Based on the previews it looks like we’re going to see Peggy’s family (or at least her mother) again. We should be seeing the Brits again too as this looks like a workplace centered episode unlike last week. I wonder how Moneypenny’s doing.
Nitpick: The Germans weren’t wearing spiked helmets by the time the Americans arrived.
Yeah, and if Grandpa McCain collapsed in line at the A&P how did the peaches get in his car? So Peggy’s a Norwegian Catholic? :dubious:
Sal’s wife suspects something, but she doesn’t know what. Anybody else notice that whenever they watch a film lately they bring one of the girls in to run the projector instead of making Peggy do it? Nice touch. I wonder how her roomate will turn out. It’s interesting how her mother and sister seem to have switched roles. Now Anita’s the supportive one and Mrs Olsen is the bitch.
Oh and Sally driving a car at 7 in 1963? 
I was 5 the first time I drove a car (1990). I wonder if Betty and William are going to go at it over the will. Sally’s going to have problems.
Were you thinking that Gene wasn’t just blowing smoke about all that, to twit Don? 'Cause that is how I read that scene.
I thought the actress playing Sally was pretty good on the porch scene after she learns about Gene’s death. Ordinarily I find her character irritating.
When Sal was acting out his commercial, a look of recognition dawned on her face. I think she has an inkling what’s going on with him, watching him pretend to be Ann- Margret. That’s not to say that she can cope with that understanding or articulate it, but she did seem to realize something that she hadn’t before.
I was once again appalled at the Draper parenting. When Sally was freaking out about the laughing, that would have been a good opportunity to talk to her about Grandpa’s death, and how people cope with grief. Clearly Sally was really hurting about losing her grandfather, the only person who really paid attention to her and told her he saw value and potential in her. Instead of talking to her or comforting her, Betty doesn’t even look at her, but says, “Go watch TV.” Then poor Sally has to see that photo of the Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Vietnam, and go to sleep clutching *The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. * I felt really bad for her.
Also felt sorry for Peggy, who is getting shit from her co-workers about her square ad, needing copy writing advice from Joan. Joan’s advice for the ad is good, but has it attracted the kind of person that Peggy will mesh with? That pairing makes me nervous. And my god, her mother is a nightmare.
Jai alai… still waiting for it to eclipse baseball as America’s pastime.
So what was wrong with the commercial for Patio? Too gay?
That, and the actress was too screechy. It seemed like a send-up of the original, not an homage. The focus was wrong. In the original, Ann-Margret is saying goodbye to someone she loves, but in the Patio commercial, she’s supposed to be embracing this new, better thing and saying goodbye to something inferior (sugar), so it doesn’t work.
Loved Peggy’s smirk through the whole thing.
God, that was so damn annoying. The original annoys the hell out of me for some reason too, even though Ann Margret was hot.
The actress that plays the daughter really shined in this episode. On the surface, it could have been hokey, but I bought all of her emotions. And now I can finally stop feeling like there’s some impending doom for her in that story line. Will she be molested, will she get thrown through the windshield… sheesh there was a vibe in all of those scenes that just didn’t belong.
The boys’ prank phone call just cracked me up, and that’s a first for this show. I usually don’t identify with the boy’s club at SC, but I was right there with them for that one.
After seeing all that mincing and prancing, Sal’s wife totally knows. She looked trapped and repulsed at the end when they were on the bed together.
This is such a well done show, imho. So dark, though, at times. Heh, most of the time, actually.
I’m uncertain of Betty’s relationship with her mother, but her own relationship with Sally is quite toxic, unfortunately. Don is not much better with the kids, but I think this points out the darker side of life in those days, a side that gets ignored in the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. Everything certainly wasn’t “perfect” and just as there are many who are totally inept (and worse) at parenting today, there were back then as well. No one wanted to deal with Sally’s grief over the passing of her grandfather and it looks like there will be consequences of that in episodes to come.
I love Peggy; yes, she smirked at the dud Patio commercial because she knew it wouldn’t work. And poor Jill (Sal’s wife); I think it dawned on her (finally …) that Sal is gay, although it would have been “homosexual” in those days. It was still being treated as a psychiatric disorder and in some case with electro-shock therapy, btw, in the early 60s. I loved Don’s confidence in Sal, though.
What happened to Gene’s second wife? Did she bolt when he got sick?
I love that Peggy didn’t fall for her mother’s guilt trip, and that Anita defended Peggy. Someone commented on Sepinwall’s blog that this makes Anita the “good daughter”. Maybe so, but I think she was sincere. “You’ll get raped!” Geez, mom!!
Great examples of bad parenting here. Peggy will be okay but Sally and Horace are in for trouble.
How delusional is Horace? Loved Don’s comment about how people will be confused by the J in AJAA.
There seemed to be a running theme regarding people being sheltered from the cruel world, and how that hurts rather than helps you.
I think I may have cheered aloud when Gene told Sally she was smart and despite her mother she’d make something of herself. Finally someone took an interest in her! And then…sigh Poor kid.
I was also excited to see Carla Gallo, who played Libby on Carnivale, show up as Peggy’s new roommate. Hopefully we’ll see more of her. And that “Swedish”…“Norwegian” moment was cute.
Who thinks that the ad failed because Sal didn’t know how to get a woman to act like how a man wanted, versus that the actress simply wasn’t the same material as the original?
Yes, she did.
So’s Ann-Margaret. (When we saw the original last week, I’d forgotten how she sounded. She did not get that job for her voice.)
I need to go and get my basket thingy.
Oh, she was hot enough. I think the client didn’t realize that it was a bad idea until they saw the finished product. That ad would work if the product was beer or after-shave. Their comments about not knowing why it didn’t work – they knew. That was just good writing on Weiner’s part (or whoever wrote this episode).
I almost felt sorry for ad men in this episode, having to work on something they don’t believe in. One of my least favorite tasks at my last job was service awards. Why should employees be rewarded for longevity? I hated wasting time on that. Nobody appreciated it. Good employees saw the same gifts being given to problem employees. There’s no value in that.
Trapped, repulsed, and smokin’ hot in that green nightie. Wow! (but yeah, she knows)
I’m in the “she knows but doesn’t know what she knows” camp. Like when I was little and knew there was something different about Liberace, but I didn’t know what it was.
But probably Jill, being a New Yorker, has more experience than I had.
I can’t believe the nerdy girl from Everwood is Sal’s wife. I thought she was much younger than she is. It probably doesn’t help that the entire Everwood show still lives on in a special part of my brain.
Wasn’t Sal one of the guys who thought that Ann-Margaret had “it” when Peggy was just annoyed by the whole thing? I think he understood what the client wanted… it’s just that the client didn’t want what they thought they wanted.
This wouldn’t have been a problem if Don wasn’t phoning in his work performance lately. He knew “Patio” was all wrong, just like he knew the Jai-Alai stuff was all wrong. He just wasn’t motivated to do anything about it. When he commented to Sal that he’d never had a client not want what he’d presented, that’s because in the past he’d always given them what they really needed and gone to the effort to convince them that they needed it. Last time he did that was for Madison Square Gardens, and the outcome of that soured him even more.
This isn’t the old Don here; he’s adrift.
Re Sal’s wife getting the wake up call that hubby is a flamer I really didn’t buy the “Oh now I get it… you’re queer!” look as he was flouncing around pretending to be the Patio girl. It would have made more sense if she had put a few little things together instead of having it hit her out of the blue.