Mo' Ladies, Mo' Problems

In the second episode of Mad Men, Ladies' Room, Don's wife and mistress get a little more crazy, and his secretary gets a little more sane. But before you read, I found a little character guide that could be helpful for anyone reading who's not familiar with the show. If you don't know Peggy from Betty or Ken from Paul, the guide will help. On to the recap...

Previously on Mad Men: all the Mad Boys check Peggy the new secretary out, then she fucks Pete before his wedding and after Don turns her down, Don has a wife and a mistress and a Jewish, female department store. Then the credits, which are really very snazzy. I read something about the last, signature shot; supposedly, one of the directors saw the back of Jon Hamm’s head and said, "Have you seen the back of this man's head? Have you seen what that is, what presence that is? Who is this person, this mystery?" Which is kind of a fruity, drama major thing to say, but it’s very true. Hamm has a great head.

The show begins at a restaurant with Slattery, his wife, Don, and his wife, Betty. Slattery begins to talk about his past nannies, and Betty chimes in that they have a housekeeper who sometimes baby-sits too, but no nanny. Then Slattery starts bitching about his teenage daughter, who recently started seeing a psychiatrist. “16 years old, wouldn’t get of bed. I tell ya, I cannot wait until that girl is another man’s problem.” I think that line sums up the whole theme of this episode: each girl is going to be some man’s problem.

Slattery brings the subject back to nannies by asking Don if he had one. Don smoothly quips, “I can’t tell you about my childhood, it’ll ruin the first half of my novel.” Betty says that she knows better than to ask Don questions because he doesn’t like to talk about himself. Don tells them, “It’s not that interesting a story. Just think of me as Moses; I was a baby in a basket.” I understand that Don’s this big mysterious guy, but has he not figured out that it would be easier to just lie and say, “No, I never had a nanny” then go through all these verbal cartwheels? It’s like he learned to juggle just in case someone ever asks him to play a song on the piano.

The ladies head to the Ladies’ Room that’s the title of this episode. At the mirror Betty’s hands get numb and shaky and she asks Slattery’s wife (who is actually Slattery’s wife in real life) to help her with her lipstick. Betty has this great dress on- white top with floral pattern, then a wide light blue sash around her waist. With her short blonde bob, perfectly curled, she has a definite Grace Kelly thing going on. Betty takes a compliment on her lips from Slattery’s wife as an excuse to throw a little pity party: “It’s hard to hold onto anything right now with the children, and running the house, and I don’t know if I told you but my mother died three months ago…” Slattery’s wife is wondering how she’s going to extract herself from this awkward conversation, but is saved by the bathroom attendants who shoo the ladies away from the mirror. I hate bathroom attendants because they’re so unnecessary, and I don’t like someone watching while I wash my hands and then handing me a towel, and expecting a tip.

After dinner Betty and Don drive home and Betty tells him she likes seeing him like that, and that “when you’re with strangers you know exactly what you want.” Don replies, “I like to think I always know what I want.” They discuss how Betty had a little too much to drink, and what a giant man crush Slattery has on Don. They’re not wearing seatbelts, which means Betty can slide over to Don’s side of the car and lean against him with his arm around her neck. It’s classic 60’s romanticism, coupled with extreme unsafety. Betty is not too drunk to note that Slattery’s openness about his nannies and depressed daughter was “an invitation to [Don] to confide.” Don claims it’s good manners that stopped him, and “it’s a sin of pride to go on about yourself.” Later, the happy couple are in bed and Betty asks Don again if he had a nanny. He starts juggling. “Why, what difference does it make?” She keeps pressing, and he finally admits, with some difficulty, that he didn’t. Betty starts to unbutton his pajama top (why do men not wearing matching pajama tops and bottoms anymore? It’s like a suit for bed. Wait, I just think I answered my question), and flirts, “So your mother and father were responsible for all this? I’ll have to thank them sometime.” The way she says this makes me think that she’s never met his parents, which would be bizarre. They start macking, the camera fades out, and when we come back it’s the middle of the night, Don’s passed out on his side of the bed and Betty’s smoking on the other. She leans over and whispers into his ear, “Who’s in there?” Talking to people you think are asleep is a dangerous, dangerous game, Betty. I personally spend half the night faking sleep in hopes that someone will whisper secrets into my ear. That hasn’t happened yet, though.

