Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT All the Real Girls
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 9 | Aired on 09.19.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Early in the episode, Roger tries to hit on Joan, but after she leaves his office in an even less amused mood than normal, Caroline tells him that Greg is going straight to Vietnam from basic training. To make his ill-timed insensitivity up to her, Roger sends her two women to give her a massage and manicure, which makes me wish he were around to hurt my feelings sometime. The next day, Miss Blankenship dies in the office in an extremely unceremonious way even for someone who wasn't the Queen of Perversions, and even though the whole thing kind of turns into Weekend At Miss Blankenship's, which I assume is evocative enough to obviate any further explanation, Roger takes the whole thing very hard, and before you know it he and Joan are going out for dinner, after which the two of them get mugged for everything they have, including Joan's wedding ring, and the raw emotion of the incident prompts them to have sex right then and there. The next day, Joan tells Roger she has no regrets, but that doesn't change the fact that they're married to other people. Roger, however, informs her that he's interested in seeing where this goes, and I said at the end of last season that I thought the two of them might be headed back into each other's arms, but now that Greg really is gone and we haven't seen Jane in ages, the possibility seems a lot more tangible.
Joyce and Peggy go out for a drink, and soon, Abe, that cute guy that ended up in the closet with Peggy during the police raid, turns up, and Joyce does a girl a solid and leaves the two of them alone. In talking business, Abe drops the bomb that SCDP client Fillmore Auto Parts won't hire African-Americans, but when Peggy compares that discrimination to the kind she endures as a woman, Abe takes issue with it, which leads to a quick end to their impromptu date. The next day, with Fillmore execs in attendance for a pitch meeting, Abe shows up to see Peggy with a piece he wrote entitled "Nuremberg On Madison Avenue," which Peggy begs him not to publish as she thinks it could get her fired. However, when she pitches Harry Belafonte as a potential spokes-singer for Fillmore and gets shot down in a "They're racists, honey" way, it leaves her something to think about. Like, in a "Is this the career path I want?" way.
Last week's discretion has been abandoned with extreme prejudice as Don and Faye are enjoying some rather energetic nooners, but the fun ends when Sally turns up at SCDP in the hands of a stranger who found her on the train into the city with no money, and when Don calls Betty to chew her out, Betty tells him he can see what it's like to deal with her for a change. Don asks Faye to take Sally to his apartment while he deals with the Miss Blankenship fiasco, and when he gets home, Sally has cottoned on to the fact that there's something between Don and Faye, and Don later seems happy that Sally has a reasonably decent opinion of her. Also, Sally, who even with the jaunt into the city seems to be a lot more together thanks to the psychiatry, tells Don she wants to live with him full-time, and although he tells her that can't happen I wonder if his mind is really completely closed to the idea, especially not after he wakes up to find that Sally has made him French toast for breakfast. In return, he takes her to the zoo before going to work, but when it comes time for her to leave, she flips out and causes a scene, and even though Don tries to get Faye to help, only Megan, who's temporarily taken over for Miss Blankenship, is able to calm Sally down so she can be delivered into Betty's arms. After she's gone, Faye freaks out on Don for putting her in such a difficult position with his kid, and he apologizes, but after she leaves, he takes a sip of the drink she made for herself. Well, AA might frown on it, but I'm inclined to let it go.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on Don forcefully telling someone on the other end of the phone that no, they are getting together today, and he's going to clear lunch plus one hour so they can discuss things face to face. However, when we cut to his living room and hear some rhythmic pounding and loud female grunting, you realize that the first bit was all about scheduling a nooner, and since the woman being pleasured is Faye, it seems it didn't take that long for Don to be ready for the full trip around the bases. After cutting to his bedroom, we see that he knocked over a lamp in his ardor, and when Faye amusedly asks if it's broken, Don asks, "The lamp?" Don, you may think it's funny, but can you imagine how different this show would be if Don Draper's dick didn't function? He should take out an insurance policy on that thing.
After a bit of pillow talk, Faye wonders which of them is going to look at the clock first, and Don admits that he caught a view of it when he was picking the lamp up, and he's already late for a Secor meeting. Faye tells him she has a four o'clock at "Erwin Wasey," but declines to share the specifics, and when Don tries to get her to spill what she's working on over there, she asks him if he knows what a Chinese wall is. Well, if he doesn't, I have a feeling he will soon. But I'm guessing he does, as he gives up asking, instead saying he should go, and when Faye asks if she can get in the bathroom first, he encourages her to take her time, and it's clear from the way he gets dressed that he's leaving immediately. Reading people as well as she does, she probably is too savvy to be surprised that he's returning to the office with the smell of sex all over him, but she does raise an eyebrow at the fact that he's willing to leave her alone in his place. He playfully replies that he's taking all the interesting stuff with him, and the fact that he's still got no shirt on kind of emphasizes the truth of that statement. Faye giggles, and Don heads out...
