Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 214 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT We're Not Gonna Take It
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 3 | Aired on 2013.04.14
After last week's glacial, diffuse affair, I appreciate that this one is thematically tight (possibly too much so, if anything), with every storyline related to parties faced with the decision of what to do when someone is pushing the limits of acceptable behavior - even discounting the title, against the wartime events, it's not a stretch to say it's about appeasement versus taking a stand. However, that doesn't excuse flimsy plotting, and Rosen being called away twice in two episodes at just the most convenient time for the plot is a bit much. Regardless, this is happening, so Don persistently tries to engage Sylvia with offers of wine and questions about the Italian menu (the character is Italian, as the casting of Linda Cardellini may have suggested) while she treats him, fittingly enough, like they're on opposite sides of the Cold War. Eventually, he stops screwing around and directly asks what's wrong, so she tells him she doesn't know what they're doing, and, referring to their spouses, she adds, "Just because they cleared their place settings doesn't mean we're alone." She goes on that he loves making them look foolish, but as we all know, there's only so long Don can be denied what he wants before he turns horrible, so he tells her he understands. "You want to feel shitty right up until the point where I take your dress off. Because I'm going to do that. You want to skip dinner? Fine. But don't pretend." This lovely little speech is broken up by cuts to them falling into her apartment intertwined in each other's arms, and again, while the themes of the episode work well enough for me, this is a hackneyed directorial choice done many times before, and given that this is only Jon Hamm's second effort as director of a Mad Men episode, I suppose it's to be expected. But seriously, we even actually get a shot of him unzipping her dress. (I don't recall his first effort, "Tea Leaves," being a standout either.) She wonders what would have happened if their spouses had been there - would it just have been someone else's dress? To clarify, she reminds Don that he told her he and Megan were drifting apart, but he tells her he wants her all the time, and if now she suddenly is looking for something more serious than that, it's news, isn't it? The waiter shows exquisitely convenient timing by appearing and asking, "Have you decided?" and rather than let that level of obviousness speak for itself, Don is like, "HAVE you?" Sylvia replies by ordering for both of them and then adding to the waiter that they're in a bit of a hurry, which I guess goes to prove, in light of the revelation about Sylvia's beliefs, that Don Draper is more powerful than God. Not that most of the viewing audience needed any convincing.