'Jesus, What a Mess': Mad Men Recapped

Don's furious, of course, but it's nothing he can't delegate -- once again -- to a lady friend in his immediate proximity. In this case it's Faye; "I'd ask my secretary to do it, but she's dead," he says with his customary grave seriousness that makes it all the more funny. Off they go in the wimpy yellow afterglow of Faye's sing-songy condescension ("I'm Dr. Faye!") and the evidence trail of her and Don's relationship. "Are you going to marry Faye?" Sally asks her father. "She knew you had peanut butter." This kid, always a couple moves ahead. And considering she didn't butcher her hair or get caught masturbating to The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and she's safe and sound and seemingly recovered from her peripatetic afternoon, Don plays along, commissioning a pizza delivery while clarifying in no uncertain terms that she'll have to return to Ossining the next day -- rum-soaked french-toast breakfast aside. (Expect that recipe on AMC's Mad Men cocktail page any time now.)

Sally doesn't respond to threats (at the moment) -- that's Roger and Joan's job. Their bittersweet evening out is ended as so many dates ended in Manhattan in 1965: at the business end of a pistol, handing over every valuable on their persons (including wedding rings! Foreshadowing much, Mr. Weiner?) to their assailant. Roger is an old hand at this, quite cool and profoundly talented at the immediate aftermath of throwing his tongue down his co-muggee's throat and initiating street sex right there on Skid Row. It happens to everyone. Their morning after is not quite as charged; Joan doesn't disagree with Roger's assessment that they had "a moment," but the cold truth of the matter is that she's married.

Meanwhile, the Fillmore Auto Parts account is giving everyone fits. The tiebreaker in the family stutters (he also happens to be the most logical, asking, "Sh-sh-sh-sh-ouldn't th-th-they be c-c-c-convincing us?"), and Peggy later thinks to circumvent the Southern boycott of the company -- which won't employ blacks -- by enlisting Hary Belafonte to sing the promotional jingle they have in mind. But that festering c*nt of a colleague Stan torpedoes the plan, instead suggesting Dean Martin -- "a friend of Sammy Davis Jr.!" -- in one of his trademark Peggy takedowns. Her own customary pause of disbelief, horror and frustration fills the room, but Don barely notices. He's got to dash off to make sure the Sally/Betty changeover takes place without complications.

He should have stayed in the conference room. "I don't wanna go!" Sally shrieks, writhing in exorcised panic. "I hate it there." Don helplessly fetches Faye once more, and I do mean "helplessly"; her limited child-psych chops blow up in her face despite the quite honest, simple and true counsel, "Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do." Sprinting out of Don's office to the lobby, Sally faceplants in the corridor as the entirety of the secretary pool looks on in anguish, sympathetic eyes zeroed in, burrowing into the vicarious shame of the witness -- there but for the grace of God go all of them. Megan goes to her knees, picks Sally up and embraces her. "It's OK," she tells the girl. "I fall all the time." Either that knowledge or the sheer, crushing odds of her situation level Sally out, and her own look upon reuniting with her mother -- mussed hair, half-smile -- suggests either an epiphany ("I will never come back here in anything less than full control") or acceptance of fate ("I will never have full control"). "Jesus, what a mess," Don tells a tearful Faye.

And then the coda: More Joyce, who fulfills her entire purpose to look awkward, deliver semi-sentient line readings and push the Mad Men feminist agenda when Peggy herself hasn't the juice or the initiative to do so herself. To wit: Women are pots, men are soup, and while Joyce downgrades Abe, she admits she wouldn't have helped him out in the first place if she "didn't think she was some very interesting soup." Food (ha!) for thought heading into the season's home stretch, where such insights must now inherit and uphold the authority once held strictly to Blankenshipisms like the one in Ida's penultimate office exchange:

"Three-letter word for a flightless bird," said Bert Cooper.

"Emu," said Miss Blankenship.

"No. It starts with an 'L.'"

"The hell it does."

Sigh. Good luck, ladies.

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