Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 4 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Laika Was An Astronaut
By Jacob | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 2007.09.27
Professor Franklin escorts Joan into Sterling Cooper, in her beautiful black dress. "My goodness!" he exclaims. "All this from selling toilet paper!" Mr. Cooper's sitting at a desk up front, waiting for her, and when she asks where everybody is, Cooper orders Franklin out of the building. She tells him to go, and Cooper takes a big breath. "Miss Holloway. Roger Sterling has suffered a heart attack." She bends a little. "He survived it, and he's currently being hospitalized." She's been called in to type out telegrams to every client in their book, reassuring them that business will not be interrupted. He reads out the names and addresses one by one, starting with Alpine Real Estate. Joan cries, while she types.
Don is affected by the event in another way. He calls Betty, who complains about the way her father and Gloria made such a big deal about sleeping in separate bedrooms, but once Don tells her about the heart attack, she's all concern. She says she's glad Don's there, that Mona must be a wreck. Don tells her Roger just randomly keeled over at work. "It was awful, actually..." Betty says that she'd come be with him, if it wouldn't break the kids' hearts. To make the point, she begins listing all the horrors of beach life: "She was making some...pot roast with ketchup, and my father started hovering behind her, watching! Like he used to do with my mother. How can he pretend that she never existed?" Betty admits that she still sometimes picks up the phone to call her mother, and Don kind of tunes her out, right up until she echoes Roger's suicidal sentiment from before: "I know people say life goes on, and it does. But nobody tells you that's not a good thing. Why is that?" He pleads ignorance, then weakly offers: "...Stop thinking about that?" She asks again if he wants her to come, but he knows it wouldn't do anything. She can't give him what he needs right now. But she can try: "Give Mona my love... And Don? Make sure you eat something."
Pete arrives at the hospital as Don's hanging up; the last person Don or anyone else on Earth wants to see. "How's he doing?" Not great. "What happened?" I don't know, Don says, and crams a whole fistful of Skittles in his mouth. They nod, and on the television Eisenhower's explaining that, all positives aside, he can't really recall any specific decisions Nixon ever made that had an impact on him. Don's really good at his job, but the truth is that Pete Campbell is really good at Roger Sterling's job. Or will be, if somebody will just give him the keys. This poor kid.