We next see
Don at a restaurant, sharing a meal with a business associate from another agency
– Wells, Rich & Greene. The associate confronts Don with the rumors he’s
heard: that Don was in California managing his wife’s career, that Don pulled a
major boner at Sterling Cooper and cried or punched someone in a meeting, and that
he got let go. Is any of this true? he inquires. Don replies: “I didn’t know I
was going to be interrogated by the Hooterville telephone operator.” But Don
doesn’t deny anything. Next, Jim Hobart from McCann comes by to say hello. “I
see a sheep and a wolf, but which is which?” When he begins to taunt Don, the
other guy tells Hobart to go away. Don says softly, “I almost worked there,
twice.” The other guy reassures, “But you didn’t.”
Meanwhile,
Sally and her roommates from school are invited to their schoolmate Sarah’s
mother’s funeral, and they’ve been given permission to leave campus to attend
the funeral. The girls talk about Carol’s mother telling Carol in a veiled way
that she looks like a prostitute. Then Carol mentions that Sarah had a picture
of Sarah’s late mom in a bikini. However, in looking for it, it turns out that
Sarah took it. At some point, Sally mentions that she wishes her mom were dead.
Sally discusses what she’ll wear at Carol’s mother’s funeral, and another girl
asks if this is her first funeral, which seems to embarrass Sally.
Next we see
Sally and the two roommates on a train, ready for their day off campus, but
Sally discovers that her purse is missing and guesses she left it somewhere.
Sally hurries off the train and says she’ll meet the other girls later. We next
see Sally at Sterling Cooper, looking for her dad. Sally discovers Lou Avery’s
name on the door to Don’s office. She speaks to Lou, who says “Don’s not here.”
Sally then goes to Joan’s office to talk to her, but the door is locked. Lou advises
that Joan’s probably out to lunch. Sally leaves, and Lou slams his door.
When Don
gets home from the lunch meeting, he’s surprised to find Sally sitting in the
living room waiting for him. He says he was at the office, but left early
because he didn’t feel well. Sally knows that’s a lie although she says nothing
at the time. Don asks if something is wrong, and Sally says she went to a
funeral and then lost her purse and needs money to get back to school. Don
offers to drive her, and she says dryly, “No that’s all right, you’re not
feeling well.”
Don drives
Sally back to her school (a long drive) and they’re both tense. During the
ride, Don demands to know why Sally went to his apartment, as if she’s done
something wrong. Sally demands to know why Don wasn’t at work, and he says,
“This is not about me.” Sally says Don doesn’t understand how hard it was for
her to go to his apartment, knowing “that woman” might get in the elevator, and
that she would have to smile while she felt like puking and would have to smell
the woman’s hair spray.
Sally then
says she wants Don to stop talking. Sometime later, Don takes Sally to a
restaurant, claiming he needed to stop for gas. Sally sits at the table with
Don but refuses to order food, and asks whether he really had to stop for gas.
She asks if she can make a phone call to tell her roommates where she is. Don
puts down 2 coins for the phone call, and when Sally attempts to take them, he
covers them up, stares at her, and says: “The reason I didn’t tell you I’m not
working is that I was embarrassed. I said the wrong things to the wrong people
at the wrong time. I told the truth about myself at the wrong time.”
Sally: “What
did you say?”
Don:
“Nothing you don’t already know.” (not likely to be true, unless he’s specifically
told her about the Hershey bar story at the whore house).
Don: “I was
ashamed.”
Sally: “Why
don’t you go and stay with Megan? …Do you still love Megan?”
Don: “Of
course I do. I fly out there every other week, and I talk to her all the time.”
Sally: “Why
don’t you just tell her you don’t want to move to California?”
Don has no
answer for this.
Sally: “I
hated it. Sarah’s mother was yellow. She had a wig.”
Don: “Life
goes on.”
Next, Don
plays a little trick on her.
Don: “Do you
see the car?”
Sally:
“Yes.”
Don then
tells her a scheme, whereby he’ll walk out and get the car running while she’s
still eating. Then he says she should just walk out of the restaurant, and they
won’t pay for the meal.
Sally
(puzzled): “Really?”
Don smiles, pulls
out his wallet, and pays for the meal. Sally smiles.
