Even more, this serves to illustration Joan’s evolution throughout the show. In the beginning, Joan is the perfect office manager, giving “her” girls the advice and “on-the-job mentoring” that they won’t get out of any employment manual or their mothers. But she assumes (mostly correctly) that the secretaries want the same things out of life and work that she wants, to wit, a good time, a husband, and a house in the suburbs, all in the appropriate order without any hiccups. This is why she is so perplexed that Peggy is doing nothing to attract a man and is willing to work evenings for free as a junior copywriter. However, her perspective changes when she is given the “extra” job of reading scripts for Harry Crane. She suddenly discovers that she can do more than boss around younger women (who also mock her age) and be admired for her figure. When that job is taken away from her, and given to some boob who clearly doesn’t know or care about making the kind of connections between drama and marketing that are natural to her. Ever since then, she has demonstrated subtle balking at her position, exacerbated by her disintegrating marriage. Joan might chastise one of her girls for making an error, but she has consistently demonstrated protectiveness and has never betrayed one for her own self-interest the way the all of the partners (save for Don) did either in action or inaction.
The duplicated scene was a framing device that is intended to emphasize the inner conflict that Joan has experienced. In the first scene, she seems to be assuring Don that she is not being coerced and sleeping with the sleezebag out of her own conscious self-interest. When the scene is played again and we understand that she has already done the deed, we realize that part of the reason that Joan slept with the guy was out of spite for the partners, almost as if being dared, and if Don had spoken to her before she likely would have not gone through with it. The look of barely restrained revulsion on Joan’s face when she removes her dress (facing away from Herb) is a great scene, and intercut with Don pitching Jaguar (which is supposed to be describing a mistress, but is actually the tenuous success of SCDP and its relationship to its clients) is one of the best scenes since the pitch in “The Wheel”.
This is also an evolution of Draper, who had initially embraced the mistress idea, and then rejected it when Megan clearly found it revolting, only to accept it again when Ginsberg pitched it (again, as a veiled metareference to SCDP’s relationship to Jaguar). Don’s whole speach to Peggy regarding the “sex sells” approach of creative (“The people who think that think that monkeys can do this job,”) is lost when the “sex” (Jaguar) is being sold to him.
And Jaguar is going to end up being a gigantic charlie-fox for SCDP. Not only are they going to be an overbearing, demanding client to shame Lucky Strike, they’re also going to be disruptive and mercurial. Lane is right to be concerned about their affect on the business; everyone else assumes that “a car” is necessary for SCDP’s reputation regardless of the cost to the firm.
Ted Chaough already knows what happened at Honda. Although it is tempting to think of him as a second-rater, especially with his apparently one-sided competition with Draper, he’s clearly very smart and capable, and didn’t get this far riding on someone else’s coat tails. His vision for the Honda commercial was actually quite good, and his pitch to Peggy in this episode is straight Draper.
Frankly, I hope this is the last series for the show, because it has been threatening to veer off into Carnal Knowledge territory for a while now, and I really don’t want to see the show depicted in the 'Seventies.
Stranger
