'And Who Are You Supposed to Be?': Mad Men Recapped

It was Couples Week on Mad Men, an intimate array of men, women and the deep, dark, dog-food-advertising secrets that come between them. And if those weren't intense enough for you, there were family histories of psychiatry and assumed identities to help gird the tension as well. So why did it all seem so... bloodless?

Of course, episode 311 of Mad Men really was sort of a milestone for the series, finally featuring the showdown in which the snoopy, restless Betty breaks out of her rut to confront Don about the Shoebox of Truth she found last week in his desk. We weren't sure we were going to get it at first -- not with Betty packing for a week back at her late father's house and another doleful sibling quarrel about how and when to unload the property. Betty's brother William is as determined as ever to get the inheritance that's coming to him, but the estate lawyer who drops by for a consultation doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. He doesn't tell Betty what she wants to hear, either; asked about her options in the Don scenario -- in which he's hidden the details of a past divorce and identity-thievery -- the lawyer advises her to suck it up and stick with the guy who provides for her and her three kids. Betty drags on her cigarette, reels, exhales. It's going to be that kind of day.

Roger won't have it much better back at Sterling Cooper, where dog-food heiress, ex-flame and recent widow Annabelle Mathis pays a visit to help revive her brand's flagging market share. Annabelle only has a few conditions: Retaining the name Caldecott Farms, and keeping the horse-meat formula that has made Caldecott Farms a rich, ponylicious canine treat for generations (even if it revolts dog owners). Don will get right to work on that, he says, and Annabelle will get right to work on Roger, for whom she's carried quite the torch since their torrid pre-war fling in Paris. She knows he's remarried to the younger, sultrier Jane, but as she soon learns, that shouldn't be misapprehended as a lack of scruples on Roger's part. "This girl's different," he tells the lusty lush Annabelle after an expository "business" dinner, and for the first time since their courtship began, it's hard not to believe him.

His sympathetic restoration continues with a call from Joan, another ex who wants something: Help finding a new job. Turns out her career in department-store administration ended almost as soon as it began, and if Roger can put the word out that a no-nonsense secretarial manager is on the market, she'd be much obliged. And the sooner he can do it the better, because Joan's self-pitying hubby Greg isn't faring so well on his transition from surgery to psychiatry. He won't listen to her advice to be candid about his own father's troubled emotional history, and when his job interview fails, he takes his inertia out on his poor wife. Joan naturally reacts as any beleaguered spouse would: By smashing a vase over his head and retiring to the bedroom. He'll recompense later by joining the Army -- as a surgeon, natch, "maybe [in] Vietnam, if that's still going on" -- without first consulting Joan.

Pages: 1 2