Mad Men Season 6, Episode 7, “Man with a Plan”

This week’s episode continues the trend of a character spouting the opposite of one of the themes that can be read out of the episode. Early on, Sylvia beckons Don to a midday tryst by calling him to say, “I need you, and nothing else will do.” Throughout the episode, however, we see repeatedly how people are able to easily take the place of one another (or how people fret about how replaceable they are), as SCDP and CGC deal with the inevitable layoffs stemming from the merger:
- Ken Cosgrove takes Burt Peterson’s place, and history repeats itself as Roger gets to fire Burt. Again.
- Peggy replaces Margie, the previously unnamed female copywriter. Margie, we hardly knew ye.
- Ted replaces Don in a creative meeting (more on this below).
- Pete worries about being replaced by the other partners.
- As far as Roger and Jim Cutler are concerned, Bob Benson is interchangeable with other junior CGC accounts men.
- Finally, even for Sylvia, Don ultimately won’t do, because even though she’s mildly aroused by his kinky dom/sub sex play, she realizes that he can’t ever really replace Arnie in her life.

Let’s get the last of these developments out of the way first, as I found it to be most lackluster and uninteresting part of this episode, but also one of the most unavoidable, given how much time was devoted to it. The scenes between Don and Sylvia in this episode had me figuratively checking my watch, wishing they would finish so that the show would move on to more interesting things (previously, I had only felt this way about Betty-centric stories). Their affair was momentarily interesting when it proved that Don has pretty much given up on Megan, and when the affair seemed as though it was going to turn into a catastrophe. I'm still hoping for some fallout, but that has appeared less and less likely as the season has progressed; instead, we’re being treated to what seems like a diluted rehash of Don’s affairs with Rachel Mencken (she rejects him) and Bobbie Barrett (the dom/sub play).

I suppose it is mildly interesting to see how Don behaves with Sylvia when he has knowledge that he shouldn’t have (about Arnie and Sylvia's fight), and I also like how hurt and vulnerable Don is by Sylvia’s gentle rejection of him at the end of the episode. He hasn’t been this vulnerable since the real Mrs. Draper died. However, their affair does not seem to be telling us much about Don that we don’t already know. It’s been rather obvious since the season 5 finale that Don has checked out emotionally from his and Megan’s marriage (conveyed nicely here by slowly fading out the sound of Megan’s voice as she talks to Don), and it’s nothing new to see him more attached to an affair than to his wife. Of course, television shows need not consist of a constant string of metamorphoses or revelations about characters, but it’s somewhat of a disappointment to see Don right back where he was in seasons 1 through 3 after all the change he attempted in seasons 4 and 5, especially considering how other characters on the show do change (like Peggy, Joan, and even Harry).* The show has such a strong track record in nearly all of its other plots and characters (with Betty as the usual exception) that I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but this part of the season has started to drag for me. However, seeing as this is only the seventh episode of the season, I suspect this is not the last we’ve heard of Sylvia and Arnie. Perhaps more interesting things are in store (like Arnie or Megan finding out).

*UPDATE: Then again, all of the repetition was thematically relevant to last night's episode, as Tom and Lorenzo point out.

Outside of Don and Sylvia, this episode was fairly interesting. It looks like no one has yet devised any good answers for all of questions last week’s merger posed. There aren’t even enough seats in the conference room for all of the partners and secretaries, which is a rather loud statement about the anxieties characters feel about their positions in the new firm. The most interesting jockeying takes place between Don and Ted. In the first meeting between all of the partners, Ted gives up his seat for Moira (who is apparently the CGC equivalent of Joan) and casually sits on a cabinet by the wall. This is followed immediately by a shot of Don reacting with amusement as he takes note of Ted’s “gallantry,” as Roger puts it. Later in the meeting, after Pete is called away by a phone call, Ted takes Pete’s seat, smiles at Meredith (the secretary in charge the meeting’s minutes), and asks her who the next client is. She’s charmed by him, and takes a moment to regain her composure before answering. Cut to Don dragging on his cigarette, sizing up Ted’s charm, and nodding slightly to himself.

