'Whaddya Say We Get Outta Here and Really Celebrate?': Mad Men Recapped

You know what would have been really awkward? How about if Mad Men had not earned a 2010 Emmy nomination for Best Dramatic Series (let alone a win), thus making Sunday night's episode about Don's big victory at the Clio Awards -- and the drunken two-day bender that followed -- one big swing and miss at a fat meta fastball over the heart of the plate? Then we would have had an average episode and an embarrassed Matthew Weiner, and heaven knows that just won't do.

But you've got to appreciate Weiner's brass -- especially narratively, with his latest assortment of flashbacks illuminating a latter, NYC-based stage of the Don Draper Origin Story. They run parallel to the more contemporary, smarmy genesis of one Danny Siegel, a cousin of Roger's wife Jane who drops by SCDP in search of a job. He says he's 24 (probably closer to 30), and his portfolio is loaded with either cliched ripoffs of other campaigns (Budweiser: The "Cure for the Common Beer") or other people's work entirely. He says he uses what inspires him, but Don and Peggy chalk his prowess up to a little more plagiaristic excess and send him on his way. Don and Roger have quite a laugh over it -- "When does he start?" Roger asks; "The first of Never," Don replies, in stitches -- but apparently this is for real. Jane will not be denied, or at least not disappointed.

Neither will Roger, though it takes a Clio nomination and his latest slog through memoir writing to stimulate the honor/power grab to come. He didn't need those outside influences 10 or 15 years ago, when he was still at the top of Sterling Cooper and would duck out in the afternoon for a gift mink the way you or I might step away for a sandwich. Then, in the sanctuary of Heller's Luxury Furs, Don rocked a sort of unflattering double-breasted suit and shimmered with fur-selling, copy-writing chops that Roger couldn't help but notice for, oh, five seconds. Flipping his business card to the young salesman, he instructed him only to call for delivery instructions. Bizarre! We all know what a nobody Don used to be, but this in-between, downmarket phase of his career -- a pitiable fur salesman! -- offers a whole new dynamic informing the cold, calculating ad genius who ties his validation to industry awards. He's come a long way since selling cars in California, but he had plenty of rungs to go toward his dream -- and Roger wasn't about to boost him, or even hold the ladder still, for that matter.

The mink, incidentally, is for Joan, who awaited her lover in a hotel with, er, bounteous youthful zest of her own. These flashbacks are ultimately most intriguing only insofar as they help wedge in more broadcast time for all the cast members currently going for Emmys down the broadcast dial; surely if Peggy weren't 15 or so at the time, she, too, might have cameoed in Roger's past as a drugstore clerk or cigarette girl or who knows what. (And Betty... ugh. We'll get to Betty.) Beyond that, as well-written and creatively deployed as they are, I'm not sure I get their purpose. If the idea, vis a vis Danny Siegel, is that they don't make ambitious, upwardly mobile pests like they used to, well, that's great. But the deeper metaphor of it all -- that Roger's largesse is benevolent, influential and unrequited -- implies that Lord Weiner himself is looking back on this most fortuitous of nights and either asking for thanks or himself thanking his predecessors. And in both cases, the future is doomed.

After all, even Danny Siegel will freely admit that his Roger connection is all he has -- no talent, no real experience, nothing. Down the hall in the creative lounge, Peggy's arc launches thanks largely to Stan Rizzo, a true pig among pigs whose idea of seduction is to unspool his old LBJ campaign ads for secretaries and nudge Peggy repeatedly over her uptight demeanor. But anyone would be a "rag" (Stan's words) under such circumstances: Don insists she learn to work with the "talented and more experienced" man on the Vicks cough-drop ads, and she's not even invited to attend that day's Clios after her part in the nominated Glo-Coat campaign. (Joan, meanwhile, gets to go in the hopes that she'll "charm" a few new prospective clients.) Mean!

And it will get worse, thanks largely to Don's imbibing at the Waldorf (at least he didn't get drunkenly ejected like Duck Phillips -- nice seeing you, Duck!) and mindblowing irresponsibility upon returning to the office, where the Quaker Oats team awaits SCDP's pitch for Life cereal. They would have arrived earlier were it not for wind in Philly; left with a Friday afternoon, post-Clio meeting, the duo (and their mortified account man Pete Campbell) is subjected to Roger's victory lap around the conference room and Don's hiccuping his way through the creative proposal. "Eat Life by the bowlful" strikes a little wide of the mark, prompting Don to basically scat a succession of alternatives despite Pete's entreaties otherwise. One, "The Cure for the Common Breakfast," achieves more of a bulls-eye -- not to mention tugs every last nerve in Peggy Olson's body.

"I need to talk to you right now," she tells Don afterward, eager to put what just happened in some recent historic perspective. Don's not having it: He wants Stan and Peggy locked in a room all weekend until they can hammer out Vicks. Stan's got more important things to hammer out, if you know what I mean; the guy loves his women (or at least leering at them), and the early portions of their hotel summit are spent largely with Peggy seething at such vicious insults as, "You're [Don's] favorite. He'll take you hunting and let the carcasses hang out of your mouth." Uh, whoa. Also: He has an irritating thing for nudie magazines. Peggy's just not "liberated," you see? but Peggy being Peggy -- that tightly bundled purveyor of mischief and genius -- spots her cue to get liberated, disrobing and challenging Stan to do the same. He does, reluctantly, and then a tad embarrassingly, calling his resulting erection "involuntary" before giving up to "take a leak." Uh-huh. Betty would cut his fingers off.

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