'Let's Go Someplace Darker': Mad Men Recapped

Of course, someone has to lose the round, and this one goes to Don as Peggy retreats to the ladies room for a good sob. Worst birthday ever? Pretty much! But it can only improve, and it does when Don, in his ongoing quest to break the Samsonite deadlock, rummages through the supply room for a new Dictaphone tape only to find the tape containing Roger's memoir dictation.

If there's anything that can heal the breach between two quarreling office mates, trust me, it's the co-founder of the company rambling about Ms. Blankenship's oversexed past and Bert Cooper's botched orchiectomy -- at the hands of Dr. Lyle Evans! Mystery solved! (Also: Think twice before Googling "orchiectomy" -- or at least narrow your browser window enough to avoid the accompanying Google image results. You can thank me later.) Peggy isn't quite as amused by the gossip as Don is -- "It's like reading someone's diary" -- but again, the bonding opportunity is priceless, as is the lessening of tensions provided by a stray mouse scurrying around the office. Peggy won't go near it and Don can't find it, which means it'll probably wind up being Joan's problem in the weeks ahead. Can't. Wait.

Next up for Don and Peggy: Dinner. And Don knows how to treat a lady on her birthday, rolling into a Greek diner for a burger and fries and more stimulating conversation on subjects ranging from the Acropolis, the nature of suitcases, single womanhood ("I know what I'm supposed to want," Peggy says, "but it doesn't feel right."), plane travel, Don's service in Korea, and the deaths of their respective fathers -- both of whom were struck down while their children watched. Don suggests they leave: "Let's go someplace darker," meaning of course that their diner is a little too overlit for the occasion, but so packed with thematic innuendo as to be Weiner's own punch in our nose.

But they do find a dingy bar where they can listen to the game and talk over more of Peggy apprehensions about singledom -- not just that she hates dating ("I'm not good at it") or wishes men would check her out on the street, but that everyone at work thinks she slept with Don to get her job. Moreover, her mother hates Don because she thinks he's the deadbeat who knocked her daughter up four years ago. She comes tantalizingly close to dropping the name of the real father before her Draperesque discretion kicks in. Well, that and the broadcast of the Clay/Liston fight, which gracelessly interrupts them as Liston goes down mere seconds into the fight. Don joins the barroom chorus of "Get up!"; Peggy earnestly asks what's happening. Nothing more work couldn't fix, alas, and they trudge back to the office.

"That elevator's like a rocket," Don says upon entering his lobby, slumping and staggering under the influence of altitude sickness and maybe a few drinks too many (again), heading to the men's room with Peggy's help before puking his guts out. Not to be outdone, look who else had paid a late-night, bowel-vacating visit to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce: It's Duck Phillips, himself trashed beyond belief, bellowing Peggy's name and making the shattered equivalent of a beeline for Roger Sterling's office to take a dump on his chair. It's intended for Draper, but this'll do -- at least until Peggy intervenes, imploring him to pull his pants and let her escort him out. It's a plan until Don and Duck cross paths -- because obviously -- and the saber-rattling commences. "You don't belong here," Don growls, to which Duck comes back with a torrent of invective for him and Peggy, who's "just another whore."

I'm not sure what prompted Don's next move -- that he was defending Peggy, that he patronizes some good whores, or both -- but in any case, drunkenly swinging at Duck turns out to be just another failed experiment in a day full of them. "I killed 17 men in Okinawa," Duck spits from on top of Don, the heel of his hand raised, ready to cave in the suave ad genius's face. "Uncle," Don says, extracting himself from Duck's animal crouch and migrating back to the redoubt of his office. Naturally, Peggy returns after shaking Duck off -- they may not solve Samsonite tonight, but there is still some emotional work to do.

How, though? Don's an acknowledged mess, vomit streaking his dress shirt, self-destruction as urgent a deadline as that of any client. Peggy, meanwhile, fulfills his prophecy from the end of last season, finally becoming the extension of Don he saw when he looked at her and her work. Thus they slump there in the dark -- an old couple, a new couple, a reflection, a symbiosis. When Peggy asks him what has happened to him, she asks not for his own benefit, but rather as a means of exorcising this low ebb from her own future.

I could go on and on... They fall asleep on his couch, he sees Anna's apparition (holding a suitcase -- a Samsonite, I presume), wakes at sunrise and calls Stephanie, gets the news about Anna, is discouraged from coming out to California (Anna left her body to science; maybe they can find out why she's so dramatically inert), breaks down and hangs up only to find Peggy having raptly witnessed and eavesdropped on his conversation. We haven't seen Don this vulnerable since he recounted his brother's death to Betty, and Peggy, like his ex before her, can offer only limited (if sincere) consolation to this man she literally doesn't even know -- this "Dick Whitman," this fake. Set adrift in the roiling sea of identity, Dick finally loses sight of land. He has no future but the one with her hand on his shoulder -- the one whose own tether has been cut without warning and who can't come up with the breakthrough that will help them sell millions of dollars worth of luggage. It's no mistake they have this exchange at dawn, but the dawn of what?

Their clasped hands hours later over Don's winning Samsonite idea -- a triumphant suitcase looming over a fallen old American Tourister, a la Clay over Liston -- hint at transference. Their exchanged glances hint at compassion. Their shared knowledge of the lives they went through in a single night hint at faith -- that they have each other. And even when it seems impossible to believe or communicate, each other is enough.

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