Later, Don is late returning from his tryst with Sylvia, and Ted starts a creative meeting about Fleischman’s margarine without him. When Don arrives forty minutes late, Ted adjourns the meeting and chews out Don for his tardiness. Don brings a bottle of whisky into Ted’s office under the guise of a peace offering, and proceeds to drink Ted under the table on the pretense of hashing out ideas about margarine. It’s an extremely manipulative ploy on Don’s part, one designed to make Ted look foolish and deprive him of some of the authority and swagger he’s demonstrated, and it works. Later, Ted stumbles out of their meeting, drunk, and makes a mild embarrassment of himself in front of the copywriters. When faced with new internal competition for top creative, rather than devote himself to his work and amend the absenteeism that has plagued Don ever since season 4, instead he chooses to try to sandbag Ted. Don has always been an asshole, but his behavior here is really starting to infringe on one of the last vestiges of the sympathy I have for him – his creativity. At this point, I’m just about ready to start sympathizing more with Ted than with Don.

And I’m not the only one. Peggy has clearly thrown her lot in with Ted. As soon as she sees that Ted is wasted, her eyes flick toward Don immediately, and a scowl comes over her face. She knows exactly what has happened and why – as a female Don Draper, Don’s ploy is transparent to her. Her anger with Don leads to their only substantial interaction later in the episode, and it’s a good one. Peggy surprises Don in his office and essentially tells him to back off Ted. This comes as a mild shock to Don – he’s still under the impression that Peggy is in his corner, not Ted’s, but it’s an impression Peggy corrects in this scene. This realization leads to some nice sparring between the two, because Peggy knows her own worth now, and is much better equipped to deal with Don’s abuse. Don dusts off that old standby tactic, “belittle Peggy,” by sarcastically implying she’s big-headed to think the merger is about her. Previously, this would have upset Peggy, but now, she comes right back at him by sarcastically implying that unlike Ted, Don’s an alcoholic. The scene concludes with Don on the defensive. He implies Ted’s a grown man who can make his own decisions, but Peggy has the perfect comeback: “So are you. Move forward.” Round 1 clearly goes to Peggy, as she leaves Don perplexed and exasperated, but also perhaps slightly suspicious. Should Peggy and Don continue down this adversarial path, Peggy and Ted’s amorous affection for one another will put Peggy at risk of some serious emotional pain. Were Don to learn of it, I can easily envision him using it to belittle her in new ways that she might not be prepared to counter (although Don certainly has secrets of his own). 

For Ted’s part, at least he figures out the next day what Don’s purpose was, and he is not without recourse to strike back: he takes pleasure in Don’s terror as they ascend through a rainstorm during their flight to upstate New York, and is very satisfied when Don tells him that it doesn’t matter what Don says to Henry Lamont (the man they are going to visit), since Ted is the one who flew them up there in his own plane. Ted smirks and says, “I guess that’s true.” Ted’s victory is a private one, however, and not one he can display in front of all of the other creatives.* But then again, perhaps Ted is the better man, and doesn't need a public victory - another reason for my sympathy meter to tick slightly higher for Ted. This is certainly going to be an interesting partnership going forward. I'm excited for more.

* Great cut from Ted telling Don not to worry about the stormy weather to the two of them crammed into the tiny cabin on Ted's plane, getting shaken about by the turbulence, stricken with terror. 

Pete’s story also dealt with replacement this week. Pete’s insecurity about his position at the new firm is understandable, but also a bit ridiculous. He nearly single-handedly brought business into SCDP after Lucky Strike left, and is responsible for a large margin of the firm’s success, as Bert told him last week. Moreover, he’s a partner. The others could always force him out, but given that Roger is an innately lazy hedonist who would rather let Pete do the work for him, Pete’s position seems secure (even if it means Roger’s ego gets a bit chafed every now and then). Pete has also inadvertently traded down from living with the young, gorgeous, and chipper Trudy to living with his mother, who is clearly suffering from dementia or early onset Alzheimer’s, as she repeatedly confuses Pete with his brother, and Trudy with Pete’s sister-in-law, Judy.

But then again, sometimes certain people simply can’t take the place of others, as we observe in weekly ongoing installments of the comedy, “Pete Campbell, the Poor Man’s Don Draper.” We learn this week that even the hostile outbursts he directs at his secretary, Clara, fail to have the same devastating effect as the hostile outbursts Don has directed at his secretaries. Clara merely looks at Pete's tantrum with mild pity, correctly recognizing him for the emotional child he is. Pete’s downward spiral will only end if or when figures out how to compensate for being his own worst enemy.

