Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A+ | 2166 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Float Like a Butterfly…
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 7 | Aired on 2010.09.05
Peggy comes marching back into Don's office and goes straight to pour herself a drink as she tells Don she thinks she just broke up with Mark. Well, that's not quite how I heard it, but the point is really that she and the fetus are no longer an item, so I won't dwell on it. Don suggests she go home, but Peggy says no -- she's there to work. Don picks up on her tone, subtle like a piercing siren as it is, and asks if this is his fault, and she acidly replies that it certainly isn't because of her that he has no family or friends or anywhere to go. Don elects not to take offense, instead telling her again to go, but she says she has to be there, "because of some stupid idea from Danny, who you had to hire because you stole his other stupid idea because you were drunk." All true and stuff she's said before, but Don's not so easy to beat down when he hasn't been on a weekend-long bender, and tells her not to get personal, "and by the way, I know it kills you, but guess what? There is no 'Danny's idea.' Everything that comes in here belongs to the agency." Well, at least until it throws things around your office in a crying fit and quits. Peggy brings it around to the heart of her resentment, the Glo-Coat ad, and Don can't believe it, as he claims she gave him twenty ideas and he picked out a kernel of one that became that commercial. Peggy loudly demurs, saying that he changed it just enough so that it was his, and when he argues that her idea wouldn't have worked as a commercial (it would have involved shooting the kid in a dark closet), her voice breaks as she points out her got the Clio for it, and he never thanks her. He's had enough, though, barking that she gets paid for her ideas, and is young and will get recognition in time, and by the way, it's ridiculous for her to be counting her ideas when she's such a short way into her career. "Everything to you is an opportunity. And you should be thanking me every morning when you wake up, along with Jesus, for giving you another day!" My guess is she's not going to start tomorrow. Peggy's face breaks, which is Kryptonite even to Don, and as she rushes out in tears, he calls after her that he's sorry about her boyfriend. Peggy pushes past the janitor into the restroom and, regarding herself in the mirror, completely breaks down -- we're talking wracking sobs here -- and aside from just the general shock at seeing her lose it, it's such a contrast from that similar iconic shot from the beginning of the series where she willed herself into not breaking down in front of the bathroom mirror. I can't believe there's still half the episode to go, but if they're willing to do it I'm certainly willing to write about it.