-The episode title is “The Crash” referencing Ken’s car crash with drunken Chevy execs, the crash that comes after the agency’s 3 day speed binge, and possibly some darker themes as well.
-Finally Dr. Hex(?) asks what we’ve all been thinking, “What are you going to call this place?”
-”I hate how dying makes saints out of people.” Kind of a throw away line from one of the no name CGC creatives, but valid.
-”Do what you have to.” I liked this line, but can’t remember what it referenced.
-Stan tried to get with Peggy and she seemed to be willing to try it out, but it didn’t stick. Things could be going much better for Abe.
-Sally was reading ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ at Megan and Don’s house. It’s a book about someone who makes a deal with the devil to further their acting career.
-Why is teenage Don Draper such a dork?
-”I’m your grandma.” Sally got social engineered by a burglar who made her eggs. What!? It ends up being doubly Don’s fault because he left the backdoor open, likely after visiting Sylvia’s door, and because, “Then I realized I don’t know anything about you.” Sally was rightly suspicious they were being robbed, but couldn’t be sure because she doesn’t know anything about Don. I imagine this will come up again this season.

David: Hi Aaron, nice use of “lugubrious” last week!

Aaron: I do what I can. Let’s get right into it. What the actual fuck?

David: So this week I’ve been thinking (and talking with friends) about how Weiner actually spends most of the show creating a mood. Obviously, the technical execution of the show, especially the set and costumes, are exceptional. But the show runners aren’t trying to make things happen, they’re trying to make you feel a certain way. We had the wonderful payoff of the merger and the Chevy merger, and then last weeks’ setback for Don – but this week threw me for another loop. I kept going back to Dawn’s comments a few episodes ago about how SCDP was a miserable place – now it’s even more miserable. Have we seen SCDP’s peak? I think so, and I have to say I hope so.

Aaron: Starting out with an easy one, huh? Did SCDP ever peak? It seems like they were on the verge of bankruptcy for a while and then they got their footing and rented an extra floor for appearances. Workwise, what have the highlights been? Beans? (David: LOVED the cameo of the beans artwork this week!) Your instinct is to ask these broad questions about the show as a whole, but our responsibility is recap the episode, so I ask again, What the actual fuck?

David: I know! It’s because we’ve been trained by these plot-driven shows to recap what happened. But I think we’ve been outflanked. There’s nothing but mood. In any case, you were right about Sylvia. Don is shattered, and it’s brought his life as a functioning adult to a halt. I didn’t see that coming.

Aaron: Is that a question?

David: I’m getting there! Last week Done was the master of the universe, getting Sylvia off on an unanswered phone call, and drinking Ted under the table. This week Cutler brings in a doctor to give them all a “boost” and he find himself incapacitated (“Even Chevy is misspelled”). Last week Ken Cosgrove was a “six foot Alan Ladd, this week he’s tap dancing on a broken foot. (Obligatory GIF.) We are all chasing the weekly plot summary, but the scene that most represents this season is Ted flying Don up through the clouds last week. Rain and turbulence, but even above the clouds Don looked like he was ready to retch. He’s lost control of his house, Megan is going to find out about the affair, he’s lost his ability to contribute to the Chevy account, and he even left Sally, Bobby, and Gene alone while a robber visited the apartment. Without reading the tea-leaves too deeply, this doesn’t end well for any of them. Two of the seven initials in SCDP CGC are already dead – I’m guessing we lose one more this year. I know you thought it may be Roger, but do you think there could be a season 7 without Don?

Aaron: No. If the series wasn’t going to end next series, then possibly. It’d be like when Dr. Doug Ross left ER and they’d groom other characters to take his place.

David: I don’t really think he’ll die (until the end of next season). I just want him too. He just writes himself out of everything, and he’s a burden on everyone who surrounds him. There’s still no Chevy in the Chevy pitch. And I don’t think this is coincidental anymore, because not only is the product not mentioned in the ad for Chevy (or “oatmeal?”), the product doesn’t exist! When Peggy calls him out, he rushes to Sylvia’s apartment.

Aaron: That was the drugs. I think he thought he was solving the Chevy issue, too, but you know how you can get hyperfocused on one thing when a sketchy doctor stabs you in the ass with speed? Here’s my question: Did you like this episode?

David: I haven’t liked any of the episodes this year, until I rewatch them (and yes, I know this sounds just like the http://video.wired.com/watch/angry-nerd-new-trek?c=series angry nerd star trek videos). But I have to say, I loved it. The business is built on fiction, just like Don Draper’s existence. We’re seeing the fracturing of that. I’m guessing you loved Betty’s return?