Betty and Don’s marriage is kind of terrifying. Based on the age of their kids, they’ve probably been married for six or seven years—what have they been talking about all this time if Don refuses to divulge any personal information? Baseball? Lawn fertilizer? The joys of smoking?

The next day at the Sterling Cooper offices, Peggy is excitedly showing Joan her first paycheck, for $35. Joan rightly tells her not to be so proud of her tiny salary, and the two walk into the women’s bathroom. Joan walks right by a woman (one of the operators we met last week? Another secretary?) standing at the mirror, sobbing into a paper towel, but Peggy stops and says, “Bridget, are you ok?” Joan gives Peggy a little, “Leave it alone” gesture. Seriously, Bridget’s a major drama queen for not locking herself in a stall, sitting on the toiler and pulling her feet off the ground, and crying silently. That’s the only appropriate way to have a breakdown at work.

Over in Don’s office, the Mad Boys (I decided that every male in the office except Don and Slattery will be called Mad Boys, until they do something worthy of being one of the Men) unpack a box of aerosol deodorant that they’ll be advertising this week. Last week all the Boys were pretty interchangeable, so this episode I’m making an effort to learn their names. Ken, the blonde one who looks like Draco Malfoy and thus might be the evilest Mad Boy of all, gives the run-down on Right Guard. Do any of you use spray deodorant? It seems so messy to me, and also, what do you do when you’re already dressed and realize you totally forgot to put deodorant on, so you have to reach under your shirt and hope you don’t get a huge amount of residue on the inside of your clothes? It seems like with an aerosol you’d have to get completely undressed or go without. Anyway, Salvatore (the gotta-be-secretly gay art director) reads the label that says, “Do not puncture or incinerate.. sounds dangerous,” and then sprays the can directly into the face of some guy whose name I can’t figure out from imdb. He kind of looks like a dad, though. Not my dad, but somebody’s dad.

The roughhousing escalates, first to Salvatore and Dad playing monkey in the middle with Draco. Don, sitting apart from the group on the windowsill, tells them dryly, “I’m sure more research is needed. You should try it out.” Paul, the guy with the nice face who’s wearing a cardigan, smoking a pipe, and reminding me of my grandfather, chimes in, “Who smells bad in here?” Everyone looks at Draco, and the homoerotic wrestling begins! They push him down on the desk, tear open his shirt, and tell him, “Just pretend it’s prom night. You can be the girl!” Draco stops struggling and closes his eyes in a very Jesus-like way, and then gets properly doused in deodorant. Don keeps sitting in the windowsill, smoking and laughing, which is why he’s a Man and not a Boy. Or maybe he just likes to watch.

Peggy interrupts to tell Don that Mr. Cooper, the head of Sterling Cooper (along with Slattery), is waiting to meet with him. Cooper looks at the almost gang rape happening on Don’s desk, but Don tells him it was just research for a brassiere account; “Just figured out we can’t sell them to men.” Cooper isn’t impressed by Don’s quick wit, so he’s obviously the bad cop to Slattery’s good cop. The two bosses tag team Don to talk about working to promote Dick Nixon for president. Don says he thought Nixon was running without an ad company’s help, and Cooper crustily says, “Trust me, we know better than Dick Nixon what Dick Nixon needs.” Don brings up the famous Checkers the dog commercial as proof that Nixon already knows how to play the media, and Slattery ruefully concedes, “Dogs are winners.” Don gets a little aggro, asking, “They obviously don’t want us. Why chase a girl who doesn’t want to be caught?” Cooper asks if Don has a problem with Nixon, and Don tells him he doesn’t vote. Instead of being aghast at a grown man who’ll easily admit he sucks as an American citizen, Cooper’s like, “hear, hear.” He explains that the last 8 years (I check Wikipedia to see who was the president at the time. Eisenhower, with Nixon as the VP) have been good to Sterling Cooper because the Republican policies have been good to the companies that are their clients. Don gets it: “So whether we like it or not…” Cooper finishes, “we will give our people want they want. Agreed?” His point is punctured by a burst of light in the background; looks like the Mad Boys, still in Don’s office, figured out how to use the aerosol can as a flame thrower. No one notices (but you can hear Draco say, “I said cut it out!” More rape?), and Cooper walks off… in his bare feet. Alzheimer’s storyline in the future? Or maybe a foot fungus epidemic in the office?