Back in the
car, they reach the school where Don drops Sally off. He asks her if she wants
him to come in with her. She says no, she has a note. Sally then exits the car,
and just before she slams the door she says, “Happy Valentine’s Day. I love
you” and walks away to enter the school. Don seems taken by surprise, and his emotions
well up.
Another collective
story revolves around the ladies of the office. This story begins with Dawn,
who we see in the first scene when she visits Don’s residence to provide
supplies, information, and the arrangement of a housekeeper. Back at the
office, Dawn (now Lou’s assistant, but also assistant to Don while he’s out) is
now hanging out with another African-American secretary on the floor, Shirley,
Peggy’s new secretary. Peggy walks by Shirley’s desk and sees a bouquet of
long-stemmed roses sitting there without a card attached. Peggy starts to ask
Shirley who the flowers are from, but doesn’t complete her sentence, guessing
they are for her (Peggy). Shirley starts to respond, but doesn’t complete her
sentence, guessing Peggy understands they are for her (Shirley). Having assumed
the flowers were sent by Ted, Peggy takes the flowers and vase off Shirley’s
desk and brings them to her room. Surprised and dismayed, Shirley doesn’t know
what to say or how to tell Peggy the truth, for fear of upsetting her.
In the
interim, Stan sees Peggy with the flowers and comments: “Hard to believe your
cat has the money.” Meanwhile, Shirley explains the flower fiasco to Dawn in
the kitchen, and Dawn asks Shirley why she didn’t say something. Shirley says
she didn’t have time to say anything. Then Dawn advises Shirley to “keep
pretending – that’s the job.” Dawn adds, “I have two bosses, and one of them
hasn’t told his wife he’s on leave.”
Throughout
the show, Peggy gets madder and madder about the flowers she thinks Ted sent
her, and she at one point refuses to answer a call from Ted because of it,
demanding that Shirley relay a coded message to Ted’s secretary that would make
no sense to Ted. Shirley eventually breaks it to Peggy that the flowers were sent
to her from her fiancé, Charles, and Peggy blows her stack at Shirley. With
contempt, Peggy muses, “Are these some symbol of how much we’re loved?” Clearly
jealous of Shirley’s relationship situation, Peggy yells and tells Shirley “You
have a ring on your finger. You didn’t have to embarrass me. Grow up” – as if
Shirley is motivated by how she affects Peggy. Meanwhile, Shirley does nothing
but apologize and attempt to act conciliatory.
The result
is that Peggy marches to Joan’s office and demands that Shirley be moved off
her desk. When Joan asks what Shirley did, Peggy refuses to say; she insists
that she doesn’t want Shirley fired, only removed from her desk. At another
point, Lou Avery blames Dawn for not being there when Sally showed up looking
for Don, which made Lou feel awkward because he didn’t know what to say. Dawn
apologizes, but when Lou demands that Dawn be reassigned to someone else’s
desk, she speaks up and says that she skipped her lunch to buy his wife
perfume; if he had bought it himself 10 days earlier when she first reminded
him, this wouldn’t have happened. Lou replies that it’s not his problem and contends
that he’s the one owed an apology.
Joan moves
Dawn to the front reception area where Meredith has been working, and she moves
Meredith back to work for Lou. Next, Bert Cooper walks out of the offices and
sees Dawn at the front reception desk. He immediately turns around and goes to
Joan’s office to tell her to get Dawn out of the front office because “people
can see her from the elevator.” Faced with the musical-chairs problem of where
to put all the secretaries, Joan feels frustrated and angry. Just then, Jim
Cutler enters Joan’s office to discuss an account and Joan snaps at him. When
Jim realizes that Joan is handling both a personnel job and a sales position,
he sympathizes. He then offers her a full-time sales position upstairs. In the
end, Shirley is placed as Lou’s assistant and Dawn is given Joan’s office,
presumably to handle personnel issues. Also, we see Joan moving her things
upstairs and thanking Roger for the Valentine’s Day flowers that were
supposedly “from her son.”
We first see
Pete on Thursday night in an office in California, where he explains with no
success to a drunken Bonnie something about his business concerns. She
approaches him and they start having sex on the desk. A man walks into the room
and they immediately freeze in place. The man, perhaps a business associate of
one of them, walks in and asks “How did it go?” to which Pete responds that it
went well. Next the man, who continues walking through the office but never
looks directly at the couple, exits the room and says, “Goodnight Bonnie.” Pete
and Bonnie burst out laughing.
