(Major spoilers follow...)
I'll get long winded, since Mad Men is one of only a few TV show I care enough about to watch. I really enjoy the way the series covers the history, the consumer products, the fashion, and in general the feel of the "future shock" era, all while weaving an entertaining tale that involves rather flawed but never-the-less interesting characters. Over the years, the series has fleshed-out the characters very well, and yet this season the character cards have been reshuffled a bit.
It's been a rough season for Peggy so far... In the 4th episode, the good news is she that she gets a $100 a week -- the equivalent of about $2800 a month, today -- not a bad chunk of change! But the bad news is that she gets to ride herd on Don, since Lou doesn't want to. The long sage advice Lou offers is "Youre in charge, sweetheart!" I got the feeling this isn't exactly the rosy future Peggy envisioned when she briefly reveled in Don's chair at the end of last season.
Poor Peggy. How long before she totally flips out and pushes Don down the elevator shaft, when the door malfunctions? Or will Don end in jail for killing a passerby on the street with an Selectric typewriter he tosses out the window?
Meanwhile, the creatives don't seem to be faring so well this season. Now, they've lost their lounge to a machine -- a cold and calculating computer -- and Rizzo and Ginsberg are now seemly stuck with a couch that's "full of farts" for all time.
Don gets totally meta while talking to Lloyd, the guy who just sold the firm their computer, about the man vs. machine angle and the whole "cosmic disturbance" qualities and the "god like" nature of the monolith, err... I mean the computer. I braced myself, expecting Roger to bust in and start singing "The Ballad of John Henry" at any moment, But luckily, Roger got involved in his own struggle before that could happen.
Don's 2nd verbal encounter with Lloyd seemed to be a prelude to Don starting to fire on all 8-cylinders again, by landing the firm a new "virgin" ad client. But then Don's new prospect (as well as Don himself) got shot down in flames by venerable ol' Burt. Has Bert put 2 and 2 together about some of the dark details of Don's past, or is he just at the point in life where he's tired of dealing with problems, in general? Or does he just enjoy setting Don up so he'll win Don's shares of the firm?
After falling off the ladder and getting drunker than a college freshman Don and (rotary) drunk dialing Freddie (one of the only friend he has left), Don takes goes into another mini-meltdown travels to a surreal level with Lloyd, the guy that "talks like a friend" (but he's not!) Huh? What? The man that goes "by many names"? Does Don see Lloyd as the devil? Or was that bottle Don swiped from Roger laced with peyote? Don isn't quite as the point where's he's wearing a sign that read "The End is Near!" but he seems to be getting closer to that point!
Roger's "field trip" with ex-wife #1, was entertaining as well. His "do as I say, not as I do" way of dealing with his daughter didn't seem to work out too well. Will Roger and Don compare notes about daughters sometime in the near future at an "off campus" location? And will Roger to able to get his grove back?
The episode seemed to have been a foreshadowing of hope for Don sometime in the future, in the form of the Mets pennant, since 1969 was the year the Mets won a division title, a pennant, and the World Series.
Bert might feel little changed when Don left, but you'd think he would have felt "a strange disturbance in the force". Now, no one seems to really be in charge. Pete and Ted are exiled in L.A. Bert takes the course of least resistance. Roger 2.0 seems to be winding down to a fraction of his formerly enlighten self. Peggy tries hard, but only seems to be able ending up as a big-eyed, sad office clown, that's constantly the butt of everyone's jokes. Lou main weapons seems to be either passive aggression or whining to Jim. Joan and Harry seem to about the only real contenders left in the battle for power, along of course with Jim. But then there's the wild card we haven't heard from in a while, Bob Benson (who seems likely to go with the side he thinks will win).
Finishing up with the Holliess "On a Carousel" playing us out to the credits seemed appropriate, perhaps on many levels...
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