Wow. This was another genius episode, full of plot points both huge and tiny, countless character revelations, and endlessly competing views on ethics, loyalty and the right thing to do.
We start with a party at Paul's apartment in an "artsy" section of New Jersey, because apparently Greenwich Village just doesn't cut it anymore. With his beard and pipe and with-it attitude, Paul is trying so hard to be hip that he actually comes off as square. Which ex-girlfriend Joan calls him on, but not before telling his new squeeze, an African-American checkout clerk at the local supermarket, that she's just part of the hipster package. (Which may be true, but still.) Although Joan's always been a snob, we later find out that she's been extra-bitchy lately because she recently turned 31 -- which is clearly over the hill for a single career gal.
In the city the next day, everyone's commute is fouled up by the ticker-tape parade honoring John Glenn's early space flight. (Image-conscious Don, of course, immediately senses how popular Glenn will be.) But that's not what they're all talking about at the office: According to the radio, an American Airlines flight from New York has crashed into Jamaica Bay for no apparent reason. (This is based on real life -- both events actually happened on the same day in 1962.) After shocked responses quickly give way to sick jokes, news of the crash leads to the main action of the episode:
First, Pete is shocked to learn that his father was one of the passengers killed in the disaster. (The actor who played him, Christopher Allport, died earlier this year.) Considering that his dad disapproved of just about everything about him, Pete doesn't know what to do or how to feel -- so he turns to perhaps the one person more emotionally disconnected than he is, Don. Who pours him a drink and tells him to go home to his family. So he does, even though he realizes it probably isn't what Don would do in the same situation.
Meanwhile, it just so happens that Duck has an acquaintance at American Airlines, and he learns that they may be looking for a new ad agency to help them weather the crisis. Everyone at Sterling Cooper wants to start pitching for that plum of an account before the bodies are even buried -- except Don, whose sense of loyalty is offended when he realizes it means he'll have to dump the smaller airline he'd been making promises to for months. The others think he's crazy not to want a chance at the big time, and appear ready to revoke his Ayn Rand Fan Club membership card.
The whole thing puts Don in such a foul mood that he angrily blows off Pete when he comes by for more comfort -- and, worse, he pretty much blows off his own kids at home, too. (Although, in a hilarious scene later on, we see him instructing his young son on the best way to mix cocktails for the adults.) He takes the smaller airline's CEO to a Japanese restaurant to deliver the blow, where the guy chews him out for being a liar. Still feeling bad, he just sits there drinking afterward -- when, of course (it being Don and all), a gorgeous waitress notices him and none-too-subtly lets him know she'd like to be the one cheering him up. Despite the fact that she's just his type (dark-haired, "exotic," nothing like his wife), either he's too depressed or he's actually sticking to his vow to be a better husband, because he turns her down.
Meanwhile, Pete has his own dilemma: Duck wants him to take the lead in courting American, clearly because his closeness to the tragedy might somehow give them an edge. Despite his ambition, Pete balks at exploiting his own father that way. At least, until it turns out that his wealthy know-it-all of a dad had actually piddled all his money away... and until Duck is actually nice to him, at which point Pete starts seeing the new guy as a better substitute father figure than Don had ever been. So he shows up at the meeting -- though whether this bizarre strategy actually impresses the guy from American remains to be seen.
Then there's our Peggy. Brimming with confidence at work and in her personal life (we see her flirt with, then blow off, a guy at Paul's party), she's the exact opposite at a meal with her family. Which is where our questions from last season are answered: Her child is being raised by her sister, with help from her mother, and Peggy still seems to feel no bond with the boy whatsoever. And we learn that during the months in which she was missing, she had been committed to some sort of psychiatric facility. Which may or may not have been a case of the doctors overstepping their bounds -- when we see her holding her infant like a sack of potatoes, it seems possible that she could actually use one of those psych medications that hasn't been invented yet. She goes to church but, like the fallen woman she thinks she is, doesn't take communion.
So, to sum up: Most of the characters are unsettled, disappointed in themselves and others, and fully aware they've done things they shouldn't have. Which, this early in the new season, is a great place for them to be.
Photo: AMC
Previously:
Mad Men Recap: The Shock of the New