On Friday,
Pete and Ted are at work on a conference call to the New York office of
Sterling Cooper. Pete tells the group that he’s landing a large amount of
business with the Southern California dealership association. His pride is cut
short when Bert Cooper expresses utter boredom with Pete’s enthusiastic but
long-winded story about landing the business; Pete’s mood turns darker when Jim
Cutler says they’ll fly Bob Benson from Detroit out to California to help finalize
the deal. Pete, who cannot stand Bob, objects, and so does Roger in New York.
Essentially, this disagreement becomes personal between Jim Cutler and Roger
Sterling, and Jim says to Roger: “I feel caught off-guard…about something that
seems rudimentary.” Meanwhile, off in his own world, Ted wonders how much of
Peggy’s account was lost. Eventually Jim wins the debate about flying Bob
Benson out when Bert sides with him.
Roger calls
Pete privately to break it to him that it’s best to get Detroit (Bob Benson)
involved. During that call, Pete begins to rant, and Roger hangs up on him.
Pete also complains to Ted about feeling overlooked, and says to Ted, “What
you’re supposed to say is: we should start our own agency. What’s our goal? Why
are you here? All you do is mope around.” Before Ted can figure out how to
respond, Pete yells “I’m not talking to you anymore” – to which Ted hardly
responds.
Later on,
Pete enters Bonnie’s workplace mid-afternoon when Bonnie is still working to
sell property. He first attempts to get Bonnie to leave work early and go with
him to a hotel to have sex. Bonnie says something like, “I love you, but I also
love the 15 people who might come here today and buy this dump.” After she
listens to Pete’s sob story about how “the system is rigged,” she tells him a
horror story of her own about working for a year to make a sale, only to have
the property burn down two weeks afterwards. She says, “Our fortunes are in
other people’s hands and we have to take it. That’s the thrill.” She follows up
with, “I’ll see you at 5:15 unless I get an offer.”
Finally, the
story of Roger and Jim begins during the conference call with Pete, where Jim
determines that Bob Benson should be involved with Pete’s business transaction
and Roger not only loses the argument but also figures out his status at the
company has been reduced and that Jim rules. The story picks up later on when
Roger sees Joan moving upstairs to an accounts position and learns that Jim
suggested it. Joan asks him whether he agrees with the move, and Roger,
realizing he is no longer in charge, says, “It doesn’t matter.” Finally, we see Jim and Roger getting into an
elevator and riding down at the end of the day. Jim says to Roger in a threatening
way: “I’d hate to think of you as an adversary. I’d really hate that.”
One of several
themes in this episode is claiming the
moral high ground in adversarial relationships.
·
When Don has lunch with an advertising guy from
another agency, the guy confronts him with the many rumors going around about
Don (he was dabbling in the LA office, cried or punched someone at a meeting
and was let go, etc.). Instead of being defensive and admitting or denying the
rumors, Don comes back with offensive lines like: “I didn’t know I was going to
be interrogated by the Hooterville telephone operator” – as if the guy was
small-minded for bringing it up, as if Don’s somehow better than that.
·
Despite Don’s lies, he does everything to claim
the moral high ground with Sally, both because he wants to defend himself and
because he’s still her father, and as such, is called upon to provide moral
leadership. When she confronts him with his lie about working at the office as
well as other lies, he says, “This is not about me” and turns the topic of
conversation back to her behavior, yelling: “Why did you go to my office?” He
also demands, “Why didn’t you say something?” after he realizes Sally knew he
wasn’t at the office earlier that day, and allowed Don to make up a story about
it instead of admitting what she knew.
·
Likewise, Sally claims the moral high ground
toward Don, confronting him again and again and demanding to know the truth.
Even though Sally breaks rules at times, she feels morally justified in
confronting and subtly berating Don.
·
When Lou is forced to interact with Sally at the
office and realizes that she doesn’t even know her dad no longer works there,
he gets very angry about being put in that position. After Dawn returns to her
desk, Lou takes the moral high ground and yells at Dawn for not being there to
handle the interaction. Although he’s clearly out of line, he believes he’s
entitled to dump his frustration onto Dawn and blame her for his discomfort. Regardless
of what anyone else says, his self-righteous response is: “It’s not my
problem.”