...while at SCDP, Roger is on the phone heatedly asking if whoever it is really doesn't think his book is better than Ogilvy's. "Mine's got a story!" That's hilarious, considering a large bit of what we heard had to do with his thoughts on comedy duos and the ice cream he was allowed to eat as a child. Roger adds that his book has actual examples of how to sell things, which makes me wonder if this is a book about him or Don, and then when the buzzer rings, he puts whoever it is on hold. Caroline informs him that Jane is on the phone and she's leaving for the weekend, and Roger barks that it's only Wednesday and they have phones in Southampton besides. When he tries to go back to the phone conversation, however, the person is gone, either because Roger disconnected him or, far more likely, the person was like, "Wait, I'm HOLDING to hear more of this bullshit why, exactly?" and hung up.
Joan comes in, and after enduring Roger hitting on her in his usual gross yet witty way ("I was just giving her a hard time. Can I interest you in the same?"), Joan informs him that she was instructed to tell him in person that Pryce is taking the last two weeks in August off for his son's visit. Roger wonders why Joan had to run this information to him, and she explains that Pryce didn't want a memo going around, as he was afraid people would stop working. Well, it's an understandable sentiment, but unless you're going to have a Pryce-shaped mannequin sitting in his office while he's away while a recording of stock British-isms plays, I'm guessing people will catch on. I do like the idea that Pryce is obsessed with making sure people are working, though. I wonder if he hides around corners and times people's trips to the restroom. Roger returns to hitting on Joan, and she leaves, but not before telling him his behavior isn't cute, like, at all. Roger calls after her that he's sorry, prompting Caroline to come in and chew him out, as they just got the news that Greg is going to Vietnam straight from basic training. Roger: "Vietnam. That's not good." Indeed. Caroline adds that they've all been walking on eggshells, declining to add that his come-ons would have been exceptionally ill-timed even if they were possessed of any subtlety. However, the chastened look on Roger's face indicates that message was received regardless.
When Don returns, Peggy accosts him in front of his office and tells him that Fillmore and Secor are both coming in the next day, and she worked through lunch on stuff for both that she needs him to sign off on before she can do anything else. Hilariously, Don's like, come back in an hour because I'm taking a nap now, and I probably should have quoted him directly to make it clear that I wasn't engaging in hyperbole there. Peggy understandably gapes at how preposterous that was, but Miss Blankenship has words for the situation: "It's a business of sadists and masochists, and you know which one you are." I was hoping the Queen of Perversions would mention S&M before she kicked off! Peggy stomps away...
...but her mood improves when she finds Joyce waiting for her. As they hug, Stan, who's working in Peggy's office, announces, "Your boyfriend's here!" It's not the same without Joey around, is it, Stan? Joyce invites her for a drink that night while Stan continues to make an ass of himself, and after Peggy accepts Joyce's invitation, Stan amusedly says he's fine with Joyce's "lesbian hijinx," but she can never do what a man can do. In response, Joyce licks Peggy's cheek, which causes a smile to appear on her face as quickly as it wipes Stan's off. Joyce then leaves, and Peggy gets back to business as she tells Stan there's bad news -- Don showed up. "We're on at four." And Faye has a meeting that time as well, so we know Don's not going to leave unexpectedly!
Don, bleary-eyed, emerges from his office, and after Miss Blankenship inquires if his "siesta" refreshed him, she tells him that Faye returned his call -- "she got the message and you're gonna have to wait." Heh. Don smirks in not-so-subtle enjoyment before walking away, prompting Miss Blankenship to call after him, "Are you going to the toilet?" I'm going to miss the old gal.
In the bar, Peggy is telling Joyce that she has to hire more copywriters, but it's tricky because "the better they are, the more my job's in danger." Oh, Peggy, I respect your commitment to your work, but stop talking about it for five seconds. The good news is Joyce isn't listening anyway; instead, she's focused on the fact that Abe, the guy Peggy kissed in the closet during the police raid of that stupid happening, has arrived, and Joyce (who from her reaction pretty clearly arranged this) leaves the two of them to make googly eyes at each other in short order. And Peggy's even officially single now!