Aaron: Betty is back on blonde, and also mean. Of her 10 or so lines this episode, two of them were inappropriately sexual. Commenting to Sally about her skirt “I earned it.” “On what street corner.” and saying Megan was working the casting couch. So why’s Betty getting smaller as a person?

David: I don’t know why she has to be so mean! Although I’m struck that perhaps Henry Francis is going to get killed, just as Bobby feared. OK, so other quick notes! I was disappointed there was no follow-up to the Rosen’s son in France. Presumably his life was in danger? It would be remarked upon. I would have liked more Ted this week, I thought he had some nice momentum going last week. And I missed Bob Benson too. I would have loved to see him on that speed cocktail. What would have happened to him? Back to this week, what did you make of Gleason’s daughter, Wendy, turning the office into a “whorehouse,” in the words of Don?

Aaron: I’m actually not sure Don was referring to Wendy when he made the “Every time we get a car this place turns into a whorehouse.” comment. He was definitely talking about Joan and Jaguar, but maybe he was talking about clients in general. More and more, Don feels put upon when the clients don’t like his work. Along those lines, he ends up having to do something he doesn’t want to do, he ends up feeling like he’s working for his money. So as Don’s ideas become less appealing to the clients, as he’s less able to sell the ideas to the clients, he thinks of what he’s doing as prostitution. On Wendy, though, the teenage daughter of a dead advertising exec? That was a pretty vivid foreshadowing of a road Sally could go down in a few years.

David: I think that Don used to feel like his work was meaningful, but he is losing it. Don is recognizing that his work and life are meaningless. I’m not sure there’s a deep meaning to the flashbacks – the point of the flashback was that Don grew up in a whorehouse. And now Don finds himself still in a whorehouse. This may be why he misses Sylvia so much – and as you note why he is so upset about Wendy. He believed that he was selling (and, in a way, producing) happiness. That’s over for good now, there won’t be another “Carousel” episode, I think that Don is gone. Did you miss Bob Benson? I missed Bob Benson.

Aaron: Nah. There are so many characters these days, Bob’s on the team that gets to be in 8 episodes with a small story arc in 3 of them. He’s a glorified Roger, Pete, Joan, Betty, Ted… I wonder if there will be some problem with him and Pete over Joan.

Aaron: I’m surprised you didn’t key more on Wendy’s line, “Does someone love me?” “That’s everyone’s question.” That’s pretty much the best way to describe the Don you see, right?

David: Yes, exactly. Everyone else is surrounded by real loss – the death of a partner or father – and Don is mourning an affair. I do worry there’s going to be a problem with Pete & Joan. They’ve been trading meaningful glances all season – but Joan is not getting what Pete thinks he’s sending. Hey, how much time passed between these episodes? Wasn’t Megan going to take a couple weeks off?

Aaron: Damn it. I usually try to keep track of that stuff pretty closely. I’m not sure if there were any clues at all. Interesting how they completely skipped over the RFK assassination, huh? Tell me what else you want to mention about this episode.

David: I’m just uncomfortably drawn to Don. He’s Tony Soprano: if you just step back and look at what he does, he is horrible. But he’s surrounded by all these people we want to root for. Both Twin Peaks and the Sopranos (the two series I feel are closest to Mad Men in tone) had these dark, ambiguous endings, and I think we’re in for that with Don too. Can we go back to the spot that’s ostensibly about Sylvia? Did you like the episode? I forgot to ask you earlier.

Aaron: I liked parts of it. I laughed uncontrollably when Zac Galifinakis, I mean Stan, got stabbed in the arm. I didn’t like it as a whole, I thought it was gimmicky. Did you like it? It was weird, when Don called Peggy and Ginsberg in to talk about his breakthrough. He said it was bigger than selling cars, but… it’s not really clear what “it” is/was. Did he actually have an idea? Or was it just a script to get Sylvia to listen to him? I wasn’t really clear on that.

Aaron: I’ve been annoyed by Don the last two weeks about how he’s taking Sylvia dumping him. He’s Don freaking Draper. There wasn’t really anything in the previous episodes indicating he had such deep feelings for her, so… what’s the deal? I feel manipulated by the writers because they portrayed this as another of his affairs, but when it ended he’s suddenly crushed. If they wanted us to see it differently, they should have treated it differently. Maybe she’s representative of how out of control Don feels in the rest of his life (which is another season!). That is, the one thing he did have control over (for a couple days in a hotel) he doesn’t control anymore. “I want you to try to be happy.” “I’m feeling a lot of emotions, too.” And then, Don snaps out of it after the robbery. It’s like the crash after the weekend of working and the danger he put his kids in by leaving the door open snapped him out of it. This is Rock Bottom Don. Maybe we can expect big things from him the rest of the season.

