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| Photo Credit: AMC |
“I've been trying to get you for 10
years. You're my white whale Don.” This is what Jim Hobart, fresh
from a trip to the Bahamas, tells Don in his office. Hobart, clearly
savoring the moment for all its worth, caps his triumph by nicely but
firmly asking him to “say it.” Don turns around, flashes a grin,
stretches out his arms and says, “I'm Don Draper from McCann
Erikson,” like a charismatic trained seal.
But oh Jim, you didn't know? Don
doesn't like to be tied down. And Joan doesn't suffer fools. And
Peggy won't be treated like a secretary. And Roger just doesn't give
a shit. If you haven't caught on yet, things have changed
considerably since last week's “Time and Life.” The big move has
happened/is happening—SC&P's partners and employees are now in
a place so big Meredith has to guide Don to his office. Creative
meetings, instead of the small, intimate pow wows we've witnessed,
now resemble a cattle call, with pre-packaged box lunches and over a
dozen creative directors stuffed in one conference room. And the
aforementioned Jim Hobart has enough juice to buy a Minneapolis
agency just so Don can pitch for Miller Lite.
Of course if everyone reacted to this
with a shrug and a sanguine “that's life,” attitude, this
wouldn't be Mad Men, and
“Lost Horizon,” focuses on how SC&P's major players,
save for Pete (who appears content for the moment), are dealing with
this transition. Don deals with it by walking out of a meeting for
Miller Lite to head for parts unknown. Well, the parts aren't exactly
unknown, at least initially; Don was supposed to take Sally back to
school, but Betty informs him she already took off, which leaves him
free to scratch an itch to drive seven hours to Wisconsin and track
down the elusive Diana Bauer.
It's
all vintage Don Draper—taking off on a fool's errand under the
guise of a perfectly plausible excuse. And what a foolish errand it
is; even the ghost of Bert Cooper knows this won't end well, asking
Don why he's traveling all this way for a girl he doesn't even
know. He pulls up to the Bauer house and gives Laura, Diana's
husband's new wife, a fake name and telling her she's won a contest
as a weak ruse to learn her whereabouts. Don settles in for a drink,
but when her ex-husband comes home he calls bull on the whole
charade. Don subsequently tries sell some more bull, saying he's a
collections agent before beating a hasty retreat. Though her
ex-husband sees through that as well, following him outside to inform
him he's not the first man to show up at his doorstep asking about
Diana.
“She's a tornado,” he tells Don
(twisters of a feather...I'm just sayin'), telling him he can't save
her before instructing him not to come back. Don leaves, but doesn't
go back to New York, opting instead to pick up a hitchhiker who's
heading to Minnesota. All of this was quietly thrilling to watch.
Don's been on his best behavior for the most part this season, and
while that's good for the character (and those of us who want to see
him at least a little happy as the series ends), turning over a new
leaf means going without story lines like this, where he ditches
work and fully indulges his hobo tendencies.
When you think about it, Don's old
school antics don't come completely out of left field; much of SCDP
and later SC&P's future existence depended on him being present,
both physically and creatively, given they were scrappy upstarts.
However McCann, like the Sterling Cooper of yore, is a huge machine.
It's easier to blow off responsibility when you're not running (or
bankrolling) the show.
Back at the agency, Joan gets greeted
by the female copywriter welcome wagon, who quickly make their
intentions known by running down their knowledge of her accounts and
offering to let Peggy have the crumbs of their workload. We'll see
how that works out.
Joan
later takes a call with a client accompanied by Dennis, an idiotic
McCann lackey who talks over her and puts his foot in his mouth when
he makes a remark about playing golf, forgetting the guy is in a
wheelchair. Joan rightfully starts to criticize him, before he
bellows “Who told you you got to get pissed off?”
“I thought you were going to be fun,”
he says before storming off and leaving all the work to her, another
example of how her bombshell looks prevent others—more specifically
guys like this jerkoff—from seeing her as anything more than a good
time.
