Yeah, I liked this one.
Peggy was more sympathetic than she’s been all half-season (not a difficult trick), but it also reminded us of why we have liked her in the first place and placed her frustrations in more context. She doesn’t like her own ad pitch, even though Lou does, and is thinking through why it doesn’t work (for her anyway). The “Burger Chef” plotline addresses the changing role of family, and of women, in a way that seems smart and well-observed. Don is around, this time as someone trying to help (even if the “My Way” dance felt clunky). He’s being the mentor he used to be, without being her boss.
Pete’s return to New York also is refreshing, because it’s nice to see him as the jerk he always was. He’s got a hot girlfriend, but going back East seems to have revived his old insecurities and obnoxious attitudes. Pete spends the episode treating women as inferiors (Peggy, who can’t do her own pitch), shopaholic bedmates (Bonnie) or ex-wives with the unmitigated gall to date (Trudy). His child is afraid of him, and Trudy couldn’t care less about him. This stings so badly that he seems to screw things up with Bonnie.
Bob, meanwhile, returns with news that the GM account is about to vanish. And he’s going to get a job there, so he wants Joan to be his beard – an insulting offer, made insultingly, with references to her age. It’s a believable plotline, though, and one can see things, from a 1969 perspective, from his perspective as well as hers. The fact that Bob misplays his hand so badly is more a sign of understandable desperation than anything else.
And Megan returns to New York too, inspiring in Don a desire to move back into the past – when she adored him. The change of setting is nice (no ominous Sharon Tate references this week), but it’s clear that Megan doesn’t want to go back to that any more than Don wants to relocate permanently to California. Don’s interest in Peggy was more in reconciliation and support than in potential romance. The latter would be a bad move for the show, and I didn’t read it that way.
The closing scene in Burger Chef was a shrewd move, as both the setting for Peggy’s revised pitch while bringing her and Pete (who still has a few redeeming qualities) together in a different setting as a different kind of “family” – work colleagues and close friends, as opposed to a nuclear family led by a pipe-smoking father. While that view of things can be elusive in real life, it certainly played to how the world was changing in 1969.
I thought the “My Way” dance scene felt anything but clunky. I thought it was a great scene, and this was a great episode.
I liked that I thought “wow, great closing credits song” and then the characters reacted to it.
The ball-fake leading to tonight’s craziness.
I loved the closing Burger Chef scene, the irony of Don and Peggy and Pete successfully understanding the “family” concept as it pertains to their ad campaign while being so terribly unable to actually participate in successful families themselves.
Even when Don and Megan are together they are apart, and they’re both realizing the writing is on the wall. Even if no one gets Manson’d.
This was a strong episode, setting us up for what will hopefully be a strong mid-season close (which I haven’t watched yet).