Everybody was in the mood for love Sunday night on Mad Men. Or at least everybody who made an appearance, a group comprising an unusually small number of the show's sprawling cast. But at least Crazy Sally made a new appearance, and viewers got some much-needed (if utterly demoralizing) face time with an old friend. And soundstage Rome has never looked more romantic! Read on and reflect.
It's summer in the city, a humid trap that never fails to spark restlessness among those poor, sticky souls with nowhere to escape to. Despite his claim to "love this time of year," Pete Campbell is one of them. Working late-ish one evening with a copy of Ebony and Trudy having split for the shore, he comes on to his secretary before his colleagues drop by to remind him of the ghost town that awaits outside. You could get away with anything, they seem to tease, and you can bet Pete will, strolling around the apartment shirtless and accosting the sobbing, buxom German au pair from apartment 14C. She's stuffing a stained gown into the trash chute -- a perfect opportunity, of course, for Pete to hit on her. Swinging and missing on the first try (she has a boyfriend), he tries Plan B: Resolve the Dress Crisis and put her (ostensibly) in his debt. That always works.
He could take a few pointers from Henry Francis, the governor's aide and aspiring paramour who supplies Betty with the political support she needs to get that pesky reservoir-draining project stopped. "I saw how happy you were in there," he says. "I thought, 'Dear God, did I have anything to do with that?' Because that would make me happy." Now that's how you earn a kiss, which no doubt comes as the down payment for more elaborate intimacies in future episodes.
See, Betty's restless, too, despite Don being awfully nice these days -- he even invites her on a business trip to Rome, where he's to meet Conrad Hilton. You know it's going to be the highlight of the episode once Betty starts speaking perfect Italian, but it takes a truly thrilling turn when she dolls up for date night -- all eye shadow, Aqua Net and class, tormenting a couple flirty Guidos until Don arrives for a classic bit of "Hey, stranger" role-playing. She's still got it, and by the time she gets home a few days later, she's clearly ready to put it to use. "I hate this place; I hate our friends," she tells Don, who fails to cheer her up with a gold Colosseum charm for her bracelet. "Now I can have something to look at when I tell people about that time we went to Rome."
But Betty always gets this way during the summer. At least little Sally is consistent: Playing at home one day with neighbor kid Ernie Hanson, she plants a kiss on him. Bobby commences joke making, and Sally commences a beatdown. She'll apologize for it later, just as she'll entertain her mother's admonition to not go around kissing boys. "Boys kiss you," Betty explains, her own recent experience triggering a flare behind her eyes.
The au pair learns this the hard way after Pete returns with a replacement dress secured from -- wait for it -- Joan Holloway, who apparently now handles customer complaints in her thriving new retail career. Good as it was to see her, and as small a town as New York can seem sometimes (especially in the emptied-out hell of August), the randomness of running into Joan under the circumstances provided the dramatic dud of the year. You expect more from storytellers who saved their "Blackmail Don" card for a year and a half before finally, brilliantly playing it last week. But I digress: The real issue is the dress, which Pete thinks he's trading for sexual favors, or at least a smooch.
What follows is unclear and may yet provoke another Mad Men rape controversy: Did Pete actually have sex with the au pair? He does get a talking-to from her employer, a strapping, mildly intimidating man to whom the girl confessed something or other. Is he just protecting her, or is he her boyfriend? And what, if anything, is consensual about any of this? In any case, Pete should consider a few sessions of Betty Draper's Restlessness Repression Seminar™, because he can't even begin to hide his guilt, shame and remorse when Trudy returns. "I don't want you to go away anymore without me," he tells her. It seems as sincere as anything Pete's ever said, for what that's worth, and thank God, because it gets him far enough off the hook to where he can comfortably follow it with news of launching the world's first ketchup-filled water balloon at work. Jeez, summer -- end already. All this boredom is rubbing off on me.