·
Dawn, in turn, takes the moral high ground when,
having been fired as Lou’s secretary, she speaks up and tells him something to
the effect of: “I skipped my lunch to buy your wife perfume. If you had been
thoughtful enough to buy her a gift 10 days ago when I reminded you, this
wouldn’t have happened.”
·
Pete rants about the New York office’s decision
to get Bob Benson involved, as though they’re all unfair to him (Pete), not
even noticing him or paying attention to his existence. He also scolds Ted,
telling him he’s a mope and should have goals for their office – as if Ted is
morally inferior.
·
When Bonnie hears Pete being self-pitying and
morally indignant about his misfortunes at work (“I realize the system’s rigged
against me”), she takes the moral high ground in a mature way by telling Pete
the story of one of her professional losses, when a house she sold burned down
just after the sale. Although she doesn’t treat Pete like an adversary, she stands
up to him by refusing to buy into his pity-party and rejects his offer to ditch
work just to play with him.
·
When Peggy learns from Shirley that the flowers
she thought were for her were actually a gift to Shirley from her fiancé, Peggy
claims the moral high ground by demanding to know why Shirley didn’t tell her
sooner, and she completely rejects Shirley’s explanation that she tried to do
so but was unable. Peggy lashes out at Shirley as if Shirley had intentionally
tried to embarrass Peggy. Shirley just keeps apologizing, as if Peggy in fact
has the moral high ground, although privately Shirley has to know that Peggy is
being unfair to her.
·
Peggy claims the moral high ground with Ted when
she receives a phone call from Ted and gives Ted’s secretary a coded message
that she thinks Ted will understand, based on her belief that Ted sent her the
flowers and that there was some twisted or manipulative intention behind both
his flowers and the phone call.
·
Joan takes the moral high ground with Bert
Cooper when Bert requests that Dawn be moved to a more invisible spot in the
office. She asks whether she should discriminate against Dawn because of the
color of her skin, and yet Bert’s reply indicates that he feels no moral
compunctions about protecting the image of the agency, even if it means keeping
the “advancement of colored people” reduced.
·
Jim Cutler claims the moral high ground at the
office when he criticizes Roger for disagreeing with his “common sense” decision
to involve Bob Benson in Pete’s California business dealings.
A second
theme is put forward by Bonnie Whiteside: our
fate is not in our own hands, and when
things fall through, you have to
accept it and not feel sorry for yourself. This theme stands in contrast to
the blame-filled environment of Sterling Cooper, but certain individuals embody
this enlightened attitude:
·
Bonnie, which she demonstrates through her tale
about the house that burned down
·
Dawn and Shirley, who accept the severe
constraints of their minority status and more or less accept that their fate is
determined by the majority white powers that be, especially given that they
work in a white office in support roles
·
Roger, who by the end of the program realizes and
seems to accept that he is no longer the master of his fate at the office
(although we don’t know if he’ll pout in the future because of it or otherwise
stop accepting it)
·
Meredith, who blithely goes along, moving from
her front desk perch to a secretarial desk for Lou when Joan deems it
appropriate, then being shifted around again without a worry when told to do so
·
Sally, who accepts her fate of losing her purse
without panicking too much about it or crying or feeling victimized as some
would
·
Joan, who finds her fate in Jim’s hands when he grants
her a choice, either to remain where she is or move to an accounts position (of
course this means her fate is partly in her own
hands thanks to Jim)
A third
theme is wins and losses in power struggles.
·
Jim struggles with Roger and ends up dominating
him when he rejects Roger’s storytelling moment near the beginning of the
episode, and later when he wins the argument over getting Detroit involved with
the LA office’s business.
·
Pete tries to control Bonnie, but Bonnie ends up
dominating Pete by setting the agenda during each of their encounters.
·
Pete argues with the New York office but New
York ends up controlling Pete.
·
Peggy dominates Shirley, not because Shirley
couldn’t stand up to her, but because Shirley doesn’t dare for fear of losing
her job.
·
Peggy dominates Joan when she yells at her to
“Fix it!”
·
Don wins back the right to dominate or control
Sally (as much as an independent-minded teen can be controlled).
·
Lou controls Dawn (although Dawn doesn’t go
without a good fight).
We also see
a large number of misunderstandings and truncated
communications in this episode.
·
Don complains to Sally when he realizes she knew
he wasn’t at the office that day: “Why didn’t you tell me?” implying that Sally
blocked a communication that should have occurred.
