Tonight's adventure: "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency"

OR

"How to Succeed in Business Without That Actually Happening"

Sally is experiencing night terrors. Is Grandpa Gene haunting the Draper home? Probably not, but wouldn't it be neat? "Avenge me, Sally. It was Don who done it! Ay, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts--O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce!--won to his shameful lust, the will of my most seeming-virtuous princess! He has no people!"

The Redcoats are coming! Lane Pryce announces that the July 3rd office holiday will be cancelled. Muckety-mucks from Wolfram&Hart Putnam, Powell and Lowe are, even now, making haste to the colonies for an inspection. Bert suggests that Don and Roger head off to the barber shop to mend fences and have their ears lowered. With a clean shave, Don might end up with a promotion, perhaps a dual post in Manhattan and London. 

Having successfully won the account, Ken Cosgrove arrives triumphantly on a John Deere riding mower. Pete fumes. His ass is grass. 

*Somewhere in New Jersey, Duck Phillips sits down for a board meeting with Mr. Bear and a gum ball machine wearing a fedora. "Someone let the fireflies get away again! That was an important account!" Nobody owns up. Duck crosses his arms with a sigh. He saunters back to his office, stumbling over the train of his wedding dress. He phones Peggy Olson six times, but doesn't say a word for fear of a wire tap. It is a very good day. 

Betty lays in bed cradling baby Gene. Bobby enters and asks permission to "pet" him. He does so. Sally is visibly disinterested. 

Roger and Don are pampered at the barber shop. Roger tells Don that it's okay for a dude to get a pedicure. He then tells a weird story about his father losing an arm and dying in an automobile accident. Whether an actual event or a story Roger uses to get a rise out of his dates, this tale of dismemberment foreshadows grizzly tidings. 

Joan and Hooker have a moment in which Hooker assumes he's Hugh Grant, but isn't. There will be a surprise party for Joan on the third, her last day in the office. 

Betty complains to Don that Sally doesn't seem to love her new baby brother. Don asks Betty if she'd ever want to live in, say, London. You know, hypothetically. Betty will now be gabbing with Francine in that intangible Madonna accent. 

Late at night, Joan confronts her husband Greg, a physician and rapist, at the door. He's tardy and drunk because he was passed over for the Chief Resident gig. As alluded earlier in the season, he's been having trouble performing delicate procedures and his mentor explains that "you have no brains in your fingers." Greg believes that his career is affectively over. He still has a year in his residency, so they can't afford to lose Joan's income. She says it's too late to keep her position at Sterling Cooper. She'll need to find something else. She comforts Greg and assures him that she still loves him and that they will sort things out. He deserves none of it and neither does she. 

July 3rd. Enter Mr. Sheffield from The Nanny (Saint-John Powell) and his limey friends. Secretaries are unsure whether to curtsey. They pass by Paul's office, where he's playing a guitar. Otherwise, everything passes muster. Peggy, in a minor fit of Beatlemania, introduces herself and then freezes. Everyone is taken with young Guy MacKendrick who makes Hooker, the current office heartthrob, look like Rowan Atkinson. Saint-John presents him to Bert, Roger, and Don as the Beowulf of advertising. Don's poker face is getting worse and worse. He appraises Guy, a big Draper fan, as if he were a sock puppet. 

Lane waits in his office, staring out the window (no doubt wondering what he did the previous night in his werewolf form). Saint-John and Harold Ford enter and tell Lane that they are very impressed with his work. They offer him a box, which I honestly expected to contain Gwyneth Paltrow's severed head. What it did contain was actually far more bizarre and English. Is that...a snake? Is he being assassinated Cleopatra style? Luckily, the snake is dead, a taxidermy cobra for Putnam, Powell and Lowe's "snake charmer." As a reward for his excellent work with Sterling Cooper, they're shipping him off to India to repeat his efforts there. Guy will replace him at Sterling Cooper. Lane has an even worse poker face than Don. He explains that his family is settled after nearly a year in America. His bosses tell him not to pout and he does his best to put on a good face. 

