to DC for the weekend.  Don really is on love with this woman, so much so he can’t even hide it well.  This should be interesting to see how long it takes to have this affair exposed.

The mood turns as we get a glimpse of what is was like to be in the shoes of some Americans as the news came across the wire that Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated.  The show as it always does captures the moment in history so well and then intertwines different personal things that are happening to each of the characters.  For example we see the offer Peggy made on her apartment decrease per the realtors recommendation because of the area of the apartment and the rioting that may have been happening, we see Don call Washington DC to track down the Rosen’s so he can make sure that the mistress he loves in safe, we see Pete Campbell call his wife with whom he’s separated from and offers to come out and see her and his daughter and be with them in that trying time but she declines (good for her). 

The most interesting exchange being between Harry Crane and Pete Campbell, Harry was complaining to Pete about how their customers were pulling ads because of the regularly scheduled TV programming being pulled in favor of the news coverage on the assassination.  Pete got very, very angry and called out Harry then Bert Cooper had to come out and have them break it up.  This was one of the few moments ever in Mad Men that I actually liked what Pete said and did. 

We again are left to see Don Draper peel away another layer of him, he doesn’t say much about himself but when he does he definitely makes a point.  This admission by him to his wife Megan about his children and how he basically fakes being happy just because he thought that was what he was supposed to do.  He admits he didn’t have a good childhood and that he doesn’t know how to be parent but then also confesses that the moment he sees something in his children he had never seen before makes his heart want to explode.  He was referring to the time he spent with his oldest son at the movie theatre watching planet of the apes as he listens to his son talking and finds himself amazed at what he hears. 

As always the writing in this show is superb as we see Don’s son Bobby peel away little strips of wall paper from his bedroom wall only to later see him reveal things about himself to his dad and Don peel away and reveal more about himself to his wife.  I could only imagine what difficult times it was to live during those days. Until next week…….In the mean time, check out the most talked about part of this episode. 
Video Clip From This Weeks Episode