Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | 7 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Beyond The Veil
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 1-2 | Aired on 04.07.2013
Don reaches his office, and our vantage point lets us see the SCDP space has been restructured - there's now an internal staircase going up to the second floor, referenced earlier by Benson. Dawn, looking from her outfit like she's gotten a raise or two since last we saw her, explains the crowd gathered around the stairs by telling Don they're taking portraits for publicity purposes, and Don then goes over and greets Joan while Pete, posing on the stairs, welcomes Don back in that inimitably pompous tone of his. Joan takes Pete's place (the photographer addressing her as "Gorgeous" indicating that the glass ceiling has not exactly disintegrated), and then Roger appears and, after asking Caroline about his shoeshine guy - he just depends on him, don't you know - he greets "Don Ho" before looking at Joan and saying he thinks he's next, "but I don't want to follow that act." Pete ribs Don for a bit, which Don does not take as well as when it's coming from his Creative team, and then Harry appears and notes that they're taking new pictures. Roger: "Yeah, we'll be done in a second." In case you were wondering if the hiatus brought any change to Harry's whipping-boy status.
Don enters his office and freezes in horror, and Dawn is like ohhhhhhhhhh, right - they rearranged your furniture for the pictures. Don isn't thrilled, but merely sends Dawn off to get the files he was working on when he left. He then steps back into his office and looks out the window, and the city sounds give way to surf noises. Damn, Foley guys. Now I want to go to the beach.
At the emergency meeting, Peggy is trying to tell the Koss guy that no one has really made the connection he's so worried about. He points out a flaw in her argument, that being that no one has actually seen the TV spot yet, but Peggy replies that the print ads have been going for three weeks, and they've heard squat. The client acknowledges that, but it's clear he's not going to let the TV spot proceed as planned, so he wonders if they could cut the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" part and just talk about how great the headphones are. Peggy's face is like, it's true that meets the definition of an "idea" in the dictionary sense; her mouth is more diplomatic, but she does offer that this play would make the whole toga idea a non sequitur (they've already filmed the spot, which is why their hands are tied on a lot of fronts here). Peterson doesn't give Peggy any help, and the client is like, I'm handing you a solution here, but Peggy sticks to her guns: "It needs more than a solution. It needs to be a great ad." Peggy, having watched the Super Bowl for many years, I'm not prepared to go that far, but I agree it should at least be the goal. She asks for a little time, pointing out that the idea they just scrapped took a while to come up with, and when the client asks if it didn't just come to her, she evenly tells him no, it didn't. "You rejected a lot of things." She leans forward and gives the client some...I won't say "Draper-esque" - for one thing, there's no theme music playing - but inspiring words, and when the guy agrees to give them a couple days, Peterson's like, great meeting, let me walk you out - only to turn back to Peggy when they're alone and drop the smile: "You gotta get a hold of [Chaough]." Heh. And indeed, Peggy does not look nearly as confident as her words would suggest. Another thing she and Don have in common.
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