·
When Peggy sees flowers on Shirley’s desk, Peggy
and Shirley both utter incomplete sentences and then assume they are both
thinking the same thing, which they’re not.
·
Peggy delivers a strange, coded message for
Shirley to relay to Ted’s office, revealing her gross misunderstanding of the
situation. Moira, receiving this message, misunderstands Peggy’s intentions and
takes it literally to mean that there’s some business that’s been lost.
·
Peggy complains to Shirley when she learns the
flowers were for Shirley: “Why didn’t you tell me?” implying that Shirley blocked
a communication that should have occurred.
·
Shirley tells both Dawn and later Peggy that she
tried to tell Peggy the flowers were hers, but she didn’t get a chance (because
she felt cut off by Peggy).
·
Ted tries to call Peggy, presumably to find out
what’s going on after she called him angrily in the morning about the flowers
she thought he’d sent, and Peggy refuses to take the call.
·
When Pete provides a long-winded story during his
and Ted’s conference call with New York about how he snagged the new business,
Bert Cooper cuts Pete off, telling him he bores him.
·
Roger hangs up on Pete on hearing Pete rant about
Bob Benson becoming involved with his sales efforts.
·
When Roger tells Lou his story about being
called a “kike,” Lou disses him, effectively cutting of the personal level of
communication, and changes the subject to business.
·
When Jim Hobart comes over to Don’s table at the
restaurant, Don’s lunch associate cuts Jim off by telling him to move along.
·
When Sally comes looking for her dad at Sterling
Cooper and finds Lou Avery there instead, Lou responds to her in brief,
truncated communication, saying as little as possible.
·
When Sally calls her roommate Carol to let her
know where she is, Carol starts telling Sally a story about a creepy salesman
on the train who invited them to the smoker; however, not being in the mood,
Sally cuts her off and ends the phone call.
·
When Sally asks Don what truth he spoke about at
work that caused him to get let go, Don says as little as possible, claiming
that it’s nothing she doesn’t know.
A broad
theme in this episode is the question of ethical
decisions.
·
Dawn agrees to help Don gather information at
the office about what’s happening within Sterling Cooper, but she draws the
line at breaking into Peggy’s locked office to get papers that Don wants
photocopied.
·
Dawn has thought long and hard about accepting
money from Don for her extra work for him, and she’s decided it wouldn’t feel right
ethically.
·
Don has also thought about whether Dawn should
be given money for her extra work for him, and he’s decided that extra work
merits extra pay.
·
When Dawn learns that Sally had come to the
office looking for Don, she immediately calls Don at home to inform him, which
could be considered ethical since she’s working for Don and accepting money
from him for her help, both personal and professional.
·
Don drives Sally back to her school, giving them
a chance to confront and discuss his past ethical failings as well as hers, and
giving Don a chance to make amends by being more honest with her.
·
At the restaurant, Don plays a trick on Sally by
putting forth a scheme whereby they would slip out of the restaurant without
paying – an unethical plan that startles Sally; she is then reassured when she
realizes he was kidding and presumably would never do such a thing.
·
Lou’s lack of ethics shows when he blames Dawn
for not being there when Sally popped in and when he has her removed from his
work area because of it, when in fact it was not Dawn’s fault.
·
Ironically, Lou feels Dawn should apologize to
him, as if Dawn were the unethical one.
·
Peggy’s lack of ethics shows when she clobbers
Shirley for supposedly trying to embarrass her, which was totally unfair.
Finally, there’s
the underlying theme of Valentine’s Day,
the holiday that celebrates romantic love.
·
As contentious as it was, Don and Sally’s road
trip ends with Sally having some idealized feelings of love towards her dad,
leading her to say, “Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.”
·
Peggy’s terrible, horrible, very bad day
probably happens mostly because she feels deeply crushed and bitter over not
having a romantic relationship with the man she loves.
·
Joan finds a little bit of romance at the end of
the day when she receives flowers from Roger, although the card says it they’re
from her son, Kevin.
·
Pete has his passionate love relationship, at
least late on Valentine’s Eve, when he scores with Bonnie in his office.
·
Shirley enjoys the flowers from her fiancé,
Charles, despite the mess it causes at the office.
·
Meredith is filled with the spirit of the day in
her little pink dress at the office, wishing Sally a happy Valentine’s Day with
gushing enthusiasm.
No comments:
Post a Comment