Other thoughts:

- Ted thinks the Fleischman’s margarine account is “groovy” and wants to have a “rap session” with the other creatives. Three words Don would never utter.

- Speaking of the rap session, the behavior of the CGC copywriters versus Stan and Michael’s behavior is like night and day. The CGC kids write in their legal pads and whisper to one another, while Stan and Michael sit with arms crossed, trying to get adjusted to Ted’s working methods.

- Nice shot of Ted walking into SCDP: it starts on his shoes and then tilts up to his head, and thus it is easy to mistake him for Don, initially, as this is the kind of shot typically only reserved for Don’s entrances (it also helps that the preceding shot is of Don on the way to work). Another twist on how characters can replace one another.

- Nice little exchange between Joan and Peggy, one in which Peggy hints at her discomfort with her living situation with Abe: she still doesn’t know how to articulate that she’s bought her own place and moved in with him. Joan and Peggy have never been terribly close, so it’s not surprising to see the two of them merely exchange quick pleasantries. It’s somewhat ironic that a lot of their early friction was the result of their very different preliminary career goals, given how each of them has achieved far beyond what they initially thought possible back in season 1.

- Moira seems to be the CGC version of Joan. Previously, this would have been cause for butting heads, but already we see Joan applying her lesson from episode 4, where she handed Dawn timecard responsibilities. Here, she simply gives over to Moira the task of telling everyone where they should go, and goes off to attend to more important matters (although not without some nice, thinly veiled barbs at Mathis, one of Peggy’s flirtatious copywriters).

- I love how Joan is subtly embarrassed by the density of Meredith, the blonde secretary in charge of reading of the meeting minutes. Meredith: “Regarding ongoing business, the following is a list of current accounts in ascending order. That means smallest to largest.” Cut to an annoyed Joan giving her the stink-eye. Their relationship is only in the margins of most episodes, but it never fails to make me laugh.

- Office musical chairs: Ted gets Roger’s old office across from Don. Roger get’s Harry’s old office upstairs, above Ted. Peggy gets the office with the pillar in the middle of it (formerly belonging to Pete and then Harry). Personally, I would have liked it had Harry wound up back in the pillar office, rather than across the hall from Roger. That Peggy is assigned the most cumbersome office on the floor (and not one with a window, as at CGC) is rather strong evidence of how this is not an upward move for her.

- More comedy squeezed out of Don/Dawn:
Peggy: “I just spoke with Dawn.”
Ted: “Black or white?”

- Don gives Sylvia a red dress, which as we saw in the flashbacks in episode three, is the color of the dress the prostitute wore when Don first met her. As Tom and Lorenzo have pointed out, it’s also the color of robe Megan puts on when she and Don fight over her kissing scenes. For Don, red = prostitution, which is precisely how he wanted Sylvia to behave in their romps in this episode.

- Nice touch: when Ted and Don begin brainstorming about margarine, Ted wonders if this is going to be a repeat of Detroit, where Don lies down and Ted paces. When the episode next returns to them, Ted is lying down and Don is standing.

- I liked Ted’s disappointed reaction to Mathis, the copywriter voting for Nixon. “Don’t you have any hope?”

- Slightly fewer fireworks this time when Burt Peterson is fired, although his subsequent exchange with Bob Benson is pretty good. Hilariously enough, Burt’s advice isn’t far removed from the only thing Bob’s been doing on this show since the start of the season: Bob should kiss own ass goodbye. Speaking of Bob, he finally gets something else to do aside from bring Pete and/or Ken coffee, and his ass-kissing actually transforms into charm and resourcefulness when he devotes his efforts to getting Joan out of the office, and then into see a doctor. Just like Joan and her mother, I’m divided over whether or not Bob’s behavior here is a genuine display of human sympathy, or simply another attempt to kiss some ass to save his job. I’d like to think it’s the former, but given what we’ve seen of his behavior, it’s probably the latter. It works, too.

- Ted on Don: “He’s mysterious. And I can’t tell if he’s putting it on. He doesn’t talk for long stretches, and then he’s incredibly elegant.” For viewers, that mystery has been solved. It’s a put on, but a meticulously manicured one that no one has been able to crack since Betty found out Don’s secrets in season 3.