Well, for my first-ever recap I drew a nice, light episode about Japanese business culture and female sexual repression! Let’s begin!
Don’s new Draper-proof secretary, Mrs. Blankenship—who looks uncannily like Dame Edna—is doing a crossword puzzle (B-O-R-E–nice touch, Mr. Weiner) when a phone call comes in from the New York Times. We have a bit of comedy while she tries to figure out how to connect the call, and then the reporter on the other end of the line wonders if Don has heard that Other Agency has just signed Clearasil. Other Agency’s Draper facsimile, Ted Chaough, is on the record as saying “Every time Don Draper looks in the rearview mirror he sees me.” “Never heard of him,” says Don, and Mrs. Blankenship’s voice comes leadenly through the intercom to say “YOU HAVE A PAHT-NAHS LUNCHEON.”
In the conference room, Roger reads the paper and remarks that The Selma Thing isn’t going away, which perplexes poor Bert, whose exotic cultural fetishizing apparently doesn’t extend to Africa. Pete’s all excited because Honda Motorcycle Company (who are venturing into automobiles, nudge nudge, wink wink) are shopping for new representation, and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce have snagged a meeting. They’ve been advised to read “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” and Pete hopes Bert can help them navigate the tricky world of Japanese etiquette, on account of all the pretty screens in his office. Now it’s Roger’s turn for xenophobia, though his takes the more understandable form of whiplash at being expected to do business with people who were the capital e enemy not so long ago and killed most of his boyhood chums. Pete, as usual, is frustrated by the display of any concerns other than business ones.
Cut to the Draper children in the Depressing Divorce Apartment, watching an equally depressing newscast. Don is off to Benihana’s, and the nurse from down the hall (demoted from her doctor role on Grey’s) is babysitting. Sally accuses Don of going to see a girl, and he allows that he is, which she takes exception to. Strenuous exception, as we learn in the next scene, when she emerges from the bathroom having cut her own hair—to the horror of the babysitter and the delight of Bobby, who gleefully informs her that she looks like a Mongoloid. This is the cultural sensitivity episode, I see.
Nurse Babysitter sends Bobby away and tends to a crying Sally, who asks whether she (NB) and Don are “doing it.” Sally hurries to inform Nurse Babysitter that she knows all about “it” from a girl at school, specifically about how The Man Pees Inside The Woman. NB is not up for a discussion of watersports and makes the horrifying suggestion that Sally talk to her mommy. She’d be better off talking to Future Sex Offender Glenn, who, I am certain, could fill her in on the finer points.
At Benihana’s, Don is dining with the college girl from episode one. The infamous Ted Chaough stops by, wife in tow, and not only is it obvious that Don DOES know Mr. Chaough after all, but that they are both engaged in the same Honda-related cultural research. Don looks annoyed for what is at least the dozenth time this episode, and it occurs to me that a Mad Men drinking game wherein you took a sip of something every time Don looks annoyed would probably result in alcohol poisoning. Mr. Chaough makes smug remarks and leaves, and his wife doesn’t like him any better than we do. Bethany knows how to use chopsticks, and Don turns to her, cigarette dangling, and says “Do you think you could teach me?” Oh I could teach you, Mr. Draper. COULD I!
Returning home, Don is not happy to hear about Sally’s foray into home barbery, citing the “river of shit” Betty will rain down on him, and sure enough, when Don drops the children off the next day Betty responds in her usual reasonable, measured fashion—by slapping Sally flat across the face and sending her upstairs. Henry the eunuch looks horrified, and when Don says “you didn’t have to hit her,” Betty responds, bitterly “You’re right. BECAUSE IT DOESN’T DO ANYTHING.” Er…exactly.
After Don leaves, Betty admits to Henry that hitting Sally was Impulsive. Yes, impulsive. Like a last-minute trip to Aruba or buying shoes you don’t really need.
The day of the Honda meeting has arrived, and Pete is scurrying around getting rid of a pot of chrysanthumums, because “apparently they symbolize death.” He reminds Don that the MAIN thing is to “avoid criticizing or giving advice,” which pretty much rules out Don’s entire repertoire with clients. Not counting waxing philosophical about household objects, I mean.
