Reprinted with permission from www.hautetalk.com

Pete’s mother comes for a visit, with her new nurse, Manolo. Pete pawns her off on Peggy, who Pete’s mother mistakes for Trudy. In her fog, she says that it’s good that they reconciled for their child, which leaves Peggy shaken. Pete then tries to bribe Manolo to…I don’t know what, but I’m hoping it’s not what I’m thinking.

Peggy, Pete, and Ted are drunk after an out-of-town meeting with Ocean Spray. Pete figures out what’s going on with Peggy and Ted because, “I’ve seen that look,” and tells Peggy that Ted is in love with Peggy, too. Peggy then tells Pete about the strange conversation she had with Pete’s mother, but falls short of bringing up the baby.

Roger is waiting for Don in his office. Sterling Cooper & Co. is going to pitch Sunkist. Oranges. Good for drinking, eating, and juggling. Ocean Spray, Sunkist, conflict? Conflict. Ted yells at Don to “join this company and read a memo once in a while.” Jim tries to calm him down, but Ted is taking it very personally and asks Jim to “imagine every time Ginger Rogers jumped in the air, Fred Astaire punched her in the face.” And now that’s all I can think about, so thank you, Ted.

When Don gets home, he finds Megan talking to Sylvia’s son. He’s in trouble. He sent back his draft card early and got a 1-A classification, which means he will be the first to get drafted. He wants to run to Canada, but Don tells Megan, “He can’t spend the rest of his life on the run.” The next day, Don has a private conversation with Pete. He wants to know how to get a deferment, but Pete won’t help. Which, yeah. That was to be expected.

Later that evening, Ted and Don are entertaining the crew from Chevy, which means men in suits eating meat and drinking booze. Don brings up the war in the hopes that someone at the table can help his mistress’s son. The executives shut down the war talk real fast, and Ted saves the conversation with levity. The next morning, Ted accuses Don of trying to poison his relationship with Chevy. Don suggests that he was just taking their temperature, and would not have done it if it wasn’t important to him. Ted realizes that perhaps Don is a human being after all, and in exchange for Don dropping Sunkist, Ted agrees to call one of his contacts in the National Guard to try to get Mitchell one of those sweet, danger-free George W. Bush pilot gigs.  When Don calls Sylvia to tell her the good news, she asks, “Did you fix it?” Don just wants to be that man, yet it always seems to be with other peoples’ kids. Their conversation turns to their relationship. She didn’t want him to fall in love, and she wasn’t very good to him, and just like that, it’s back on.

Pete’s mother and Manolo arrive at Pete’s apartment, and Pete sends Manolo away so that the two of them can talk. Pete lets his mother know that Manolo is her nurse, but Pete’s mother is enjoying the male attention just a little too much. “Maddy has awakened a part of me that was long dormant.” When Pete threatens to let Manolo go, his mother tells him, “you were a sour little boy, and you are a sour little man.” And, yeah. That sums up Pete Campbell.

Sally Draper is in trouble because Betty finds out that she is only one of two girls on an overnight trip with a bunch of boys in Manhattan. Because Sally is clever, she diffuses the situation by saying that she will stay at Don’s apartment. Sally and her friend, Julie, arrive in the city and run into Mitchell in the lobby and swoon. That night, Sally and Julie make a list of “Things I Like About Mitchell.” Julie dares her to sneak downstairs to kiss him, and you can tell that Julei is nothing but trouble. The next morning, Megan is rushing to get the kids out the door but Sally is nowhere near ready.