Paul (nice-looking, dresses like a grandpa, remember?) comes out of the office and asks Don if they’re still on for lunch. Don looks at his watch, says no, and walks away. Peggy, observing the conversation, pulls her brown bag lunch out of her desk, and Paul starts doing the lunch-break flirting thing. Peggy doesn’t take the bait, and Paul says “toodle-lo” and walks off. What a grandpa. Joan walks over and observes that Peggy’s white bread sandwich and totally black banana (what’s up with that? So gross!) are “making me sad.” She tells her to get her things, they have feminine wiles to use to their advantage.

In the office break room, Draco, Dad and Harry (wears glasses and a bow-tie) look at the postcard Pete sent from his honeymoon at Niagara Falls. On the back he wrote, “Greetings from the wettest place on earth,” which is an awfully weak double entendre for someone who’s supposed to be clever and creative for a living. The Mad Boys are interrupted from speculating about Pete’s sex life as a married man by Joan, who’s leading Peggy through the room and loudly suggesting they skip lunch and go shopping for sweater sets instead. Draco tells them to come to lunch with him instead, and when Joan doesn’t immediately agree he tells her, “C’mon, three on two. I know you all like to be outnumbered.” Harry quickly clarifies that it’s actually two on two, since he’s married. Could this be the one good man in the office? No, he’ll probably turn out to be worse than all of them, even Mudblood-hating Draco. The girls agree to come to lunch, and Joan asks about the postcard. Draco cracks that Pete hasn’t left the hotel room, and Peggy stops smiling and looks down. Dad pins the card to the bulletin board, and the Mad Boys and Girls head out to lunch.

At the local diner, Draco and Harry interrogate Peggy about whether she’s “taken, kept, or merely browsing.” Basically, they want to know if she’s some other man’s problem or if she can be theirs. Joan chimes in, “She’s browsing, and like most of us she’s disappointed with the selection of merchandise.” Draco swarms, “Perhaps I can interest you with a 42 long?” and Dad hits the punchline: “That’s not his suit size.” All the hardened Manhattanites at the table laugh, and Peggy from Brooklyn blushes. Harry tells her that everyone in the office has been talking and placing bets on who she’s going to hook up with first, which is sure to make a girl feel special. If there’s anything we’ve learned from She’s All That, it’s that you shouldn’t mix gambling and dating, especially with the dowdy girl who’s sure to have a totally hot bod under those overalls.

Anyway, lunch ends and as Peggy gets up to leave, Draco leans into her ear and asks her if she wants to do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Well, almost; it’s more along the lines of taking the afternoon off so they can “go to the zoo, see what the animals are up to,” but he’s rubbing her hip as he says this so I stand by my interpretation. She tells him she has to go back to work, and everyone laughs at Draco’s failure to score Peggy.

Back at Peggy’s desk, Paul swings by and asks her, not unkindly, “Did you enjoy yourself with the Hitler youth?” Yeah, if Draco Malfoy lived in 1940’s Germany he’d be the pride of the SS. She laughs, and says, “Oh, yeah, it was kind of last minute…” which is the classic “Sorry I didn’t invite you” excuse. Paul tells her it’s ok, then hands her a folder to show to Don. As he leaves he pauses and tells her, “You can look, too.” Very smooth, grandpa, but she’s not going to take the bait until you take off the cardigan.

Back at Don’s house, Betty and her friend Francine smoke, drink tea, and slag off past PTA presidents, just as all housewives do. Francine shares some new gossip about the new neighbor moving in up the street—Helen Bishop, a divorced mother of two. The two women look disturbed at the thought of not having a man to consider you his problem, of being your own problem. They pause, and Francine gets up to check on their kids, revealing that she’s pregnant! Pregnant and smoking! I forgot to mention in my last recap how, at one point, Don is exercising while smoking in his office, which is just dumb, but smoking while pregnant is way dumber. Not to be outdone, Betty sees her daughter with a plastic bag over her head and tells her, “If the clothes from that dry-cleaning bag are on the floor of my closet you’re going to be a very sorry young lady.” Sally (the daughter) is about two breaths from suffocating to death, but Betty sends her back off to play.

