The Japanese are coming! It should be cause for celebration at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, but instead served as the trigger for an epic orgy of scheming, loathing and throat-slashing agita -- just the way we like our mid-season Mad Men. That it entitles Roger Sterling to some of his most historic one-liners is merely a bonus. Let's break it down.
We open on Don's redoubtable secretary Miss Blankenship, adrift in her crossword puzzle and still developing proficiency in modern buzzer technology. For the second episode in a row, a phone call will set the tone for what follows, but it's so hard to actually get the phone call transferred since Allison quit. In any case, Walter Hoffman from the NY Times will hold as long as it takes to get a comment from Don about rival Ted Chaough, whose CGC snagged Clearasil and Jai Alai and who claimed to the Paper of Record, "Every time Don Draper looks in his rearview mirror, he sees me." Don's response: "I've never heard of him." It only took about six months of arc time, but he's finally getting the hang of this press thing!
And he'll need it with Chaough, a slick, scaly little runt of a creative director who, despite Don's dismissals, is in fact the principal competition for the up-and-coming Honda account. This account is Pete's baby (figuratively, though he'll later remind us of its importance to his imminent, literal fatherhood as well), but he's not above the punchliney context of it all; as Jai Alai's Horace Cook Jr. was last season's "fatted calf," Honda motorcycles are a blippy, goofy incursion into a '60s auto idyll dominated still by tail fins, horsepower and size. Don plays straight man, ordering Joan to get everyone copies of Ruth Benedict's 1946 text The Chrysanthemum and the Sword -- the benchmark (if controversial) study of post-WWII Japan for Americans.
Roger, meanwhile, plays crazy man. "I don't expect you to understand this because you're a little boy," the WWII veteran (from the Pacific campaign, natch) spits to Pete, elaborating on the wartime carnage witnessed at the hands of Pete's "little yellow buddies." Ruh roh! He is a minority of one, thank goodness -- for the sakes of both business and the slow march of 20th-century cultural tolerance, I guess -- and even Bert Cooper agrees Roger will need to be kept a mile away from Honda, which represents the promise of $3 million in billings. But that's just the first point in a complex plot to win Honda and, moreover, to vanquish Chaough, who happens to be at Benihana the same night Don visits with Bethany, confronting his foe with fork-tongued finesse: "The good news is it's going to be between us. The bad news is the best man's going to win." Bethany, on only her second date with Don since the Great Thanksgiving Blue-Balling of 1964, asks, "We're not going to let this ruin our evening, are we?"
Of course not! We're going to leave that honor to Sally, whose weekend visitation with her brother plunges into coiffure chaos when she escapes the sitter's supervision and hacks the holy hell out of her hair. "I just wanted to look pretty," she tells Phoebe, the comely nurse from across the hall who hopefully pays better attention to her patients than she does her babysitting charges. Sally notes that Phoebe's hair is short, attempting to connect further dots by asking point blank, "Are you and Daddy doing it?"
Something something about the man peeing inside the woman, something something else about trying to fix her hair... just this whole vortex of sexual awareness, insecurity and thinly veiled lust that was only in the warm-up stages of sucking Don, Betty, Henry and even Sally's friends down with it. Upon the kids' return home, Betty deploys a healthy slap to Sally's face and a metaphorical right hook to Don's, only to be talked down by Henry, who urges her to apologize to her daughter and make an appointment for Sally at the hairdresser. Of course this runs counterintuitive to everything Betty stands for, which is why she remains one of the worst mothers on television. (Don't think Don didn't remind her of this himself before he shoved off.) Still, it's always nice to see her in top form.
The same goes for Roger -- usually. Not so much during the Honda reps' visit to SCDP, where the only lapse in taste that can possibly outdo the Japanese observation of Joan -- "How does she not fall over?" -- is the double-barreled blast Roger levels right between their eyes. On the one hand, you can't blame the guy for being upset; the meeting was set up behind his back without so much as an acknowledgment or conversation about his concerns. On the other, when you end said meeting with the adjournment, "They wont know it's over until you've dropped the big one on them -- twice," only to punctuate it with the fairly unequivocal, "We don't want any of your Jap crap"... Well, maybe some invitations should be lost in the mail.
Furious, Pete accuses Roger of sabotaging Honda not only because of the war, but also because it's "one more chip" that diminishes from Lucky Strike's omnipotence -- and, by extension, Roger's legacy. Roger charges Pete, Don intervenes, Pete flees with the last word: "The rest of us are trying to build something." Don agrees. But in the end, all the customs and self-destruction are just part of the Honda challenge: The ascendant automaker will allow only a $3,000 budget and no finished work in each suitor's pitch. Don's first idea is to gamble out of pocket on a splashy commercial, but a later epiphany emphasizes not the client but the competition: If Ted Chaough thinks SCDP is going big or going home with a TV spot, then he'll feel compelled to do the same thing. The ruse involves renting a soundstage and letting Peggy ride around it just so Chaough and his director -- whom Joan earlier interviewed for the fake job -- can stand outside the "closed set" and imagine what the creative genius Don Draper is up to this time. Trickery!
I know, I know: But what about Sally Draper's masturbation interlude? Er, yes. This happened. The last thing the 30-something male at this keyboard wants to do is parse the dynamics of prepubescent onanism in girls, especially as it pertains to The Man from UNCLE, which got Sally hot and bothered enough at a sleepover to gradually lift her nightgown and... yeah. I just get a big error message in my brain -- "DOES NOT COMPUTE, RETURN TO MADISON AVENUE" -- and a long spell where I type literally nothing. That said, I think we all knew where this was going -- and furthermore, how it would end, with Sally's discovery by her girlfriend's mother and prompt midnight exile back to Betty. (At this point, how does Sally even have girlfriends? All she wants to do is kiss boys and conjure her late grandfather and commit tonsorial mayhem and swoon at the appeal of lecherous young house vandals.)
Confronted, Sally denies it, prompting arguably the most disturbing line in Mad Men history: "Don't lie to me! I'll cut your fingers off!" As far as threats, vulgarity, neurosis, fear, angst, repression and cold-blooded cruelty go, can you find anything more vivid than that? Betty would rather mutilate her 10-year-old daughter than permit her to masturbate. Or at least to lie about masturbating, which is Betty's default position regarding the matter to begin with: denial. It's almost a wonder it got past the censors. I still squirm at the thought of it.
As far as Honda goes, Don's winning strategy amounts to simply writing a $3,000 check and withdrawing SCDP from consideration for the account. This stuns the Japanese -- just enough to convince them that this is the imagination they want steering their brand into showrooms and driveways nationwide. Or at least Chaough is out. Lane takes some credit for quietly allowing the stunts and subterfuge to proceed in the first place, if only because he knew it's necessity in the trench warfare of competition. Speaking of trench warfare, Roger's tumble into combat-summoning self-pity gets the rebuff from Joan. Her eloquent reply to his question about believing in a better, safer world -- "I have to" -- invokes both Greg's forthcoming Army jaunt and the all-too-rare optimism of the era directly preceding phenomena like the Summer of Love. I relate, Joanie. We'll get there.