The Drapers' whirlwind Roman adventure was a distant memory in this week's Mad Men, in which Don's traditionally slippery midseason slide into self-destruction was greased more than usual with the sudsy residue of nighttime soap operas. Related: Betty won't make Don a cuckold with just any tawdry old governor's aide. And Sal! Poor Sal. Parse the moves and machinations after the jump.
Viewers can glean the spirit of the episode from the first shot of Betty on her fainting couch -- a reliably erotic convention from a couple weeks ago, but on which she now has an unidentified male partner. There's a touch, a peeling back of her dress top, the frilly fringe of her bra, and the man leaning in, and... goddamnit, Conrad Hilton! Must you call so early in the morning and rustle Betty from her dreams? But that's Don's deal with the hotelier, whose proposed Hilton on the moon would be the capstone of his more aggressive "international" growth. "America is wherever we look," he tells Don, who scratches out notes for a proposal to be in Hilton's hands by noon.
The Hilton subplot yields both the best and worst of the episode. Connie is quickly turning into the new Grandpa Gene, a charmingly old-fashioned and utterly crazy coot whose portentous insights into God, communism, the Marshall plan, Khrushchev, Disneyland, manifest destiny and myriad other influences on American hegemony have come to dominate too much precious time that could be dedicated to, say, Joan Holloway or Sally Draper's own plot for world conquest. He acknowledges he thinks of Don like a son, maybe even more than he does his own: "You didn't have what they have, and you understand." As such, he can confess deep disappointment in Don when the admittedly great international Hilton campaign doesn't include that high-rise on the moon.
As both a fatherless child of the Depression and an industry titan of the Cold War, Don is vulnerable to and even consumed by all of this. Which of course doesn't stop him from pulling over en route to work one day, picking up Miss Farrell on her early morning jogging rounds. "Who are you?" Don asks. "I run into you in the middle of the night? How did that happen?" Don't be daft, Don. It's called a plot contrivance. She won't accept his invitation for coffee, though, which is probably just as well; he's got work to do, and holding Don off will just make the culmination of their bedward journey all the more rewarding.
Betty starts an epistolary exchange with Henry Francis, which culminates in his visit to the house when no one else is home. Not so smart, especially when Clara walks in and Henry springs a Rockefeller fundraiser on Betty just to have a more licit excuse to have dropped by. The letters are fun, though; it makes me wish I wrote more of them, and that there were people sitting at the other end of the correspondence narrating their own words. All right, who am I kidding -- I just want to be Betty Draper's pen pal. (I smell an end-of-season promotion, AMC!)
Recently minted commercial director Sal Romano, meanwhile, has rebounded from his poorly received Patio campaign. Now he's working on a Lucky Strike spot while Pete Campbell puffs once and hacks a million times in the background. Harry Crane, the Lucky accounts man, stands by nervously. Sal wants the actor to look into the lens, make a connection. That's pretty much what cigarette scion Lee Garner Jr. wants from Sal as well, getting handsy in the editing room and launching the type of confrontation we've been anticipating since season one. We all know that the ultra-discreet Sal doesn't just put out for anyone (Baltimore bellhops notwithstanding), but we're about to learn that no one says "no" to Little Lee: He drunkenly calls Harry to get Sal off not only the Lucky Strike account, but off his desk at Sterling Cooper. And naturally, the most important part? Nobody can know.
It's a matter about a dozen levels above Harry's pay grade, and since Lee was wasted on whiskey and rejection anyway, what could it hurt to bury it? A lot, it turns out: At the sight of Sal in the conference room during the first commercial screening, Lee makes a 180 and flees the scene. "What just happened?" Pete wants to know. Roger Sterling has an even more urgent curiosity, coaxing the truth from Harry and shitcanning Sal on the spot. And why not? "Lee Garner Jr. wants you fired," Roger announces, simple as that. Don seethes when the situation escalates to him; Roger puts him "on notice that you're in over your head," and whether or not Don buys Sal's story, the climate is too polluted (and the account too valuable) for a liability like him to remain. But Don gets in one last acid jab of disgust at Sal -- "You people" -- to make his perspective and moral superiority crystal clear.
Yes, indeed, "You people." Classy, Don -- especially for a guy who shows up at Miss Farrell's house before work the next morning to finally close the deal with his daughter's elementary school teacher. Of course it works, setting Don up for an indiscretion far too close to home to make any sense at all, but still, "You people." He's still a few steps ahead of Henry Francis, who stands up Betty's fundraiser and then tries to get her to go to a motel room when she brings him his money. "You had to come to me because you're married," he says. Fail.
Twenty bucks says Betty offloads the fainting couch by next week's episode -- perhaps to poor Sal, who's reduced to drunkenly cruising a park after his last night in the office. He did make a few surreptitious photocopies after hours, though, for which we have five episodes remaining to see who those devastate, and how. Any ideas? And when did Conrad Hilton pass away, anyway?