This was an episode with a theme, which gave the show some much-needed structure.
Don (Hamm) is going to have to shape up if he wants to keep up with all of the changes in his life. "Move forward." Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) says to Don (Jon Hamm) midway through tonight's Mad Men episode. In many ways, this was the theme of the episode. SCDP had to move forward from their exciting merger with CGC last week, Burt Peterson (Michael Gaston) once again had to move forward from his work at the agency, and Don had to move forward in both his professional and personal life. This was an episode with a theme, which gave the show some much-needed structure. Let's jump in and see how it went.
Last week's episode was remarkably chaotic for a series that is usually much more deliberately paced, and that chaos carried over into the early moments of this week's episode. As CGC moved in to SCDP's offices, many things were up in the air. Who had which secretary? Where was Dawn (Teyonah Parris)? Who are all these new people? Some questions were answered, while many more are still up in the air, but from the opening minutes to Burt's hilarious firing things were fast paced and enjoyable.
Everything slowed down for a moment as Ted (Kevin Rahm) sat down with his new creative staff to talk about margarine. It was interesting to see a process that was vastly different from Don's, where they held an actual brainstorm and no one was yelled at. Naturally, Don was too busy in a hotel room with Sylvia (Linda Cardellini) to attend this meeting, which Ted scolded him for later. I've been frustrated with Don and Sylvia's relationship from the get-go, because whatever meaning it has to the series has been far too abstract for my liking. I was excited to see that Ted was going to call him out for not working, though, and this led to a little bit of gamesmanship between the two. Don drank Ted under the table, embarrassing him on his first day in the office, but Ted got his revenge as he flew him and Don to their meeting with Mohawk upstate.
And then we actually had the scenes between Don and Sylvia. Don was feeling on top of the world after the stunt he pulled last week, and he wanted to continue a streak of dominating things, so he turned to the always submissive Sylvia. It's honestly getting to the point of uncomfortable to watch Don talk dirty to people, like we are getting too intimate with a character who is supposed to have an air of mystery about him. I get the whole point here; Don is used to always getting what he wants, and he takes advantage of that power he has, and the payoff of him finally not getting his way with Sylvia when she actually ended the affair was satisfying, but I think the writers on this show are capable of being more subtle than they were with what has existed for this storyline so far.
As far as the rest of the office is concerned, most characters didn't get a lot of attention this week, with the exception of Joan, Bob, and Pete (Christina Hendricks, James Wolk, and Vincent Kartheiser). Joan had mysterious pains in her side that turned out to be an ovarian cyst, which just sounds terrible. Thankfully, creepy Bob was there to take care of her, which in turn made him significantly less creepy. I actually like Bob, and it was nice to see Joan maneuver to keep him hired as the other partners were talking about letting him go to balance the books in the merger. I'm not sure if there's anything substantial here, though I hope there's more to Bob considering the bizarre way he's entered the series, but as of right now I'll take this small storyline as a good start.
Then there's Pete, who I'm constantly fluctuating between hating and feeling sorry for. He was understandably worried about his security at the company considering the amount of business he lost from his father-in-law last week, and things just kept getting worse for him at the office, as he had no chair at the partners meeting, and wasn't involved in the Mohawk trip. Even worse, he had to deal with the arrival of his mother, who is at the very least going senile, but probably has Alzheimer's. Without any real backstory, it's hard to accept how cruel and impatient he is with here, even if he does have a lot going on. I'm more interesting in thinking about just how much more stress Pete can take before something drastic happens. I don't know exactly where his character is going, and his arc has been all over the place throughout the series, but I hope he gets some real direction soon, because I think he's one of the best characters on the show, and could provide a huge payoff before all is said and done.
This week's episode of Mad Men ended with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and an interesting decision to overlay upbeat music on top of audio of the news report playing from the Drapers' television. The look Don gave at the end of the episode is another case of the writers divulging far too little for us to take anything away from the final moments of this episode, but it looks like the assassination at least will have an effect on the next episode, which is more than I can say for any of the other historical events covered so far this season. All in all, this was a decent episode that lost steam towards the end, but the trend is leaning towards a much more active second half of the season, which I'm all for.