Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 497 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Half the Battle
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 8 | Aired on 2010.09.12
...and then he's got Peggy, Stan, and Ken in his office, and when Stan hands him a drink, he takes it but then stares at it like he's forgotten what to do with it, and it's a good thing rye doesn't have feelings, because if I were that one glass of Canadian Club that Don Draper refused to drink I think I'd throw myself down the drain in shame right then and there.
Ken snaps Don out of his reverie by telling the group that the whole Mountain Dew campaign has gone pear-shaped -- apparently some bottlers voiced opposition to an occult-themed design, and as a result even though it was Pepsi's own artists that drew it, in this situation, as Ken puts it, "Pepsi is the tail and the bottlers are the dog," and as such they need to change the design. Don sighs that the whole idea is tainted now before instructing Peggy to start over, and she exposits that she did that one with Joey before asking if he wants Stan to take over. Stan pipes up that he's being spread awfully thin, but even though that's the only way I can abide him, Don still sees that as a problem and barks for Miss Blankenship to get Joan in there. Peggy and Ken make light fun of Miss Blankenship, but Don is more concerned with staring at the drinks in their hands, and the voice-over is one thing but the slow-motion close-ups I think I could have done without, especially since they don't stop Don from eventually taking a sip from his own glass.
Some more overly cinematic shots are thankfully interrupted by Joan's arrival, and when Don tells her he'd like to make Joey full-time for a couple of weeks, and instead of laying waste to the entire room, Joan says she'll have to check on his availability before asking if he's really the right person for the job. After Ken and Don express some confusion as to why she would ask that, Joan closes the door and says she's been hearing a lot of complaints about him. "He's not a gentleman with the girls." Oh, dear. Joan is of course historically extremely protective of the women under her care, but I wonder if maybe she's making this up rather than come clean about the fact that Joey directly disrespected her, because if one of the girls had really complained to her, I think she would have brought it up earlier rather than wait until confronted with the prospect of full-time Joey.