Later in the day, Betty is driving down in the neighborhood and passes the divorced Helen Bishop, dragging a box into her house alone. Seconds later, her hands become numb like they did in the bathroom at the beginning of the episode, and she loses control of the car and goes up onto her neighbor’s lawn, running down a bird bath. Oh, women drivers, they never know how to steer with their elbows or use the break pedal. Peggy sits and stares at her hands in horror, then gets out to check on her kids in the backseat. No car seats, you guys! They’re on the floor between the front and back seats, giggling like crazy. When I was younger, my dad would swerve the car back and forth to make my sister and me scream when he was driving through our neighborhood. It’s like a rollercoaster! Betty didn’t find the whole experience as fun as her kids did, and sinks down to the grass with a confused look.

Her face fades out and is replaced with Don, on top of Midge, looking like they’re in the middle of some hot sex. But then about two seconds later he rolls over, so maybe they’re substituting pillow talk for orgasms today. Or maybe Don Draper doesn’t know how to satisfy a woman! Just kidding, that’s not possible. Have you seen the back of his head? Midge puts on a robe, Don lights up a cigarette, and they discuss her new color TV. Don is not happy that she got a TV, and Midge tells him to just ask her where she got it. He does, and she says, “I got it.” I really liked Midge in the first episode, but it was at this point that I was like, “Uh, what’s wrong with this chick?” Don continues pressing: “Same place you got that wig?” And she is, indeed, wearing a really ugly brown bobbed wig. Who wears a wig during sex? Besides Beyonce, probably. Midge tells him that someone gave it to her, and now we all know Midge is a giant freeloading slut. Don starts putting on his clothes, and Midge just unplugs the TV, picks it up, and throws it out her window. Crazy! You can hear it hit the fire escape and the street, and Midge is like, “All better?” Don gets this look on his face as he realizes that his fun-loving mistress is actually a total lunatic who’s going to boil his daughter’s bunny before much longer, and quietly tells her “yes” in his best “Don’t disturb the psychopath” tone. Midge then starts laughing and looks all “oh my god, I’m so bad, hehe!” She threw a TV out the window! Run, Don!

That night, Betty is making a dinner of fish fingers for her kids. Healthy. Don walks in, and asks how everyone is in the aftermath of the birdbath run-in. Says he’s sorry the hospital couldn’t get a hold of him, and makes up a work excuse to cover for his session of afternoon delight. The kids finish their food (nice job making a dinner that take less than a minute and a half to eat, Betty) and run off to watch tv, and Don asks what really happened. Betty fesses up: “It was my hands. It happened… again.” Don tells her she has to get that taken care of, since the last doctor they saw about it wasn’t any help. Betty says she knows, but the doctor at the hospital was nice, “older, actually, he was from Rochester, he has two children, ten years apart…” Don’s like, great, but those are not the kinds of things normal people need to know about their doctors. Betty finishes that both doctors agreed there was nothing physically wrong with her. She’s about to cry into the sink as she lights her cigarette, and hesitantly tells Don that they recommended she see a psychiatrist. Don is pissed. He thinks the doctors should “open the hood and poke around,” which is a truly awful way to refer to your wife’s body and health. On the other hand, I wish Don would open my hood and poke around, if you know what I mean. Don says she should go see another doctor, a better one, and Betty meekly agrees.

At the end of the night, Don is doing push-ups (shirtless!) on his bedroom floor while Betty gets ready to sleep. Don counts, “10, 11, 12, 98, 99, 100,” then gets up and looks at Betty all, “You got your two tickets? To the gun show, I mean!” You know, whenever I walk by someone doing push-ups on the floor I have the biggest urge to sit on their back. Surprisingly, no one ever wants to go to the gym with me. Back to the show: I think Don has the perfect amount of chest hair. Not Robin Williams, not a member of 98 Degrees, but perfectly in between. Don puts his pajama shirt back on as he tells Betty he worries about her. Betty tells him she was shocked at first at the suggestion of psychiatry, but it doesn’t have as much stigma as it used to. A few weeks ago, at a party, a friend called out (randomly? There may have been context), “Who here is currently or has ever seen a therapist at the NYU Health Center?” and like 5/6ths of the room raised their hand. When drunk college kids are discussing their mental health, I’d say all the stigma is gone. Anyway, Betty asks Don if he thinks she needs therapy, and you can tell she’d be willing to do anything he told her to do.

