A strong episode that centers on the complicated relationships of Don and Pete, while also highlighting their characters' similarities and key differences. After the bland season premiere, I'm glad to see Mad Men back and raising the drama.
In the episode, Don and Pete are two men dealing with similar situations very differently. Both are in affairs with their friends' wives, yet both respond to the challenges of their affairs with varying degrees of success. Don is smoother and smarter about his adultery, he even makes it look more meaningful. When Sylvia gives Don the cold shoulder at a fateful restaurant dinner, Don turns it around on her and makes her fall for him even more. When Pete's mistress shows up at his household, he does everything wrong and shows that he does not care about her in the slightest, dooming his marriage. Don succeeds, Pete fails. We also get more insight into Don's screwed up psyche, with some interesting flashbacks to his childhood that we haven't seen since the early Mad Men seasons.
My favorite scene of the episode was Trudy's speech to Pete, ending their marriage and telling him what was going to happen from there. Trudy may act happy and oblivious but she knew what Pete was up to all along. She even tried to make it easy for him by letting him have his own apartment in the city, yet Pete still managed to screw that up. He was a trainwreck waiting to happen, sleeping with their neighbor was a new low Trudy couldn't overlook. Good for her.
Meanwhile, Peggy is successful at her new job but not very popular. She is the Don Draper of her new firm, but without the coolness to make everyone like her. She vents to her buddy Stan, who tells her about the Heinz ketchup situation to cheer her up. Her mistake is that she relayed this intel to her new boss, who wants to act on it and steal the Heinz account. She may lose her only friend because of this. I look forward to seeing the eventual face off her firm will have with SCDP over the account.
Overall, this was an episode that increased the stakes with Don and Peggy's storylines, while resolving Pete's. The end of his relationship with Trudy was in the making since the first episode. Don is getting in deeper than he should and Peggy is about to start some trouble with her old firm. I can't wait to see where this all leads.
Observations:
- That Jaguar guy oozes sleaze. I'm glad Don ultimately circumvented his plan by acting cheesy and fake.
- Apparently all the guys on Mad Men spending their morning hours before work cheating on their wives.
- "If you so much as unzip your fly to urinate, I will destroy you"- Trudy to Pete.
- Don seems to love the woman he's with. In almost back to back scenes, he embraces Sylvia and consoles Megan.
- Child Don spying on his mom through the keyhole was creepy though. His excuse: "I dropped a penny!"
- Hopefully Stan doesn't get fired for telling Peggy about the Heinz account.
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