David: I also thought it was odd how shook up he was, they didn’t quite pull that off (last week, I even denied he was). But I think you are right – although I also think the damage has been done – I don’t think they’ll lose Chevy, but we’re still not sure how they are replacing Vick’s/Clearasil, and other products. And what happened to the Joe Namath special? Surely that was a disaster in waiting.

Aaron: My sense is that they don’t need to replace Vick’s/Clearasil because they have Chevy. Cutler said Chevy was paying for all those weekend workathons.

David: I wish I’d been on record earlier about the Twin Peaks -> Sopranos (David Chase) -> Mad Men lineage. We’ve talked about i over IM. but this was obviously a Twin Peaks/Sopranos dream sequence episode. It’s a particular genre, a sort of lazy (but fun) way to make sure that the characters that need to have epiphanies. In fact, we can call this genre of episode “the epiphanator.” Anyway, Aaron, “are we negroes?” Why even have Bobby on the show if we’re just going to destroy him? Is the point that children of the sixties are idiots?

Aaron: It seems as though the SCDP creative is much more of a motley crew. Stan’s bushy beard and Bieber hair. Ginsberg’s general weirdness. Compared to CGC’s buttoned up guy, one of whom is even a Republican. What do you make of that?

David: Well, it’s a lazy way to communicate that they are “more creative,” and all those CGC folks feel like redshirts to me. I liked Margie (Margie?!) and I am surprised they wrote her out of the show. But I think we’re headed to a Duck what-his-face situation with Ted, who’s already complaining way too much about the SCDP culture. There weren’t any work villains left in Don’s life post-Herb, so Ted is stepping right up.

Aaron: But CGC had been getting the clients/accolades, so I don’t think they’re less creative. I think they represent more of the older way of advertising instead of Stan and Ginsberg ushering in the type of person we know of as “creatives.” For instance, Ted was using a formula to figure out how to pitch Fleischman’s. Almost like advertising as science.

David: But didn’t his process come to nothing? I think the scene where they were “rapping” just betrayed how little his process worked. No ideas at all, and then the meeting ended.

Aaron: The contrast was pretty stark in how they portrayed the two styles of advertising. CGC and brainstorming sessions, SCDP is Don drinking in a room until he gets an idea.

David: I’m a little bit disoriented when it comes to Don’s arc – he’s just getting everything he wants over and over, and as Don famously said, happiness is just a moment before you want more happiness. But, I’m not sure why he feels threatened. They went out of his way to talk about how rich he was last week, but it’s always paired with how unhappy he is. Is there another way to tell this story again? I guess I wouldn’t even call it an arc, it’s more of a narrative pancake. What do you think?

Aaron: We better hope so. Don’s definitely in a different place than he has been in recent years. This season he’s neither on top of the world or underneath it. I actually don’t think I’m too concerned about the arc repeating because I don’t see it as so clearly repetitive as you do. He’s the main character of the show and I think you don’t like him very much, which is fair, but it’s not the same story every season with him as it is with Walt in Breaking Bad (1. Figure out how to get money. 2. Get money. 3. Lose money.)

David: It drives me nuts when the writers of Mad Men wink to the superfans, it just gets in the way of the narrative for me, and it’s distracting. But I loved the Gilligan Island’s conversation. Whereas the SCDP to Gillian’s character mappings were quite clear, now that there are more characters on the show, they just don’t match up anymore. And when Don connected the growing number of brands of margarines, I couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t talking about the growing number of characters on the show as well. Lots of meta-winks this episode. Megan talking about being written out of the show (as January Jones and others have been), the Gilligan’s Island chat, the news of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination being broken by Pete’s mother (I also assumed she meant JFK), and the deep background of the May ’68 Paris riots. The show (especially last week’s show) is rich enough without these distractions, in my opinion, and compared to last week’s episode absolutely nothing happened. Should we be worried? I hate to go there, but are we in a Lost season 5 situation, where the occasional great episode fools us into thinking this is better than it is?