Don leans in and says, “I always thought people saw psychiatrists when they were unhappy. But I look at you… this [their really sweet green velvet headboard thing]… them [the kids], and I think, “Are you unhappy?” Betty looks like she’s about to break into a million pieces as she tells him, “of course I’m happy.” Then she tells him, a little more believably, “Whatever you think is best.” Betty’s beginning to see that being Don’s problem is both comforting and deeply constricting (are you annoyed at how far I’m pushing this “every girl is some man’s problem” theme? Because I don’t think I’m done).

The next day, the Mad Boys are presenting their ideas for the deodorant ad campaign to Don in his office. The idea is that it’s a space age deodorant, perfect for astronauts and businessmen alike. Paul spouts some pretty good ad-speak: “We’re looking for new worlds, and with that search comes any number of new gadgets. It’s not just a random association, this thing is shiny, it’s explosive, it’s from the future, a place so close to us now, filled with wonder and ease.” The first ad mock-up they show has an astronaut saying, “It works in my suit… or yours.” After Paul wraps up his pitch Don sits silently, looking concerned. Sometimes the Mad Boys act like Don is one of them, but here he is clearly the boss and they desperately want his approval. Don shoots the future-angle down: “Except some people think of the future and it upsets them. They see a rocket and they start building a bomb shelter.” Paul questions this logic, and Don says, “I don’t think it’s ridiculous to assume we’re looking for new planets because this one will end.” Instead of telling Don it is, actually, ridiculous, Paul goes back to trying to convince Don his ad is good. Don isn’t buying it, and tells them to get back to basics and think about who’s buying this deodorant: “Some woman, your girl or your mother, will pick this up walking through the grocery store. We should be asking ourselves, what do women want?” I know, for sure, that they don’t want Mel Gibson. Salvatore gays it up, quipping, “I don’t know, but I wish I had it.” Paul says he’s stopped trying to figure out what women think, and Don says a little harshly, “Maybe I should stop paying you.” He tells the Boys to bring it down to earth, that “You think they want a cowboy, he’s quiet and strong, he always brings the cattle home safe.” The boys get a little uncomfortable as it becomes clear Don isn’t talking totally hypothetically. “What if they want something else? Inside, some mysterious wish that we’re ignoring.” I guess Don has finally realized that taking care of Betty’s problems isn’t as easy as patting her on the head and saying “All better.”

The Mad Boys stream out of Don’s office and Betty asks how the meeting went. Not well, and Paul asks Betty to buy him lunch. I’m sort of into the gender reversal, but it’s not at all surprising that when she goes to pay for the sandwiches from the food cart, he’s like, “What are you doing? This 60 cent lunch is on me.” Do you ever wish you could go back in time with your bank account intact, and be super rich? The pair walk through the office (which apparently becomes a ghost town during lunch—does no one eat at their desk or eat a few hours earlier or later? Everyone leaves the premises at exactly 12:30, en masse?) and Paul explains to Betty how advertising works. I told you in my first recap that I didn’t want to learn anything from this show, but in case you’re dying to know the nuts and bolts of 60’s ad agencies, here’s what Paul tells us: most of the client’s money goes to the media department, which buys space in magazines or spots on TV. Sterling Cooper “doesn’t sell ideas or campaigns or jingles, they sell media at a 15% mark-up. Creative is just window dressing.” Paul pulls out that old man pipe as he tells her about accounting, account management (where Pete, the former son of a vampire with soul, works). Paul stands in front of Pete’s closed door and says in a Rod Sterling voice, “Let me present to you, one Pete Campbell. A man who recently discovered that the only place for his hand… is in your pocket.” Betty looks horrified at the idea that Paul knows what pockets Pete’s hands have been in, and Paul is disappointed she doesn’t watch the Twilight Zone. He proves himself to be a man after my own heart as he declares if the show is cancelled he’ll kill himself. Anyone who hasn’t felt that way about a TV show hasn’t lived. He then leads her to his desk, in the creative department. They sit on his desk and start eating their sandwiches, and Paul tells her that there are women copyrighters, and that sometimes a woman “might just be the right man for the job.” Aw, so enlightened!

