Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 5 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Strange Bedfellows
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 6 | Aired on 05.05.2013
Everyone starts buzzing about that one, but Joan pulls the brass into the conference room -- Ken joins them -- and asks what the heck is going on. Don gets in the first salvo, asking why the hell he didn't know about the public offering, but Pete bites out that he tried to tell him the night before, "but you'd rather have dinner with Herb Rennet!" Pete, you're not Don's favorite person, but I don't think THAT'S true. Roger then jauntily enters and announces that he's got good news and bad news, at which point Pete finally announces that "Don fired Jaguar." Joan's, "WHAT!" portends evil things for Don, but Roger's unfazed: "Then I just have good news!" Hee. He explains that they're giving a presentation "this Friday on Chevy's top-secret new car," and after Pete and Don give appropriately flabbergasted reactions, Roger happily tells the group that his "friend Mikey O'Brien; look him up" said he was seeking something cutting-edge, but none of the agencies had it. Don turns to Pete and is like "Chevy, am I right?" but Pete isn't impressed, snarling at Don not to act like he had a plan. "You're like Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine!" Hee. Don is unfazed as he starts giving orders pursuant to getting the pitch ready, but when he tells Joan to get the Creatives into his office, she replies in a voice carved from ice for him to get them himself. Uncomprehending, he asks if she doesn't feel "three hundred pounds lighter," but Joan tells him actually, she does not. The resentment causes her voice to quaver as she tells Don that if she can stand Herb, he should be able to, and what -- she went through all of that for nothing? She starts to storm out, and when Don calls to her that he'll win "this," she turns back and snaps, "Just once, I would like to hear you use the word 'we'." She adds that they're all just waiting for him to decide what's best for their lives, and then exits, leaving the men to look glum. On the plus side, there's no need to send someone to assemble the Creative team, since they're all standing outside watching.
I wouldn't necessarily say that scene completely played -- in particular, Roger standing by and letting it all unfold seems false, as does Joan not even seeming to notice that Roger was going to dump Jaguar anyway -- but I'll take Don being told off where I can get it, even if he doesn't seem as fazed as he probably should be. Speaking of the Creatives, they scatter when he turns and sees them, but he barks at them to get in his office, which they and Roger do. Ken wonders if they should go in as well, but Pete seethes that he doesn't care and stomps off...