When Sally finally gets dressed, it’s in a slick red and blue plaid mini dress with a red bow at the neck. Julie is looking slightly dorkier in a white dress with a spring green bow with Holly Hobby-esque sleeves.  The girls are in a cab on the way to whatever educational school event they used as an excuse to go to New York City, and Julie tells Sally that she slid a love letter from Sally to Mitchell under Mitchell’s back door. That earns a fairly impressive punch in the arm from Sally, who heads back to her father’s apartment. After talking the doorman out of his set of master keys, she listens at the door just like Don used to do. Oh no, oh no, oh no, don’t go in there…Sally spots the note on the kitchen counter and when she walks inside to retrieve it SHE SEES DON SCREWING SYLVIA!!! AND SHE DROPS THE KEYS ON THE LINOLEUM SO THEY SEE HER!!! ZOMG! Don pulls himself together in the elevator, but Sally is long gone in a cab. Don is, understandably, a mess. He doesn’t know which way to go—home? Work? Work, then home?

After spotting a rat in her apartment on the way to the office, Peggy comes home late one night to a trail of blood on the floor, and she hears the telltale squeaking and scratching sounds. She calls Stan and asks him to come over because there’s a “mortally wounded” rat in a trap under the couch. When he tells her that he isn’t the boyfriend so it isn’t his problem, Peggy tries to lure him over with the promise of sex. But Stan has a real live woman with him in bed, plus he doesn’t believe that Peggy is serious about the rat-induced booty call.

Pete calls Bob Benson into his office to yell at him for recommending Manolo The Rapist as a caretaker for his mother. Bob tells Pete that Manolo’s interests aren’t with women, which repulses Pete. But Bob wants to know if his mother seemed happy. And if she’s happy, then what’s the problem? “Couldn’t it be, if someone took care of you, very good care of you, if this person would do anything for you, if his well being was your only thought, is it possible that you might begin to feel something for him. When there’s true love, does it matter who it is?” And with that, Bob Benson all but confesses his love for Pete which, really? Pete? Nobody loves Pete. Even his own mother doesn’t love him. But there it is, their knees touch, and Pete moves his away. “Tell Manolo I will give him a month’s pay, and tell him it’s disgusting.” Bob leaves, and Pete looks like he wants to take a Silkwood shower.

When Pete gets home that night, he pours himself the remnants of a box of Raisin Bran. Aw, Peggy got an orange cat, to kill the giant rat. And Ted goes home to his wife and two kids. Don, however, is less sure about what he will find at home. By all appearances, it’s a happy family. But Sally looks nauseous. She clearly has not told anyone, even Julie. Then, Arnold and Mitchell stop by so that Mitchell can thank Don. Sally finally has her anticipated outburst, “You make me sick!” Don goes to talk to her, but the door is locked. He speaks quietly through the door, the only lies he can muster, “I know you think you saw something, I was, comforting Mrs. Rosen, she was very upset, it’s very, complicated.”  But Sally knows what she saw, and it’s just a matter of time before she decides who she will tell. My guess? Betty.

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Reprinted with permission from www.hautetalk.com

The episode opens with a drunken car crash, and is that Ken Cosgrove at the wheel? Ken hobbles into the office with a cane, and all Ted wants to know is what the client said about their seventh round of creative. The client is Chevy, and they “didn’t like ‘em.”

Don gets a call at the office from a very angry Silvia who tells Don that he needs to stop wandering her hallway, leaving his cigarette butts around. So…Don has turned into a stalker, and Silvia is in control. Silvia explains that their relationship was all about trust, and both sides having equal amounts to lose, but it appears that Don doesn’t care as much about Megan as Silvia does about her husband. After reminding Don that he once loved Megan, Silvia hangs up the phone.

Sally gets Bobby and Gene ready for a weekend with Don and Betty shows up with recently re-blonded hair.

There is yet another death in the office as we learn that Frank has passed away, which leaves half of Sterling Cooper Draper And What Is This Agency’s Name tearful. Coincidentally, the agency has brought in a doctor to administer an “energy serum” to the creative department that gives 24 to 72 hours of uninterrupted energy and focus. It requires Don to drop his pants, and while I’m generally very pro-pantsless Don, there’s a needle involved so I have to look away.

The drug seems to work because the hallways are riddled with creatives running around like mice in a maze. The running then turns into pacing as the creative team desperately tries to revive the Chevy account with a dad buying a son a car, and a son asking his dad for a car. The look on Peggy’s face shows that they’re grasping at some very tired straws.

