They’re about the meaningful life a woman leads when work is done. ~ Peggy

Ah, but a woman’s work is never done, as the old saying tells us. Sometimes just getting through her life is work. And sometimes work is her life, because she’s ambitious or she gets tangled up with her boss…or both. This week the women of Mad Men get worked up and worked over and the “Chinese Wall” that’s supposed to separate business from personal life comes crumbling down for some, while others desperately try to rebuild it and regain control. The men, meanwhile, act mostly weasel-y and desperate, and are so married to their careers that they offer their families mere trinkets while missing the most important events of their lives.

There’s no business in here, son. ~ Tom to Pete  

Like a cornerstone pulled out of a building, Lucky Strike begins the cascade of possible ruin when it “goes South” (weren’t they there already?), jumping to BBDO before the 30 days that Lee Garner Jr. had promised Roger. Perhaps Lee knows that Roger wasn’t using the time anyway, having delayed delivery of the bad news to Don and the other partners until it’s too late. (“Good news is always worth waiting for,” Pete’s mother-in-law says about a different delivery, and Roger clearly feels the same way about bad.)

Cosgrove’s the first to learn the truth while celebrating a night out with his fiancé and future in-laws, when a BBDO exec casually offers him condolences and he figures out that it’s not for the loss of a fellow mad man who’s died, but something they care about much more – business. Starting a daisy chain of desperation, Ken rushes to tell Pete, who has to leave the hospital where Trudy is laboring to produce what everyone is expecting from her, a feeling that her husband will soon sympathize with, although at a funeral instead of a birth. Pete continues the chain letter of ill fortune by calling Don, and soon all the partners are convened at the office, where Roger has to pull a Sally-at-the-deli with a faked phone call that supposedly brings the overdue news.

Having “worried every day what would happen if this happened” (something that’s true for him on many levels, as we saw last week), Don seeks solace with Faye, who reassures him that he’s the most wanted man on Madison Avenue (not to mention on every couch).  But her loving attention is repaid by Don asking her to break that Chinese wall of confidentiality and tip him off to unhappy clients at the other agencies she consults for. When she says she can’t do that, Don blithely replies, “Sure you can,” demonstrating once again a lack of moral fiber that must be one cause of his emotional constipation. When she rightly complains that, “You want to throw me to the wolves to save your neck,” he doubles down on his insensitivity by dismissing her concerns as meaningless since she’s a mere employee of her company while he’s an owner of his firm. Furious, Faye tries to draw a line between work and personal life that’s apparently invisible to Don, declaring, “I would never use you like this because I know the difference between what we have and this stupid office.”

But Faye ultimately fails to maintain that line, caving after she’s “thought about whatever you are in my life right now” (notably unspecified) and offering Don the tip that Heinz isn’t happy with their aptly named agency, Ketchum. Having faced her earlier fury, Don accepts this offer with surprise rather than the relish we’d expect. But then, he’s a man in a pickle by that time, having already moved on from Faye with a tryst with Megan on his office couch.

That soon-to-be second Mrs. Donald Draper continues her eerie similarity to Jane Siegel-Sterling by playing as innocent as Bambi while getting her man exactly where she wants him – in her target sights. Rather than acting the damsel-in-distress as Jane did, Megan’s tactic is to cozy up to Don over client strategy statements, demurely saying she wants to know more about the business not only to avoid those silly little mistakes she’s made before, but because “ultimately” she’d like to do Don’s job – or, uh, Peggy’s (a hedge against any possible charges of hubris). Don’s either come a long way, baby, or he’s enamored of Megan, because he fails to give her the sexist put-downs that Peggy’s had to endure for her ambition (such as reminding her she started as his secretary and has a job that a “grown man” should be doing). Instead he seems fascinated to find out Megan’s a plucky Montreal girl who came to the Big Apple not because she’s an artist (which she insists she’s not) but merely “artistic,” having “dabbled” in writing, painting and acting.

