Mad-Men: 4.04 "The Rejected" (open spoilers)

Agreed…I forgot how unpredictable the show is when I surmised that the artist/filmmaker who was throwing the party was Warhol himself. Guess he was already much bigger by then.

Thanks, Jophiel - I figured as much but thought they were making a leap there; the conversation wasn’t natural, IMHO. Brevity for time’s sake, I suppose.

The best part of this was that he didn’t respond in typically Pete fashion, by feigning incredulity and saying “I beg your pardon!??!?!” or somesuch.

It appears that he is becoming more accepting of his SOB-ness.

I took that to be Don’s saying what he WISHES were true. I’m fairly sure Don hates most of himself, the exception being the guy he is with his California soulmate and with his kids.

Well, I wanted Elisabeth Moss (Pegg) nakedness, actually. January Jones I have seen, and Christina Hendrix does not move me.

I thought the scene with Peggy going to lunch side by side with the Old Guard going to lunch was a little too much on the nose, if you will, but maybe that was an era of on-the-nose.

Its funny how much I had forgotten that Peggy actually used to be Don’t secretary.

Pete really stuck it to his FIL, basically telling him “I want everything and I am about to have a baby with your daughter, so guess what, you decide.”

Especially, IIRC, FIL threatened to pull Clearasil if Pete didn’t give Trudy what the baby she wanted!

I was thinking “wait 40 years, then it’ll be a bunch of 12-year-old girls”

The thing I noticed is that the psychologist missed it. They weren’t searching to get married - not exactly. They did want to feel pretty, but the secretary with a French mother wanted a connection with her mother. Dotty & Alison wanted recognition and respect. Peggy’s idea (indulge yourself) was off, but so was Freddie & Faye’s (Ponds will get you a husband). They needed a new idea.

I also found myself seriously questioning the scientific credentials of someone who used a 6 person focus group as a means of “disproving the hypothesis.” Small sample size much?

Another good scene: Peggy “comforting” Allison until Allison says that Peggy must have slept with Don, at which point Peggy tells her to suck it up and get over herself. Not for Don’s sake but rather she’s offended that Allison (and others?) think she slept her way up.

Which made me think, I spent a moment or two wondering if Allison would reveal what happened but… would anyone of note care? Roger wouldn’t. Pete wouldn’t. Joan took Peggy to get birth control on Day One so neither of them should be scandalized. Lane and Cooper might think it was a stupid thing to do but neither would try to come down on Don for it. Aside from mild disapproval, there’s no real sword of Damocles hanging there.

There’s definitely no danger to Don’s career due to his fling with Allison, but I think the arrival of Miss Blankenship signals at least Joan’s disapproval of Don. I hope Miss Blankenship stays forever.

Looks like Lee Garner Jr. is getting more and more tyrannical in his demands. “No, Lee, the jockey will be smoking.” and “Yes, bowling is a sport.”

Poor Peggy. In this episode, she was rejected in some way by all of the men in her life. First, she finds out that Don had slept with Allison, in a way, undermining her belief that Don was a good man who wouldn’t take advantage of his secretary. This has an added sting of making his first rejection of her all the worse. Then he finds out that Pete and Trudy are expecting. Even her assistant, Joey, also prefers Trudy, at least in terms of looks. None of these are rejections of Peggy directly, but they all indicate that the men in her life wants a woman, just not her. No wonder she puts her lot in with the younger, bohemian crowd.

No, nobody would give a fuck, and Allison must realize that, too, which only demeans her more. She’s entirely powerless and Don’s a real bastard.

I thought this line was one of the funnier ones of the entire episode. Of course we can’t hear what Garner is saying, but here’s what I imagine the conversation went like:

<Roger> We can use sports, like bowling or horse racing…
<Garner> You are going to show a horse smoking?
<Roger> No, Lee, the jockey will be smoking.

I rather hope that Miss Blanksenship was Joan’s way of passive-aggressively kicking Don in the nads, but it’s also possible that he asked for an old one. It would make his keeping to his own rules easier, after all.

I was not aware that Don ever rejected a romantic overture from Peggy, but I didn’t watch during the first season. May I ask which episode?

As for people rejecting Peggy: well, at least she knows the girl from Life won’t be in that crew. And she was about to get someplace with the guy in the closet until LifeGirl interrupted.

It was in the first episode or two. I don’t remember the exact event but Peggy made some mistake as Don’s secretary, Don covered for her and Peggy started in with putting her hand on Don’s and saying how grateful she was. Don said he wasn’t her boyfriend and don’t fuck up in the future.

In some defense of Peggy, this was after Joan had Peggy go on birth control as a precaution to working in the office, a clear sign that Peggy might be expected to sleep with someone.

There seemed to be another joke in that exchange too, that we needed Lee’s side to get the gist of…something about a boat?

I found it interesting that they were charging all the other clients’ time to Lucky Strike!

Roger said something like “If it costs that much, it should have a motor”, and he laughs at what Lee says and then Roger says “One of those too”. Live-in hooker?

I think the exchange between Joan and Don right after Allison stormed out of the office indicated that Joan knew and disapproved of what Don had done. Don also seemed somewhat surprised to see Miss Blankenship at the desk in the morning. I really hope she sticks around though, if only for lines like “Dr. Miller is here. She’s a woman.”

True, I think Peggy will have a much easier time fitting in with those crazy kids.

Don’s rejection happened in the first episode. In my view, this primed her to be open for Pete’s really sleazy late-night call which led to her surprise pregnancy.

So now that they have Vicks does this mean they’re going to drop Ponds?

Was anybody else expecting to see Andy Warhol come up at the party?

And I hate it when they leave it on a cliffhanger: we have to wait a whole week to know if she got the pears.

Very mysterious, the way she said they’d talk about it inside…how much can you say about pears? Would it have killed her to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?

No, I pretty sure Clearasil was let go, and given to Cosgrove. Otherwise, I pretty sure Freddy would be gone, and I think they would’ve made some note of that.

Anyone notice Allison saying “This actually happened” in contrast to Don’s advice a couple seasons ago to Peggy that “This never happened.” Don’s go to move has always been to sweep things under the rug, and that isn’t really working anymore. And I think that ties in with the closing scene where the wife wouldn’t talk about such mundane things as groceries in front of others, but I’m not sure how.