After that I would have gone out with him just for not being an outright misogynist, but Betty is dumb. She hears his sweet inquiry about Ukrainian food and tells him she has a lot of work to do, still. Dumb, dumb Betty.

After lunch ends, Don is smoking in his office as Slattery walks in. Don asks if he can fix Slattery a drink; he looks at his watch and says, “4:30, close enough.” God, I love these men. Slattery brings up Nixon again, and says that Don should put together a team and it better include Pete Campbell. They banter about how going to Niagara Falls for your honeymoon, like Pete did, “redefines lack of imagination.” That is quite an insult on someone who does something creative for a living. But it’s totally true—my dad’s side of the family lives in upstate New York and every new couple went to Niagara Falls after getting married. I’m pretty sure my grandparents even did. I went there a few years ago and saw some “Just Married!” signs on cars, but geez, Niagara Falls is ridiculously tacky and crass now. I think a honeymoon there would be not only unoriginal but depressing. But then again, it couldn’t be anymore depressing than being married to Pete Campbell.

Don starts in with the required “Bitches, man” conversation. He brings up the “What do women want?” question again, and Slattery throws out a perfectly cold, “Who cares?” Then he gets even less loveable by denying that his daughter is seeing a psychiatrist, contrary to what he admitted at dinner at the beginning of the episode. Don’s eyebrows shoot up, and Slattery continues, “I am very comfortable with my mind: thoughts clean and unclean, loving and.. the opposite of that. But I am not a woman. And I think it behooves any man to toss all female troubles into the hand of a stranger.” See! Like he said, “I can’t wait until that girl is another man’s problem.” But then the “another man” is going to pass her onto a third man, the shrink, and it’s just a big, twisted game of hot potato.

Don tells Slattery that he knew a “headshrinker” when he was in the army. The guy was a gossip, and knew and told everyone’s secrets. Slattery says that not much has changed, “they just cost more.” Don replies, “And you can’t shoot at them.” Slattery: “We live in troubling times.” Don takes the joke seriously, and asks, “We do? Who could not be happy with all this?” Slattery tells him that women just want what other women have, like the wife who insists her home needs a new stove after her neighbor gets one. “It’s just more happiness,” he finishes. Don looks disbelieving, and the shot changes to behind and we can only see the back of his head. What mystery is this man!

Don arrives home after work, greets his kids (have I mentioned how freaking adorable they are? Every time they say “daddy” I melt) and then Betty. They talk about his day, and Don tells her, “You know, when I told you, you had everything, I was wrong.” He then breaks out the jewelry box and gives her a very nice watch. She’s grateful, and then proceeds to freak the fuck out. Betty noticed a bruise on her daughter’s face earlier, and asks “what if she had gotten a scar, something permanent? I’m just saying, if it had happened to Bobby it would have been ok because a boy with a scar is nothing. But a girl, it’s so much worse…” Don tries to calm her down, but Betty is on a crazy roll and says, “I keep thinking, not that I could have killed the kids, but worse—that Sally could have survived and gone on living with this horrible scar on her face and… some long, lonely, miserable life.” Whoa, right? First, that having a scar is worse than being dead, and second that having a scar dooms you to being alone. And finally, Betty looks like Grace Kelly and she has a lonely, miserable life, so look on the bright side: maybe a scar on Sally’s face would prevent her from marrying a man like Don. Betty sits down, exhausted from her freak out, and Don stands behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, unable to comfort her. She asks, practically begs, “What’s happening to me? Do I need to see someone?” Don, at a loss, gives in: “I don’t know. I guess so. Whatever you want.”