Playing Don like Cosgrove’s gold violin, she overcomes his nanosecond of hesitation at sleeping with her by reassuring him that it’s merely personal, not business, and that she just wants him for tonight and won’t throw a morning-after hissy like Allison did. Despite the fact that she’s just admitted she thinks about him all the time, Don falls for this “co-worker with benefits” offer as if he’s dealing with a female Don Draper.  And Megan leads him to think that’s precisely what she is, not just because she wants his job but because she says that, like him, she judges people on their work and “everything else is sentimental.” Memo to Don: Unless sex is work, that means what you’re doing on that couch is sentimental. She may have pulled your Clio out of the trash, but you may have to pull your ass out of the fire for having fallen for one of the oldest lines in the book, “I don’t want anything from you but this one magic night.”  Didn’t you notice how “wifey” she acted with you afterward, telling you she wanted you to go home, get some sleep and not drink any more?

 It’s the last days of Rome. I was in an agency that went down. The women get sex crazed. The energy is very good. ~ Stan

Showing once again that she’s moving ahead of her boss and mentor, Peggy both separates and combines work and pleasure adeptly in this episode.  Having run into Abe at Jones Beach, they end up at her apartment making salty sandy love that leaves them both sweetly besotted.  “I’m not usually like this,” Peggy murmurs when they can’t bear to separate (in any sense) and when she moonily wanders late into the “all hands” meeting announcing the loss of Lucky Strike, she hardly seems to care. (After all, what’s a cigarette matter when you’ve met your match?) But as the news sinks in and she's told by Don that she must singlehandedly nail the Playtex glove presentation, she reacts with a feeling that every Catholic girl recognizes after enjoying sex:  “Every time something good happens, something bad happens.  I knew I’d pay for it.” 

But she soon returns to her usual competent self. Don brusquely tells her she’s not paying for anything, and she doesn’t, landing the client with a persuasive presentation despite the smeared lipstick on her teeth (which she’s able to laugh off easily in her victory). Incorporating her sexual satisfaction into the campaign, and emulating the “poetic” conclusion that she admires Don’s pitches for, she enthuses about “all the things a woman wants to touch” – an integration of the romantic into work that the client admits he hadn’t thought would be possible. Even after naively falling for Stan’s juvenile groping trap, she shakes off her reflexive sexual guilt, laying the blame precisely where she should by exasperatedly asking him, “Why do you keep making me reject you?”

Maybe it’s a good time to get out of this business. ~ Roger  

While Peggy seems to be smoothly integrating romance with work (even slipping in a nooner with Abe in her office), Joan has ceased to find the silver lining in polishing Sterling.  The match that breaks the not-Camels back comes when Roger confesses his concealment of the Lucky Strike-out. Calling her from the NYC hotel where he’s hiding out (while pretending to be in North Carolina trying to get the client back), he reveals his cowardice and draws her anger at failing to even try to save the business.  Oblivious to her reaction, he begs her to join him at the hotel and comfort him, but his failure to try to woo the client is repaid by losing any hope of doing so with Joan.

Showing up at her apartment later, he’s genuinely mystified as to why she didn’t obey his summons to play reassuring Mommy. So adept at language when it suits him, Roger is utterly obtuse when it comes to parsing his own motivations or the feelings of others. Arguing that Joan always comes back to him “because we belong together,” he insists that she comply once again because “I need you right now” and counters her weary observation, “Because I’m a port in a storm” with a clueless “No, because I feel like shit and you care about me,” not understanding he’s just proved her point. 

Tantalizing us with a further hint that she did not go through with the abortion, Joan warns, “I’m not a solution to your problems; I’m another problem.”  But it takes the three-times-is-the charm repetition of “I can’t do this any more” before he finally believes her, and his reaction says it all: Rather than bemoaning losing the love of his life, he merely regrets not knowing the mugging was the last time they’d have sex. But what can you expect from a guy who thinks that the highest compliment he can pay a woman is telling her that she’s the greatest piece of ass he’s ever had?  Here’s hoping Joan has truly kissed off Roger for the last time.