Guy presents a flow chart to Sterling Cooper, revealing the new hierarchy. Don scowls to see that Guy is one rung above himself. He begins doodling. The chart emphasizes Harry's increasing importance as the TV guy and, given his absence from the thing, Roger's obsolescence. "An oversight." Bert looks at Don and shrugs. Pete sums it up best. Aside from Harry, nobody is getting a promotion. Roger wanders back to his office, either to take a nap or work on a model airplane. 

Betty offers Sally a gift. It's a new Barbie, and it's apparently from baby Gene as a token of friendship. Being a kleptomaniac, Sally is aware of every Draper's individual income and possessions, so she sees through the ruse. She takes the doll anyway. 

Guy makes a toast to Sterling Cooper, most especially to Joan who he's learned is leaving. Joan bursts into tears knowing that all that's waiting for her at home are a stack of job applications. Guy apologizes as Hooker wheels out a sheet cake. Joan composes herself. 

Don receives a call from the secretary of Conrad Hilton. Can he meet Uncle Pennybags? "How about now?" replies Don, quizzically. 

The celebration continues at Sterling Cooper. Peggy and Joan say their farewell, Joan joking(?) that she takes credit for Peggy's success. Smitty takes a drunken joyride on Ken's riding mower, eventually offering it to Switchboard Lois. 

Then shit gets real. 

Amidst the cheers of her co-workers, Lois pilots the mighty John Deer mower down the aisle. It is the single greatest moment of her life. Then, she makes an abrupt turn, rolling over Guy MacKendrick's foot. Blood cascades from the thresher, splattering onlookers like the second row of a Gallagher set. Guy collapses to the floor, crying out. Lois loses control of the mower, crashing through an office wall, shattering glass and all hope for upward or lateral change in employment. Joan rushes to care for Guy's mangled foot, improvising a tourniquet. 

Don meets with Conrad Hilton, who turns out to be the old southern gentleman he met during Roger's "Yay Horses! Spectacular Minstrel Show Dance Party." "Connie" wants a free consultation on a terrible advertising campaign he's been mulling over. It involves cartoon mice. They negotiate playfully, Don endeavoring to secure the Hilton account, but are interrupted when Don gets an emergency call from the office. 

Soaked in blood, the office boys try to figure out how things could've gone so horribly wrong. Ken says he takes full responsibility. Roger shrugs. "Somewhere In this business, this has happened before." He exits the office as a cleaner applies a wet sponge to the frosted glass. It's like the aftermath of a Romero movie. 

Don arrives at the hospital where Joan apologizes for pulling him away from his meeting. The Brits thank Joan for her service and she and Don say their farewells. She kisses him on the cheek. Two old friends who have an atypical level of respect for each other. As she brushes her lipstick from his cheek, Don offers the grin usually reserved for the original Mrs. Draper back in California. It's a testament to Joan's innate motherly qualities. There's a lot of history here, none of it sexual. One of my favorite relationships in the series, and I hope it isn't going away for too long. 

According to Saint-John, Guy will survive, sans a foot, but his career is crushed. Don questions this, wondering what a foot has to do with running an ad agency. The Brits are resolute. Perhaps it has more to do with decorum than mobility, but you can't be a peg-legged ad-man. Thus, Lane will remain at his Sterling Cooper post indefinitely. Lane buys Don a soda from a vending machine and relates his near-banishment to Tom Sawyer. "I feel like I just went to my own funeral. And I didn't like the eulogy." 

Sally has discarded her new doll in the front garden. He returns it to her, but later she wakes everyone up with a shrill cry. Don rushes to check on her. It is revealed that Sally is totally creeped out by baby Gene. Mostly, she's resentful of her mother's choice to name the child after Sally's beloved grandfather, a move Sally probably views as an attempt to replace the old man. Don and Betty go back to bed, where Betty voices her frustration about the whole situation, wondering why everyone is giving her such a hard time about trying to celebrate her father by using his name. Don argues that the man never liked him and that the only memory she was preserving was of that rotten relationship. One he wished had been buried with the old man. Sally apologizes for her behavior, realizing that the baby is innocent in all this. Don explains that there is no telling who or what baby Gene will be, and in that uncertainty there is something quite wonderful. Endless possibilities. 
 


*off camera

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