"Mad Men" recap: 10 best moments
Sunday night's episode of "Mad Men," entitled "The Crash," was one long speedy trip, both literally and figuratively. No one stopped moving the entire night, thanks to a "vitamin B plus" shot straight to the gluteus maximus.
1) This speedy, speedy episode began appropriately with Ken zooming down the highway towards his likely demise in an Impala, blindfolded, with a loaded handgun and cackling clients on either side. This scene was an indicator of what was to come in this amphetamine-driven joy-ride of an episode.
2) Ken managed to come out OK, with just a limp and a cane, which later provided him with a nifty drug-fueled tap-dance routine. And it also showed the lengths to which the high ups at SCDPCGC (what a mouthful) will go to please another car client. Death? It's just a risk they are willing to take. In one of the best moments I've seen from an amped Ken Cosgove, he says, "Oh, they like me alright, I'm their favorite toy." Gotta love that clever dancing monkey. Ken's got moves we've never seen before.
3) Thanks to Jim Cutler and his Dr. Feelgood, whom he brought in to "get everybody fixed up" and revved up to come up with the campaigns of their lives, the offices of SCDPCGC turned into a chaotic crack den, that transformed into a mix of dreams/flashbacks blurred with reality for Don, complete with whores, coughing fits and rants. It may have been traumatic and sweaty for him, but it was sure entertaining for us. And it left the door wide open for Peggy to be the voice of (soberish) reason once again, asking Cutler, "You see the mess you made?"
4) While Dr. Feelgood managed to get most everyone high and happy as a kite, there was one person, who was not seduced by the magic shot and that was Ted, who was reeling from the death of his good friend, Frank Gleason. To which he had Peggy to lend him a consoling shoulder, because you see, Ted is sensitive, a trait that his partner Cutler does not appreciate: "I hope we don't lose Ted for too long, he doesn't know how to deal with these things." A.K.A. he has feelings -- not everyone can get a shot in the ass and pretend like everything's jim-dandy.
5) Watching Cutler race Stan through the office was one of the better moments of the season.
6) Speaking of Stan, we saw a softer side of our favorite bearded boy -- albeit while trying to put the moves on Peggy -- he briefly opened up saying that he needed her sexual comfort because he had just lost his cousin in the war. And in a moment of sincerity he says, "That means my aunt sent 16 letters that he never saw." Peggy in turn reveals that she's had suffered loss in her life as well, which we're assuming she was alluding to her Pete Campbell love child. Stan managed to get a short make-out session from Peggy before she ultimately pulled back, but he got it elsewhere later on in the episode, in what turned out to be his own little one-man porn show for Cutler. Cutler is one nasty little SOB -- but he's an entertaining one.
7) Meanwhile, Don's original family pops briefly back in the picture, which means we get a sour taste of the always lovely (and back to blonde) Betty and her snide comments. When Sally appears wearing a very grown-up and revealing skirt, that she claims she earned, Betty snips, "On what street corner?" Mean? Yes. But also kind of great, you have to love her biting one-liners.
8) Speaking of one-liners, Ginsberg's comments have come to rival the king of office sarcasm, Roger Sterling. At one point, he states, "Wasting my Saturday with lunatics." But then of course, he is more than eager to join in on the craziness, and readily throws a pen at (and ultimately into Stan's body).
9) Speaking of lunacy, Don is definitely coming off his rocker. Even before his "feelgood" shot, which made him flash back to the coughing fits and prostitutes of his teenage years in a brothel, we find him sadly hovering outside of Sylvia's backdoor, smoking cigarette after cigarette and eavesdropping on the married couple. He may have enjoyed the power during their hotel games, but he has lost it all now, and this unfamiliar feeling of powerlessness is driving Don off a ledge. It is also amazing how easy it is for Sylvia to rid herself of him, proving that she actually was the adult in their adulterous relationship.
10) Don's moment of weakness is broken through as a result of a home intruder, "Grandma Ida," who robs his home while Sally is awake and the rest of his kids are home. He is jolted out of his three-day work bender, drug-induced fog, when he comes home mumbling to himself about Sylvia and is greeted by Betty, Henry, Megan and two cops waiting to tell him about the woman who walked into his home (because he left the door open), lied to his children, and stole his watches -- which causes him to pass out on the spot. Though when he wakes the next morning, his heart is no longer broken, and the walls are back up. He enters the elevator with Sylvia and begs no more, instead rides in silence the whole way down. And scene.
So much happened in this episode, the list could go on forever. Here are some other fabulous moments:
- The appearance of hippie Wendy, the late Gleason's daughter, is both odd and revealing. Don thinks that she can sense his broken heart, but alas, she can only diagnose the broken stethoscope. Though she does give Stan a helping hand, so to speak.
- When Don comes up with his masterpiece that will save Chevy, the Sober Ted swoops in and exasperatedly points out that even Chevy is spelled wrong.
- The seemingly innocent/sweet-faced woman in the Granger's Oatmeal ad -- "Because you know what he needs"-- looked obviously like the prostitute who first coddles a young Dick while he is sick, but then corrupts him. Oh how his childhood reveals so much about his adulthood.
- Apparently Don likes the sound of his own voice as much as we do, for as he explains during his insistence to meet with Chevy in person, "The timbre of my voice is as important as the content." Yes it is Don, except when it is raspy from no sleep and hallucinations as it was in Sunday's episode.
- Where was Joan?
Tell us: What did we miss? What were your favorite moments from the latest episode of "Mad Men?"