Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 490 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Giving Up The Ghost
By Couch Baron | Season 5 | Episode 13 | Aired on 2012.06.10
Peggy, her suit and office indicative of her new compensation level, is positively barking at two male underlings about some copy for Ajax when Chaough interrupts and asks the boys to clear out for a moment. Instead of chastising her for her rough (albeit possibly deserved) treatment of her staff though, he asks if she smokes and when she tries to tell him not really, he replies, "Get started." Heh. He tosses her a carton of what he calls "Phillip Morris's top-secret ladies' cigarette" going on to add that Leo Burnett thinks the account is too small, so now it's in review. "And it's your job to make sure they're sorry." Peggy's like, awesome, so Chaough has some dude wheel in three boxes full of research and tells her to go through it at her leisure and then get her underlings on it. Her face falling a bit at the dissertation-like amount of reading in front of her, Peggy asks Chaough if they told him anything she should know and he takes the long way to answer her, asking if her boyfriend lights her cigarettes. She weakly reiterates that she doesn't smoke, but he demurs and then tells her the concept has to make noise. "Maybe she lights it herself." He adds, "You're a woman and you smoke. What do you want?" I could write quite a bit about the implications of this scene, but I'm going to do the short version and save the rest for later: Remember Peggy drunkenly telling Dawn that she wasn't sure if she could act like a man, which she was equating with being a boss? That she wasn't sure she wanted to? This episode is where she leaves those doubts behind by realizing that she can be a woman and still be the boss and this business is indicative of that. Bobbie Barrett would be so proud.