Freddy Rumsen, holler! At least one burning question about this young season of Mad Men was answered last night as an old friend made a comeback -- albeit one of the cryptic, suspicious variety. Christmas came and went, meanwhile, while libidos soared and egos crashed. Oh, and the creepiest kid ever paid his latest visit to the Draper/Francis household. Let's sort it out.
For all the nifty office drama this week, the most harrowing interlude of the night might have occurred off-site in the first scene: No sooner had Henry and Betty settled on a Christmas tree than young Glen -- the pubescent, backyard-crashing Betty-kisser from seasons one and two -- literally stalked out of the shadows to accost Sally. Puppy love! Or... something. With young, aspiring psychopaths like this you can never be too sure. Their halting conversation tumbles one line over another in the dark suburban cold: She compliments his winter attire; he says he might call her. She is rescued by her brother; he will have his revenge on Bobby soon enough. For now, can he get you some twine?
A far less squirm-inducing resurgence occurred at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, where out of nowhere, in walks Freddy Rumsen with, in Roger's words, a $2 million present under his arm. Sober 18 months now, the erstwhile pee-er of pants walked out of his agency with his Pond's Cold Cream deal apparently still intact. It's quite the boost for SCDP, which Roger equates to Potemkinville, a façade of progress and affluence belying the fledgling firm's many pressing crises. But Freddy has one precondition for parking the account there: "I don't want Pete Campbell anywhere near this." Done and done.
Which doesn't mean Freddy doesn't have to see Pete, officious as ever, kicking the old man's tires before Roger can intervene. Peggy hardly shares his reservations, virtually bursting with glee at Freddy's entrance. Don, meanwhile, does what Don does: Offer the recovering alcoholic a drink. Nice.
It's an interesting variation on Don's evolving aloofness -- some deadened outgrowth of his bachelorhood that disables him even from closing the deal with, say, the hot nurse Phoebe. Granted, their meet-not-so-cute the next day involves hammers, nails and garland at the crack of dawn, yet Don -- who spends his holidays with whores, remember -- doesn't simply ignore the young woman's signals. He doesn't receive them. A similar event occurs with Dr. Faye Miller, an appealing consultant whose attempt to psychoanalyze the SCDP crew with a test meets with Don's polite but direct recusal.
On the one hand, he seems to be above all this misjudgment -- the drunken self-immolations, the presumptuous come-ons, the predatory headshrinkers. On the other, of course, he is the standard-bearer for all three, somehow not recognizing his own reflection in the culture he helped shape as one of most influential ad men on Madison Avenue.
And so it appears Don has moved into a little hotter circle of hell. He can't close (or really even start) the deal with Phoebe, who helps him stagger to bed one soggy night, shimmying in her cocktail dress to remove his shoes before he blacks out. He has nothing for Dr. Miller, whose attendance at the office Christmas party comes with a diagnosis ("You're the kind of man who doesn't want to take the test"). And the one tryst he does manage -- with his secretary, no less, to whom he earlier entrusted the intimacy of reading him Sally's letter to Santa -- is a soused byproduct of having clumsily left his keys at the office. And it lasts even less time than his slappy-prostitute interlude. And it results in one of Don's most truly tone-deaf acts to date: Putting the secretary's promised bonus -- $100 cash -- and added thanks for bringing him his keys in the place where some acknowledgement of their quickie should go. Nicer.
At least Peggy has some dignity. Or whatever it is you call her shielding her sexual history from handsy boyfriend Mark, whose efforts to relive Peggy of her "virginity" bear rather smug, revolting fruit later in the episode. Her nooners with Duck Phillips were so much more rewarding, interruptions via presidential assassination notwithstanding.
Her professional tangles with Freddy, meanwhile, have their own implications. They're fairly on-the-nose, stock Mad Men gender politics -- Freddy wants an aging female star for the Pond's campaign, Peggy wants to skew the demographics younger, Freddy stereotypes ("You might get married!"), Peggy stereotypes back ("You and your old typewriters and your desperate spinsters!") -- but their resolution suggests Peggy is indeed the superior politician. That's quite the rebound from last week, when her creative wiles gave us the infamous Sugarberry Ham Brawl of 1964.
And it's definitely a step ahead of virtually everyone else in the office. There was no more glaring evidence than the Christmas party -- I mean, did you see Lee Garner Jr. whip Roger into playing Santa Claus? Or Lane's desperate trawl for approval when giving Lee his gift Polaroid? Or the emasculated husbands in a circle, supplemented by Don, whose plunging creds have already been established? It's true that Joan, with Peking House on speed-dial and her fierce conga-line leadership, wields the more redoubtable authority. But in her cagey, modulated (and sure, occasionally false-modest) way, Peggy slashes through one Y-chromosome after another in her march through the Testosterone River Delta.
Sally will follow that trail someday, assuming that Glen doesn't taxidermy her in the climactic grace stroke of his savage love. You know when a boy breaks into and vandalizes every room in your house ("There's eggs in my bed!" Bobby yelped) only to leave your room untouched and an anoymous trinket of affection behind, that is true love. Or it's the only thing keeping the show's Ossining arc from becoming an increasingly frustrating stall-out, like a computer crash in the middle of a productive day. Or maybe it's just Matthew Weiner's way of giving his son Marten -- who inhabits Glen with laconic, sinister zeal -- something to occupy himself with on the set besides sneaking peeks inside Christina Hendricks's trailer or whatever it is teenage boys do. All of the above? Part of me doesn't even want to dignify Glen with a response: "Ignore him and he'll go away," that kind of thing. But I don't think he quite works that way. I guess we'll find out.
Anyway, what did you think?