Mad Men Review: Things You Can Accomplish While Drunk (or Nude)

It is poetically fitting that on the same night Mad Men won its third consecutive Emmy for Best Drama, Don Draper took home a Clio Award for an ad produced by the firm. The series and its creators certainly deserve the accolade, but does Don? Sure, he probably pitched the idea and massaged the client through the creation process but we learn that Peggy was actually the brains behind the campaign. And what thanks and applause does she get? A crappy assignment with a new art director who happens to be a lazy asshole. This girl just can’t catch a break.

The art director in question (named Stan) is by and large a pure misogynist who’s biggest claim to fame is an election ad for Lyndon Johnson that never aired. He works at a snail’s pace and talks down to Peggy like he owns the place. And while you would think she could get a little support from Don on this one, he is unsympathetic to her plight and chalks it up to her lack of management skills. Don then drunkenly (more on that later) forces them to lock themselves in a hotel room until they can complete the assignment. It is in this hotel room where Stan happily lounges on the bed reading Playboy and claims to be a nudist.

And this is where for the second week in a row Peggy became my hero. She boldly calls him out on his nudist claim and strips down to nothing to do their work in. He sheepishly follows suit and Peggy mocks his erection until he finally submits and gets the assignment done. In my opinion, Peggy is the definition of cool beans and I really hope she can start getting a little respect like Rodney Dangerfield.

In addition to getting stuck with a lousy work partner, my hero was also denied the pleasure of attending the Clio Awards ceremony, which Don, Roger, Pete, and Joan attend to both claim victory and seek out new clients. Pete and Joan manage to stay sober enough to run into and talk to old coworker Ken Cosgrove whose friend spills the beans and makes a comment about the “old gang getting back together.” Pete is immediately suspicious of a merger but has to wait to talk to anyone about it because Don and Roger are already properly shit-faced.

After winning the award (where Don acts like a little boy on Christmas morning) the four are called back to the office for a meeting with Life Cereal that had earlier been postponed. Keep in mind the fact that they’ve been drinking all day long when you imagine how this meeting goes down. It starts with a “victory lap” around the table followed by a wonderfully slurred project pitch speech from Don. I’ve honestly heard better public speaking from crazy homeless men but the guys from Life Cereal eat it up (they are also drunk) except for the slogan. But rather than schedule a later meeting to pitch new slogans – Don starts riffing on the spot and pulls “The Cure for the Common Breakfast” out of his ass and the client loves it!

But there is one problem. Don didn’t really pull it out of his ass. He actually stole it from a young guy (Michael Yurchak) that he and Peggy interviewed earlier in the day who used the same slogan on every type of product in his portfolio. At the time they mocked the kid but here now was drunken Don using the idea much to the approval of the client. Peggy is furious about the whole thing but Don is oblivious and heads out to the bars for more celebrating where he picks up a chick for his Friday night and wakes up on Sunday morning with someone else and no recollection of Saturday. For the 111th time this season Don has hit rock bottom and even he seems a little disturbed by it. I take this as a slightly good sign but Peggy still has to show up at his doorstep and remind him that he stole his new Life Cereal slogan from the inept interviewee who Don then feels forced to hire.

What makes this all the more potent is the fact that throughout this episode we were treated to flashback scenes of Don meeting Roger for the first time when Don was hustling fur coats to the rich and trying to make the jump into advertising. We see Don throw his portfolio in with a nice mink stole that Roger gives to Joan but Roger has no interest in the coat salesman whatsoever. After some persistence from Don they meet over drinks (in the morning) where Roger gets wasted and mistakenly tells Don, “Welcome aboard,” so Don shows up at the office the next day to start his career as an ad man. Funny how things work out like that.

Is all of this a sign that Don is on his way to becoming just like Roger – a bitter alcoholic who spends his time recording memories for his memoirs rather than doing any real work? It’s hard to argue with that assessment but I think we all hope that that’s not the case. Don’t get me wrong – I adore Roger Sterling but losing Don to frivolous antics would be a crime against ad reading humanity.

One last nugget of information that this episode gave to us is the impending return of Ken Cosgrove! After running into him at the ceremony and suspecting a merger, Pete confronted Lane about it and learned that they’re actually hiring Ken instead. Long-time viewers of the show will remember the bitter (mostly just from Pete) rivalry between Pete and Ken over the years so it’ll be nice to have the evil, paranoid version of Pete back. Let the games begin.

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Season 4, Episode 6: Waldorf Stories (originally aired August 29, 2010)

Sundays at 10PM/9C, AMC

Photographs courtesy of AMC and imdbpro.