It was one of the most perverse episodes of “Mad Men” yet — a packed, bicoastal hour in which Don doesn’t only hear from his past, but finds a way to secure his future.
But before he does so, there’s a threesome, Sally might have broken her nose, Betty gets political and somebody really loses it, slicing off a nipple in the biggest scene of office violence since Ken Cosgrove drove a John Deere tractor over somebody’s foot.
Well, as Iggy Pop might have put it, “It’s 1969, OK?”
The episode titled “Runaways” is rife with questioning authority. First Stan finds Lou’s portfolio for a comic strip about a monkey in the military called “Scout’s Honor.” Lou explains he was trying to strike it rich, just as the real ad man Chet Stover did at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample in the 60s, creating the “Underdog” cartoon show so he could sell some cereal for General Mills.
Lou is awfully thinned skinned when people kid him about his creation, though, and makes everybody work late as punishment.
That means Don can’t fly out as he had planned to see his “niece” Stephanie. Stephanie was last seen in season four as the surviving niece of Anna Draper, the widow of the original Lt. Don Draper. Anna died of cancer, you may recall, and we didn’t hear from Stephanie again until now, when the full blown hippie child calls pregnant from a Hollywood phone booth in the shadow of the Capitol Records Tower and sheepishly asks Don for help.
Then as now, she’s played by Caity Lotz, but since she was last on “Mad Men,” Lotz has gone on to play Sara Lance in season two of “Arrow” on The CW (put a black mask on her and she’s the Black Canary).
Stephanie gets along with Megan (who, notably, is getting along with Don, though the last time they spoke they were on bad terms since she was just finding out that Don had decided to stay in New York even though he had been put on suspension at his job). And Megan helps set her up with a shower and some food (though Stephanie declines the steak she made).
When Stephanie notices Megan is wearing Anna’s ring, she mentions it and says in passing she knows all of Don’s past secrets (she had called him by his real name Dick on the phone). Certainly Stephanie knows more than Megan, so for whatever reason she cuts the girl a check for $1,000 and she hits the road.
Don’s delayed to L.A. anyway because of Lou’s foolishness, so the two never actually see each other.
Oh well, he can still hang out and see his wife, who was planning on a party for her acting class friends, a happening where they’re smoking pot and drinking, listening to Blood Sweat & Tears at top volume, making way for a weird jazzy combo to jam live. You almost expect Megan to break into her party-ready song “Zou Bisou Bisou,” but it turns out she’s got something even saucier planned.
Don’s a bit of a drip at the party in his plaid sports coat until who does he see escorting a young actress to the party but Harry Crane, who says he didn’t even know they were headed to Megan’s house.
Don’s happy to see him, though, and gets him out to an empty bar to talk business. Harry, in his sideburns and ascot, lets it slip that the partners are about to meet with Philip Morris to talk about a campaign for Commander Cigarettes (yes that used to be a real brand too). Don wants to go right back to New York to get in on this (though he’s the guy who screwed up his firm’s cigarette business with a famous open letter in the New York Times). But first, Megan’s got her own idea.
Her party all over, she suggests a threesome with her friend Amy (played by Jenny Wade, who played Nina in “Reaper”). It takes a while for Don to warm to the idea (“I’m tired!” he bellows), but he does, soon enough.
The scenes of Betty and Henry’s house in Westchester are jolting, since they have no connection to the rest of the action, but there is good stuff. Betty is getting ready to do her portion of a progressive neighborhood dinner — which is not very progressive politically, it turns out. She says the rash of vandalism and “wildness in kids” a neighbor mentions might be tied to unrest over Vietnam. Even Nixon is against the war, Henry says, and he stands with the President on his approach. “Since when?” Betty says.
Obviously she is not being as vague as a politician’s wife would require. We don’t see their argument, but in their next scene, Henry is furious at having to go to the remaining dinners by himself (though, as a politician, one assumes he’s in that situation pretty often).
A bigger problem in their home is that Sally had almost broken her nose by sword fighting with golf clubs. She’s sent home from Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, though she talks with her youngest brother Eugene and says she’s going to run away, hitch hiking back to school. Eugene is bruised by all the yelling in the house and says he has a stomach ache all the time (is this the Matthew Weiner character in the show finally emerging? He was about that age when his dad was in the ad game).
The fights there continue. Henry doesn’t want Betty to sit in the kitchen “like the help.” Betty is tired of being treated badly. “I’m not stupid,” she says. “I speak Italian.”
Back in New York, Don shows up in the paneled private room at the Algonquin where Lou and Jim are indeed meeting with Philip Morris. Draper’s statement is short and powerful: He’ll quit the firm if it means they lose their business and won’t it look good to their competitor that it looked like they made Don Draper apologize?
“You think this is going to save you?” Jim asks, when stealing his taxi. “It isn’t.”
Indeed, some ad men just self destruct all by themselves.
Which gets us back to the nipple slicing.
Michael Ginsberg had provided a lot of the comic relief in the episode with a big reaction to the newly installed computer in the old graphics room. The hums that come from the insidious machine are driving him mad, and he says more than once in some outrageously politically incorrect statements (probably accurate for the time) that the machine is turning people to homos.
At one point he has to go to Peggy’s apartment for relief, just so he can do his work in peace. Then he decides he wants to propagate the species in order to counter the effects of the computer – the weirdest pickup line Peggy has ever heard. After earlier scarring forays into office sex with Pete and then Ted, she declines though she’s a little flattered.
The next day at the office Ginsberg apologizes, says it’s true he’s attracted to Peggy, he’s found a way to relive the computer-caused pressures inside of him and offers her a little box. A nice piece of jewelry from a 60s shop?
No, it’s his nipple, which he just sliced off as a way to relieve all that pent up pressure.
Peggy excuses herself from the office to call for help.
We see Ginsburg leaving on a stretcher, a fitting farewell since it occurs on the very day the actor, Ben Feldman, was unveiled as star of a new NBC fall sitcom. “A to Z,” about a young man who pursues an office romance (with Cristin Millioti, the mother from “How I Met Your Mother,” of all people).
Hope it all works out between them on that new Thursday network comedy. And they keep the sharp knives away from him.