When we come back, after the commercial, Don is in the hallway of Midge’s apartment building, smoking and sitting on the floor. Midge walks up wearing a low-cut black dress, heels, and an even uglier wig than before. She observes that it’s 11 am, which means Walk of Shame for slutty ol’ Midge. Don explains that he brought Betty into the city to see the doctor, but he’s calling in sick from work. Midge, who kind of looks like Florence Henderson with her wig, tells Don she doesn’t want him to mention his wife to her, ever. “It makes me feel cruel,” she says, with a little emotion in her voice. He tells her she’s right, then says, “I can’t decide if you have everything… or nothing.” She says, “I live in the moment. Nothing is everything.” This makes me wish I was watching the episode of How I Met Your Mother when they flash back to Marshall and Ted as freshman year college roommates, and Marshall says, “Ted, you live in Ohio, right?” and Ted says, “My parents live in Ohio. I live in the moment.” And then later in the episode, when Marshall apologizes for knocking off Ted’s “spectacles,” Ted says, “That’s ok. They were mostly ornamental.”

Anyway, at the office Salvatore asks where Draper is, and when Peggy (I keep typing Betty when I mean Peggy and vice versa; they couldn’t have picked less similar names for the two lead women?) tells him Don is sick, Salvatore peaces. Peggy goes over to Paul’s office to tell him she can’t go out to lunch because she wants to be there in case Don calls. She does thank him for the tour yesterday, calling it “eye-opening.” “Hmm, I didn’t think your eyes could be any wider,” Paul says as he gets up and closes the door. Then, with no more preamble, he leans in and kisses her with all the confidence in the world. This reminds me of something that happened to a certain person who I happen to live with: it was really late and one of her guy friends had come over to drink, and when she insisted it was time to go to bed he carried her into the bathroom to watch her brush her teeth. Then, just as she put her retainer in, he asked, “So, do you want to hook up?” And she said, “Are you serious?” He was, but they didn’t, and I was in bed 20 feet away listening to this conversation and laughing hysterically. Boys are so dumb.

Peggy takes the tactic of pretending Paul is not sucking her face, and tells him, “I guess I’ll go to the cart [for lunch], you want something?” Paul ignores the hint and guesses her again. She has to push him away, and still he thinks it’s a good idea to say, “The office is going to empty out any second, we could push the couch in front of the door…” We thought Paul was one of the good ones, but it turns out he’s a Mad Boy like all the rest. Peggy keeps pushing him away, and Paul finally gets it. “Do you belong to someone else?” All this dating-ownership language is making me nauseous. Paul looks at her and thinks he’s figured it out: “Shit, I don’t even like to sit in Don’s chair.” She says, way more calmly than I would have, “I think we’ve misunderstood each other.” As she walks out he confirms, “There is someone else, right?” Maybe she just doesn’t want to be your lunchtime conquest, tool. Peggy tells him yes and walks out.

Later in the afternoon, Peggy types then decides to leave work a little bit early. Joan and her awe-inspiring hourglass figure walks over to lay some smackdown about leaving early now and making typing errors earlier. Peggy gets a little defensive, and Joan says, “Look at you, all in a snit.” Peggy tells her how frustrated she is that “every time a man takes you to lunch around here, you’re the dessert!” Joan agrees that it’s terrible, and Peggy continues, “It’s constant and from every corner! I’m from Bay Ridge. We have manners!” Joan takes on a tone of voice that could pass for motherly and is more like condescending: “Look, dear, I don’t know you that well. But you’re the new girl, and you’re not much, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.” I’m gonna be a bad feminist and say I know what Joan means. I worked at a restaurant where almost all the wait staff was male, and even when I would make jokes about a “hostile work environment” brought on by guys trying to throw ice cubes down my shirt, I sort of loved the attention. But no one ever tried to sleep with me in an office during lunch, so I guess Peggy has it worse. She goes back to typing as Joan walks away, and there’s a little montage of every Mad Boy in the office walk past and check her out. Even Big Gay Salvatore looks her up and down. I thought he went home, or to the park to cruise some random dudes? Peggy finishes her task and surreptitiously opens her desk drawer to look at Pete’s postcard from Niagara Falls that she apparently stole off the bulletin board. This is the first step on a long road that leads to building shrines and making animal sacrifices.

Peggy heads to the ladies’ room, clutching her stomach and tearing up a little. She sees Bridget crying into the mirror once again, and decides to straighten her jaunty little neck scarf, pull it together, and go back into the office. Aw, I’m so proud of little Peggy, finally taking care of her own problems (for now, at least).

