By Lauren S
It's July 1, and Sterling Cooper is informed that three PPL muckey-mucks are coming from London the day for a two-day visit/observation. Everyone is ordered to get their desks in shape, and the boys are all told they'll need presentations prepared for July 3, which is extra-annoying for everyone, as that was supposed to be a holiday. On top of that, the day is Joan's last at SC as Greg is getting the news about the Chief Resident position that night and she is preparing to be a Lady of Leisure. The other girls are planning a surprise party for her, which isn't a surprise for long when Hooker spills the beans. Unfortunately, but not as much of a surprise to us as it is to Joan, Greg comes home in the middle of the night drunk and finally admits that not only did he not get the position, but his boss told him he'll never be a surgeon, at least not in New York. I guess his hands are more adept at forcing himself on women than on surgical procedures. He announces coldly that Joan will have to keep working after all, which is horrific timing considering she's as good as gone from Sterling Cooper now.
The Brits arrive the day with a young guy in tow who seems important, but who no one knows at all. They go into a meeting with Pryce and congratulate him on his good job there, and then reward him by giving him the boot to the Bombay office. At a lunch meeting with the execs they show a restructuring plan that puts this new Brit, McKendrick, in charge of the office with Don and Cooper. Roger is actually left off of the chart altogether, which they claim is just an oversight; they hand-write him back in, but this clearly spells out that the future might not be so rosy for our silver fox. After dropping this bomb the Brits go out to tell the rest of the office, and there's an office-wide champagne toast to the "good" news as well as to Joan for her last day. They give the office the rest of the day to party, so everyone lets their hair down as people are wont to do when drinking glass after glass of champers at 2pm. Smith find the John Deere riding mower that Ken brought in the day before as a token of him landing the John Deere account, and after he joyrides a little he hands the controls over to Lois. Lois, however, is both drunk and doesn't know how to drive, and she manages to lose control and drive straight over McKendrick's foot, spraying all of the boys with blood. Joan, because she's awesome, immediately leaps into action and puts pressure on the wound while shouting directions -- she saves his life but ultimately not his foot. That means Pryce is going to be sticking around for a while after all.
Don was not there for the carnage as he got a call from Conrad Hilton's office requesting a meeting. It turns out that the "Connie" with whom he had drinks at the country club during Roger's Derby party was in fact Mr. Hilton himself. Unfortunately the meeting isn't because Conrad has a funny feeling about how his heirs might turn out to be famewhoring idiots and is looking for advice about how to prevent his children from procreating. Instead, he wants free advice from Don on his ad campaign. Don reluctantly gives his opinion but seems to be on his way to possibly landing Hilton as a new client. He's called out of the meeting when Joan phones to notify him about the bloodbath at the office, and he meets her at the hospital where they have a nice and rather sad goodbye.
Things aren't really rosy for Don at home either, since Sally isn't sleeping without the lights on because she's terrified that baby Gene is her grandfather come back to haunt them all. Betty is wholly unsympathetic and she and Don finally get in a fight about her naming the baby Gene considering that Don and Grandpa Gene loathed each other and it's traumatizing their firstborn. She won't budge on the name, so Don steps up to help his poor daughter and manages to get her to accept the baby as just a baby, and not her crazy deceased grandpa. His job and marriage might be a mess, but it's pretty awesome to see him step up and finally be the parent Sally needs and who he never had himself.
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