Yay, Mad Men's back! It's back for what's officially the second half of Season 7, but for all intents and purposes, last night's episode sure felt like another season premiere, heavy as always on the Don-in-existential crisis mode. Let's get right to it shall we?
Don is back at work, seemingly doing a good job again, and trying out women for a fur coat commercial (half-naked women of course) with only other men in the room, and he's even out on a double date with Roger, who has two young girls on his arm (Don just gets one). While they're a diner, Don seems to recognize the melancholy waitress serving them (played by Elizabeth Reaser) and can't get her out of his head. Later on, while in bed with his latest floozy, he has a dream that his old fling Rachel Menken tries out for the commercial, which causes him to schedule a meeting with her department store about a pantyhose product in order to see her. But of course, as Don always does when someone dies, he's experienced a surreal vision of the person in question, and Rachel turns out to have passed away, just the week before. That's too bad. She was always my favorite of Don's girlfriends- I was convinced for years she was his actual true love.
Don deals with the loss in his own Don-like way, which is to go back and see the waitress again, who ends up having sex with him in the alley behind the diner (but only because that's what she thinks he wants, after Roger had left her a $100 tip to make up for being rude earlier- ick), and then Don goes to Rachel's memorial service, where her family members are sitting shiva. He meets her sister there, who recognizes his name and is none too pleased he showed up, but she does tell him Rachel had leukemia, and lived a full life since he knew her. Don tears up as he sees her two young children and goes back once more to the diner to grieve over Rachel, and the woman who surreally reminds him of her.
Meanwhile, in office news, Peggy and Joan deal with a couple of sexist assholes from Topaz, the pantyhose company, who mock Joan to her face and tell her she should sell bras (because of her shape, ha-ha, get it?), and Peggy is kind of bitchy about it and tells Joan it's her fault because of the way she dresses. Joan snaps right back that Peggy doesn't dress like her because she doesn't look like her (ouch), and Peggy storms off in a huff. Those two are such great friends, aren't they? Peggy now feels undesired of course, and consents to be set up with Mathis's brother-in-law Stevie (who's Brian Krakow from My So-Called Life), and the two of them hit it off big time at dinner, leading a drunk Peggy to suggest they run off to Paris together. The next day she's embarrassed, but Stan tells her it's a good idea and she ought to go for it.
Finally, in what's got to be to the first time in at least five years, we get a Ken storyline, as his father-in-law's retiring and his wife tells him he should quit his job because he's never liked it much anyway and he could finally write his novel. Before Ken considers it though, Roger fires him over some personal insults he once griped about the McCann Erickson guys. Ken's pissed at having to hand over his accounts to Pete, who smarmily tells him he'd always recommend him for a new job somewhere, but then Ken turns the tables on everyone and replaces his father-in-law as head of advertizing at Dow, where he will now be a client of SC&P, and finally be able to drive his old co-workers nuts. Ha. Yay for Ken, in an episode that I'm betting was kind of like his sendoff, since the show never focuses on him at all.
Notes:
-No sign of Betty, Sally or Megan tonight. I'm sure they'll get their day though. Speaking of Megan, what's the over/under on how many more times we'll actually see her? Don mentions tonight that he's getting divorced again, which means it hasn't happened yet- come to think of it, it's hard to tell how much time has actually passed in between this episode and the last. Can't be more than a few weeks, right?
-What's going on with Roger's 'stache? Okay, so Ted has one too- it seems the Sgt. Pepper look has finally made it to the SC&P offices, but with Roger's all white hair, it makes him look like an 1860's Union Soldier in the Civil War. Seriously dude, not a good look.