Pete's on her side, working to get her
involved in business, but largely she has to resort to her old ways,
giving evasive answers to the men in charge, and using feminine charm
to pull strings behind the scenes. However, Joan now seems to neither
have the energy or interest in doing so, given she's had to play this
game for decades. A meeting with Ferg Donnelly doesn't involve any
yelling, but in its own way goes even worse. He tells her her
accounts are safe, presenting himself as an ally, but laces his
promises with gross innuendos—like making sure “nothing comes
between me and your business” and her “showing him a good time.”
At least with Dennis Joan knew what she was dealing with; a
collaboration with Donnelly seems like it'll be much more dicey and
treacherous to navigate.
“It's a big place and I asked the
wrong person for help,” she later tells Richard in bed. The final
straw comes when Joan meets with Hobart and asks for more
independence, explaining she can't work with Ferg. Hobart bluntly
tells her her status at SC&P as partner is irrelevant now, and
she'll just have to get used to the new arrangement. Joan pulls out
the big guns, saying she'd be happy to take her half a million
dollars and walk, then threatening to call up the ACLU, and rally the
other women for a sexual harassment suit. Though it would have been
glorious to watch Joan go full on Erin Brockovich, sadly it feels
much more realistic for her to take Roger's advice to accept half her
buyout—$250,000—grab her Rolodex and leave. Is this the last
we've seen of Joan? Geez I hope we get that lunch she and Don were
planning to have before things wrap up.
Peggy hasn't gotten much of welcome
herself at McCann. Her new bosses think she's a secretary,
sending her flowers like they did all the other secretaries and
sending a messenger to tell her she can work in the steno pool until
her office is ready. Peggy rightfully balks, and says she'll be
working at her old offices until her new one is ready.
Her situation
worsens when the lights get turned off at SC&P; the sight of her
dropping a cup of coffee she made in a pitch black office is not a
good omen for her future. And even when she finally gets her own
space, she still has to work at a drafting table.
The sound of some spooky music leads
Peggy to Roger, who's tooling around with an organ (who knew SC&P
had an organ?) Roger asks Peggy to stay with him and pack, mostly so
he could bitch and moan about his non-role at McCann, but Peggy
reminds him he sold the business, to which he offers more complaints
about the unpredictability of the ad business in general.
Peggy concludes the move is a good
thing, a push they needed; he says he'll miss this place, she says it
was miserable while they were in it, though she backs away from the
sentiment when Roger challenges her on it. The whole conversation is
a push-pull between fuzzy nostalgia and cynicism. Though it's easier
for man like Roger to be sentimental, since his future is secure,
than it is for Peggy, still hungry and striving to leave her mark.
Later, the scene, as all extended ones
between two characters on this show often do, ends on a very
whimsical, warm note, with Peggy roller skating around the now empty
office while Roger plays a tune on the organ.
Peggy shows up to her new digs the next
day, hung over but looking fabulous as the old Sterling Cooper
theme--the one same that accompanied Joan when she wore infamous the
red dress and showed what brings all the boys to the yard--plays in
the background, shades plopped on her face and a cigarette dangling
from her mouth, carrying Bert Cooper's octopus painting under her
arm.
McCann-Erikson doesn't know what hit
them.
Other Thoughts:
--Meredith's proving herself a worthy
secretary, laying out a look for Don's new place—he names her his
new decorator—and covering for him when Jim Hobart asks about his
whereabouts.
--Shirley
had the foresight (and good sense) to secure a job elsewhere and
tells Roger, who is shaken by her news, but mostly because it'll be
one less face he'll recognize. Shirley talks about the trouble with
starting over at a new place, and Roger says he's starting over too,
before she subtly points out how that experience is vastly
different for them, given their
gender, race and class.
--Roger to Harry: “Maybe they can
keep track of your hat size. It seems to be growing.” Shade.
--Betty to Don: “Your secretary is a
moron.”
--Don missing Sally gives him time to
talk to Betty, and they have a pretty civil exchange, as he massages
her shoulders while lightly teasing her about carrying schoolbooks at
her age. He even calls her Birdie. Aww.
--From Bert
Cooper's cameo to Peggy hearing spooky organ music, the episode
certainly gave an underlying sense of the SC&P/McCann absorption
being a bad idea.
--Along with being
a sexist pig, Ferg Donnelly is terrible at impressions.
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