Stumbling home to trophy wife Jane in double defeat, Roger’s presented with the hollow victory he deserves, the first copies of the book he’s spent the past year writing rather than tending to the business of keeping his clients happy. (Those who can’t do, write.) Like the cold breath that Stan told Peggy to blow in his face, the title “Sterling’s Gold” mocks Roger even as a clueless Jane tells him how proud she is. After inscribing a book with the insipid, “To my loving wife,” at her insistence, he slumps down and reluctantly accepts her embrace on the marital couch. 

You made me wait for you while you worked. I’m not waiting anymore. ~ Faye to Don

Back at Chez Draper, Don falls into the exact same posture with Faye, who’s just thrown him a lifeline in the form of a possible death knell to her own career, should word of her unethical indiscretion leak out (any bets on whether it will?).  While Roger appears utterly unconnected to Jane, Don seems silently remorseful at Faye’s sacrifice, perhaps wondering what he’s done by cavalierly moving on to Megan. Reluctantly inviting Faye to stay while warning her he’ll probably just fall asleep on her, he buries his head in her hair with either real affection or need.  As both men sit on their (for once) sexless couches with their mates, Roger seems lost, but we’re left wondering whether Don will fall asleep emotionally on Faye, becoming unconscious again after his recent attempts to wake up.  “Miracles, I guess, still happen now and then,” music hopefully croons as the credits roll, “Step into my heart.”

We have dog food experience. ~ Don at the funeral

I got him. ~ Pete

But hearts are what these men seem to have buried in their drive to succeed, even using the funeral of a rival mad man to troll for accounts they can harvest like organs from his dead corporate body.  The eulogies that the guests offer up for the dear departed point up the hollowness of the businessman’s life, telling tales of months spent away from home while reassuring the grieving wife and daughter that the baubles he made sure to buy them showed that they were his real treasures.  In the same vein, Pete’s father-in-law shoos him from the hospital by saying he was at a ball game when Trudy was born and Pete should likewise “relax and go about your business,” while the women get on with this minor matter of bringing new life into the world. Pete’s informed of his daughter’s birth and wife’s recovery by a secretary and while obviously touched, doesn’t question the imperative that he go to a funeral and drum up business rather than rushing to be with his family. Like several other characters in this episode, Pete’s being wooed, possibly by the least attractive suitor of all, the slimy Ted Chaough.  Pete’s father-in-law Tom pressures him to accept Chaough’s advances, terming SCDP a “folly” and saying Pete needs to grow up now that he’s a father. Despite this hard sell as well as Chaough’s tempting offer to put his name on the building (as he’s always wanted), Pete’s sure that Chaough’s just trying to get revenge on Don for the Honda fiasco and so resists the courtship – for now. 

I’m not at that point yet. ~ Don  

Recovering the Clio that Don has hurled across his office when Glo-Coat devalues it by telling him they’re abandoning the sinking ship SCDP, Megan explains that “I thought in the end you wouldn’t want to throw it away.” 

“You’re wrong,” Don responds gloomily. What he might throw away – his success or his personal life or both – remains an abiding question of the series, one that has broadened to encompass the other characters.  Each is struggling with the dividing line of work and life, trying to determine what will truly make them happy, and only the dark horse Peggy seems to be pulling ahead in the race, declaring “I’m not worried,” even as the agency teeters on the brink of collapse. Rather than ruining her career as she feared, Abe’s proved himself a good guy, and she takes the risk of accepting his humble implied apology (“I’m learning”) and letting him into her heart. Having earlier told Don that nothing seems as compelling as what she does in the office, she seems to have found something that is, embracing that “meaningful life” that women have when their work is done, including finding meaning in having done that work well.

Tellingly, while Don tries to monitor his drinking, enlisting Megan to help him yet still ending up as he tells Faye, “one over” (but not won over?), Peggy tells Stan that “I can’t do this drunk” before delivering her crucial presentation. Soberly facing her fears in both romance and work, she succeeds and literally has the last laugh, even at her own foibles, rather than lying and hiding in fear, a route that seems to be leading the men who follow it to destruction.

Only so much we can pretend like we’re doing.~ Don