Aaron: I don’t know, I don’t know. I want to believe I’m staying up late writing these recaps every Sunday night for a reason. In talking about TV, there are 4 tiers of program for me from lowest to highest. 1) The dreck I won’t watch. 2) The dreck I will watch, which has a span from drecky dreck to actually OK dreck. 3) Cable dreck, shows that are just better for various reasons from writing to acting, etc. 4) The unparalleled programs. The Wire, Deadwood, etc. I think the first season of Mad Men was absolutely in tier 4, maybe the first three seasons. The last couple have gone from tier 3 and 4. I look forward to watching it every week, but I’m not totally sure it’s as amazing as it used to be.

David: I’m feeling that too. So, was margarine a reference to the show feeling faked, or forced. I can’t imagine so, but it was the first thing I thought of. And that certainly betrays something not great. (I want to remark that the “It was our pleasure to serve you” coffee cups made a brief appearance last week, and they were indeed invented in 1963. So that was satisfying, but it’s not great drama.)

Aaron: We should talk a little bit more about Ted and Don. I like to think it’s not just going to be them battling the next season and a half. It’s hard to see where everything is going because we don’t know how the new agency is set up. We don’t know if they have parallel positions or what. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if they became a great creative partnership? Are we underestimating Ted? He’s getting Don’s charm offensive, “He seems more interested in me than he is in the work.” Ted got the advice to let Don have his way in the early stages, “Give him the early rounds.” and he’s obviously intrigued, “He’s mysterious, but I can’t tell if he’s putting it on.” And don’t forget, Ted got some hand back in the relationship during the flight.

David: I loved it when Peggy said “Move Forward.” It was obvious how quickly she picked up on Don’s misery, his emptiness, and that he was taking it out on Ted by drinking him almost literally under the table. But I think it’s going to be just this season – not the next as well. If they became a great creative partnership, that would be more exciting since it would be unexpected. There’s no way he can “win,” though, because it’s basically Don’s firm. I just don’t like Ted. But the last episode’s bar scene was one of the more perfect scenes of the entire series. So it would be a shame if their relationship is only a power struggle from here on out. When they realized that their Chevy creative was complementary, there was a real shared connection.

David: As above, I think it’s a little lazy to tell a story through references. There’s a nuanced but important difference in using historical context to set a mood and inspired a massive change in a character’s worldview, but sometimes I feel like major events like (say), the May 1968 riots in Paris are less than window dressing. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come up at all? And the second is the Sun Tzu quote, “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” Because for better or worse, that’s been Don’s philosophy. He never competes, he just does what he does best. The show teases Don towards a realization that his life’s work doesn’t matter by juxtaposing his (and his neighbor and co-worker’s) struggles with 1968 in Paris (and will they get to Columbia?) and Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. His will be the body floating fown the river. Do you the writers have something that existential in mind for the series finale? Remember, Weiner comes from the Sopranos, which came from Twin Peaks – two shows with ambiguous (at best) finales.

Aaron: Gosh, that’s a big question. You make these huge declarative statements about how Don is realizing his life’s work doesn’t matter, and I’m not there yet. There was a huge contrast between how the show treated MLK’s assassination and RFK’s, which was shown quickly at the very end and then overtaken with dissonant music about coming together. The reason is the MLK episode was build up to a series reset, a throwaway episode, while this episode is the morning after and there’s too much to cover. On whether we’re going to get a bleak, dystopian, philosophically empty end to the series, maybe? I don’t think anything is being telegraphed ahead of time, though. 1968 is a gigantically tumultuous year, lots of change in lots of facets of life. Maybe the finale will be about change or about renewal.

Aaron: We’ve seen hints of dominant Don before on a couple occasions, but with Dr. Rosen’s wife (whose name I still don’t know for some reason) he seems to have overplayed his hand. What I don’t get is why he was so into her in the first place, and why he was so completely shattered when she ended it. Was it just because he doesn’t like to lose or not get his way?

David: Ah, I think he was trying to drive her back to Dr. Rosen. Because he overheard them arguing, and it was all about how the relationship was only about him. So he made their relationship ALSO only about himself.

Aaron: Subconsciously? I don’t think that’s what he was doing at all, but that’s a good point.

David: Oh, I thought consciously.

Aaron: Then why would he be so upset?

David: He wanted one more romp in the jungle. Or, she thought he loved him more. As he was losing power at work, he was asserting more power with Dr. Rosen’s wife. So once that outlet is removed, he only has Megan. Who, obviously, has some self-determination at this point, even affecting the plot of a popular show.