Over in Don’s office, Don promises Ken Cosgrove that he’ll have fifteen new ideas by Monday, but that Ken needs to get Don in that room so that he can look the client in the eyes, and rambles on about how “the timbre in my voice is as important as the content, I don’t know whether I’ll be forceful or submissive, but I must be there in the flesh.” Then, Ken starts tap dancing on his injured foot, and is this what the late 60s looked like? Man, I missed all the good drugs. Don then visits the creatives to give them a totally creepy pep talk about how it only takes one good idea. Peggy wearily asks Don what that one good idea is, and Don’s got nothing. She’s the only one who has figured out that Don is useless. He then gets a stroke of drug-induced genius and instructs Peggy to go into the archives and look for a soup account from the mid-1950s because it has the solution.

While Don is flying on amphetamines, Megan is taking care of the kids. But Megan has to leave in even higher hair and a very short mini dress, so she bribes Sally to watch her brothers by promising a pair of boots to go with a skirt she bought her the week before. Sally agrees and spends the evening reading Rosemary’s Baby when an intruder wanders into the apartment and claims to be Sally’s Grandma Ida. But…she’s black. She says that she raised Don, and Sally isn’t buying it at first, but then Grandma Ida knows Don’s name and she knows that he’s handsome, and for a fourteen-year-old girl, that’s enough. When Grandma Ida starts going through too many drawers and cabinets, Sally calls the police. Unfortunately, Grandma Ida catches her and hangs up the phone.

The Sterling Cooper Something Or Other Drug Den has turned their attention to chucking X-Acto knives at Stan. One lands in his arm, but thanks to drugs, he doesn’t feel a thing.  Peggy takes him away to clean him up and receives a few semi-unwanted kisses from Stan. She eventually asks him to stop because she has a boyfriend and doesn’t like beards.

Don visits Silvia’s hallway on his way home and lightly knocks on the back door. No one answers, but he doesn’t go home. Instead, he returns to the office to look for that old soup campaign. He finds it, and it’s nothing more than a kid looking up at his mother with a spoonful of soup and the headline, “Because you know what he needs.” It reminds him of a hooker from his youth who healed him back to health and then took his virginity, so naturally it’s perfect for Chevy.

Don calls Peggy and Ginsberg into his office to announce his big idea. They’re desperate for him to be right, but he’s just a sweaty old man rambling a lot of words that don’t add up to a Chevrolet car. Peggy asks, “What have you been doing the past three days? Have you been working on Chevy at all?” Having solved all of Sterling Cooper Draper Please Shorten This Name’s problems, Don finally goes home to find the police, Megan, Betty, Henry, and the kids sitting in what’s left of the living room. Grandma Ida held the kids hostage and robbed Don blind. She got in through the back door, which had been left open. With nothing left to do, Don collapses. The next morning, Don runs into Silvia in the elevator. She’s in a gorgeous canary yellow suit with a perfect wave of black hair, and they say nothing to each other. It is the longest elevator ride in the world. When Don gets to the office, he calls Sally to tell her that he’s okay, and that he left the door open so it’s his own fault. She’s in a canary yellow nightgown and I get the impression that he’s trying to apologize for more than just the robbery.

Ted returns from mourning the loss of Frank and wants to know what went on over the weekend. He has looked at the new Chevy campaigns and half of them are jibberish, and Chevy is spelled wrong (Shevy? Chevvy? Chevie? Cheavy?). Don cleverly sets himself up as Ted’s boss by announcing that from now on, Don’s role is Creative Director, which means that he will be evaluating work, not creating it, and “I’m sorry, Ted, but every time we get a car, this place turns into a whorehouse.” Ted has no idea what he’s talking about, which perfectly sums up the last few days at the office.

Next week, Peggy, Megan in a v-neck, Joan in a fuschia dress, Pete, Don, and drinks.

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