By Couch Baron
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's 1963, and as Don heats up some warm milk for a very pregnant Betty, he has visions of both his real and adopted mother and the circumstances in which he passed from the former to the latter, and let's just say I understand him changing his given name a lot more now. Betty's pretty sure she's carrying a girl, who I hope for her sake will be heterosexual, and Don helps her sleep using his way with words.
Peggy's got her own office and secretary, but the latter, "Lola," is too busy swooning over the new English accents in the office to pay her much mind. To be more specific, there's a "Lane Pryce," the new big on-site boss, and his executive secretary, "John Hooker," who hasn't taken long to clash with Joan. Of course, he's rather good-looking, so perhaps their mutual disdain will blossom into something else down the line -- if Joan's still at Sterling Cooper, which is apparently not her current plan. There are still layoffs happening in the wake of the merger, one of which is the axing of the Head of Accounts, and Pryce gives Pete the job -- only to turn around and also promise it to Ken. The two of them have a hilarious elevator conversation in which they each think the other is congratulating him, but Pete's not laughing when he finds out that he and Ken are going to share the title he's coveted for so long and compete with each other for the brass ring, and he basically tells Ken to piss off, while Ken's jazzed about the new responsibility and couldn't care less about Pete's little hissy.
Don and Sal take a business trip together, and before they've even hit the ground they've made a date with some gullible stewardesses, one of whom accompanies Don back to his room. Disappointingly, he takes her to bed, but it is at least his birthday. Meanwhile, in action I approve of a lot more, Sal calls for a guy to come fix his air conditioner and ends up getting his pipes cleaned instead. Well, not quite -- before the deal can actually be sealed in either room, the fire alarm goes off, and not only does Sal not get his rocks off, Don sees him with the hotel staffer on his way down the fire escape. However, as Peggy well knows, if there's someone you can trust with your secrets, it's Don, and Sal's relieved as all get out when Don doesn't make an issue of it. Don ends the episode by assuring Sally he's always come home, but as Betty tells Sally about the day she was born, Don's a million miles away. Here we go again!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Welcome to Season Three! I'm loving how much great press the show's getting, aren't you? I can only hope the ratings see a spike because of it. All that said, this episode didn't grab me quite the way most of them have up to this point on first viewing, but it rather grew on me the second time around. Also, I thought last season's premiere was a little underwhelming too, and we know how that turned out. Anyway, let's get to it.
We start as usual with some close-ups: Pajama bottoms leading down to bare feet in front of a refrigerator; a burner on an electric stove coming to life in the dark; the lights flipping on as a pan is placed on top of the heated metal. Don, smoking a cigarette (guess that recurring cough he had last season hasn't worsened), pours some milk into the pot and idly stirs it, but his attention focuses when he hears some muffled crying. He looks up, and in front of him is a scene from the past: A woman in her late thirties, I'm guessing, is lying on a bed, shaky both physically and emotionally due to the fact that she's just delivered a stillborn, apparently not for the first time. She wonders why God has forsaken her, but the person to whom she's talking, a woman of a somewhat more advanced age, firmly tells her that God will give her a child. Her faith must be pretty strong for her to deliver that statement with such authority while holding a basin containing God's latest failed attempt. The would-be mother insists on taking a peek at the corpse, and after she does so, a surly, rugged man enters and snits, "So you killed another one." The midwife snaps back that possibly if he'd "get off her" every once in a while things like this wouldn't happen, and I agree, not just because it would relieve the physical strain but because the kid might be less inclined to commit suicide in utero were she less sure that Archie was going to be her father. Yes, these are the younger Archie and Abigail Whitman (played by the same actors they've always been), and I guess it's nice of the show to give us a reminder of how screwed up a childhood Don had before they make him into a big old cheater. Again. Archie growls at the midwife, who vamooses...
...and then after a cut to Don, the scene has changed, and we see a young man begging a pretty young woman to cut him a discount on her, uh, services. Of course, we know that Don's mother was a prostitute, so it's not a big leap to conclude that this is she. After some discussion about the fact that he doesn't have enough money for a "sheep," she consents to fulfill his needs, but "you get me in trouble, I'm gonna cut your dick off and boil it in hog fat." Looks like Don's gift for flowery speech wasn't inherited, although there's a certain similarity in the number of sexual partners they enjoy. We see Don smile at his mother's sassiness...