Doing the opposite is Betty, lying on a couch in a shrink’s office and monologuing about herself. My parents made us go to family therapy on and off for years, and one time I was in there alone with the therapist and I asked if I could lie down on the couch since I was a punk and thought it would be funny to reenact scenes from Freud. She let me, but told me I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep. But I ended up feeling really vulnerable and weird in that position—plus I can only sleep on my stomach. I really disliked therapy because, like Don, I don’t like talking about myself to strangers. That was maybe 2nd grade, I think. The last time I went was maybe freshman or sophomore year of high school, and my parents, sister and I would go into together, but then one time the therapist called and got me on the phone and said she wanted me to come in alone (since it was obvious to all that I was the problem in my family), and I’m still kind of proud of the fact that at 14 or 15 I had the balls to say, “Actually, that’s not going to happen.” And that was the last time I was in therapy. Is it me or am I sharing a lot of personal family secrets in this recap? I guess I don’t have a problem typing about myself. Maybe we should go back to Betty before I spill about all the buildings I may or may not have burned down.

Betty tells the shrink, who stays completely silent, “I don’t know why I’m here. I mean, I do, I’m nervous, I guess? Anxious? I don’t sleep that well, and my hands, well, they’re fine now. It’s like when you have a problem with your car and you go to the mechanic and it’s not doing it anymore. Not that you’re a mechanic [nice parallel to Don’s earlier comment about “open the hood and poke around”]. I guess a lot of people must come here worried about the bomb. Is that true? It’s a common nightmare, people say, I read it in a magazine.” If this show were taking place in the 80’s, she’d say, “Do you think Soho is becoming too… commercial?” and he’s say, “Yes, I read that.” Anyway, I guess potential bomb anxiety, or at least the belief that lots of other people have bomb anxiety, is something Betty and Don have in common. Maybe that’s what they’ve been talking about for all these years while ignoring their thoughts, feelings, and personal history. She continues, “My mother always told me it wasn’t polite to talk about yourself. She passed away, recently. I guess I already said that. Can I smoke in here?” The answer, of course, is yes. She says, looking incredibly sad, “We’re all so lucky to be here.”

Back at Midge’s, Don is sleeping and Midge has a new wig on. She’s on a wig-induced downward spiral, I tell you. She tells him he stinks and needs to take a shower, and Don takes the opportunity to do a little research on the deodorant campaign. “What do women want?” Midge very rightly tells him, “One of the things is not to be asked something like that.” Don brainstorms slogans aloud: “What do women want? You know better than to ask.” He asks Midge for a pen (luckily, a pad of paper magically appears in his left hand), and writes, “What do women want? Any excuse to get closer.” That’s pretty good, and Midge agrees: “You god. There’s that ego people pay to see.”

In the next scene Don has cleaned up and is eating dinner in what looks like the same restaurant as the opening. Was there only one restaurant in 60’s Manhattan? Don asks about Betty’s day, and tells her “You know I work with doctors. They’ll say anything you pay them to.” That’s… not at all comforting, but it’s a fact that’s going to work to Don’s advantage in about 3 minutes. Betty changes the subject to how excited she is to be eating dinner in the city, and Don smoothly transitions away from any uncomfortable talk of human emotions and into an article he read about phone companies charging for unlisted numbers. He tells Betty that some people are giving aliases to the company. He tells her his favorite, “Pat McGroin,” and Betty laughs like it’s the most wittily scandalous thing she’s ever heard. Truman Capote, Don is not. The way these two are talking to each other it’s as if they’re on a first date, not at all like they’ve been married for over 5 years. Even when they’re cute they’re a little scary.

After dinner, Betty and Don walk into the house and Betty goes upstairs. Don goes into his study to make a call to… Betty’s psychiatrist! Violation of the doctor-patient confidentiality agreement alert! I think this scene is the biggest fear of anyone who’s ever been in therapy. The psychiatrist pulls out his notes and starts telling Don, “Your wife is a very anxious woman. I think you’re doing the right thing.” Don settles in for a long discussion of his wife’s innermost thoughts, and the episode ends.

Next time: Pete returns from Niagara Falls, Rachel Menken returns from her Jewish department store, and Helen the divorcee up the block may put some moves on Don.