The Honda Contingent arrives, we have a little Translation Follies interlude, and upon being introduced to Joan one of them wonders in Japanese how she doesn’t fall over. (Hidden wires, gentlemen. Hidden wires.)
There is some bowing and gift-giving (“It’s a cantaloupe!” enthuses Pete, and I have a sudden and bizarre urge to kiss him), and the meeting is concluding successfully when Roger barges in to strike one last blow to the Yellow Menace. It’s the least charming I’ve seen him, and afterwards Don and Pete storm his office to yell at him before walking out again, leaving Roger alone and giving us a nice, long shot of his lamp shaped like a mushroom cloud.
Then things get sticky. Little Sally Draper is at a slumber party, a friend asleep next to her on the couch, watching The Man From U.N.C.L.E. held captive by a presumably Asian woman in a golden mask. As she watches his face, she inches up the hem of her nightgown and begins to…let her fingers do the walking, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
The friend’s mother walks in, and just like that, Sally is inducted into the sisterhood of shame.
We are blessedly saved by a ringing doorbell from watching Betty and the Eunuch having sex, and poor Sally is sent upstairs again while her friend’s mother tells Betty that she found her daughter “playing with herself.” Betty again reacts in her usual measured and reasonable fashion, flying into Sally’s room to shout “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” and make a charmingly maternal threat to cut her fingers off. So all around, a not-at-all traumatizing sexual awakening!
Back in bed, The Eunuch suggests a child psychiatrist and Betty smokes to soothe her nerves. Someone should slip a cigarette to poor Sally.
At SCDP, we get another comedy bit with Dame Edna, and the Honda Presentation is discussed. It’s still on, but after Roger’s meltdown, only as a formality. They’re dead in the water, and this time Ted Chaough will be the one looking in the rearview mirror.
Don is at the Depressing Divorce Apartment reading “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword” when Betty calls to tell him that Sally was masturbating in front of a friend. Don wants to know whether the friend was a boy or a girl, but Betty reminds him of what’s important–that Sally is ten years old and does he know what kind of girls do that? FAST ONES! She mentions the psychiatrist, and Don says “can’t you talk to her?” Jesus, Don, I expect this from Nurse Babysitter, but you were MARRIED to her.
Don strides into the office with A Plan he thought up while reading The Chrysanthemum. It’s a complicated charade that involves tricking Ted Chaough into breaking the rules Honda gave for the presentation—you know how the Japanese are about rules—by making him think that SDCP is breaking them as well, when really all that’s happening is that Peggy’s riding around an empty soundstage on a motorcycle. The whole thing feels uncannily like the plot of one of the advertising movies actually made in the mid-sixties, and we even get a peppy little “HIJINKS!” soundtrack to go along with the madcap scheme, which naturally works like a charm. Poor Ted Chaough is obviously no Don Draper, a fact his ugly plaid blazer takes pains to impress upon us.
Don has sake with the Lady Psychologist, who isn’t married after all and has just come from another focus group. She makes the remark that “you’d be surprised what people will say to an interested stranger,” which makes me think of blogging, and to which Don says, expasperated, “why does everyone need to talk about everything?” He then proceeds to talk about how he feels relieved when he drops his kids off, but misses them afterward. He looks sad and bewildered and in need of comfort, and I drift off for a moment, imagining myself comforting him.
…But then we are in a child psychiatrist’s office with Betty, who is ostensibly there to talk about Sally. The doctor deftly draws her into talking about herself, and Betty reveals that she is no stranger to the behavior for which she threatened to dismember her daughter—though she “was private” and “mostly outgrew it.” At the end of the scene, when the doctor leaves to get her datebook, Betty smiles at a dollhouse family with more tenderness than she has ever shown her own.
At Honda, Don pretends to be affronted by people who don’t follow rules and withdraws from the competition. Playing hard to get only makes me–I mean Honda—want him more, and back at SCDP, Joan consoles Roger while everyone else celebrates. Dame Edna croaks “YOUR DAAA-TAH’S PSYCHIATRIST CALLED” so that everyone can hear.
In the waiting room of said psychiatrist, Carla watches with sad eyes as Sally enters the office. The credits roll to the buoyant lyrics of “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” and women across America genuflect, thankful it isn’t 1965 anymore.
About Alexa Stevenson