MM 607 ‘Men With A Plan’ Recap
Sometimes, you don’t need 20 years to find everything to be changed, or, to be back where they were.
Hello again, Peg. Ciao ciao, Slyvia.
The love affair was finally put an end to. (But surely we will see Slyvia and her husbands again, after all neighbours don’t easily disappear) This time there’s something more to the all-too-similar-Don’s-affair. It is noteworthy that it was Slyvia who called it a day, despite the fact that she was in a passive and inferior state for a fairly long time. After Don’s king pose (Kudos to Vulture’s prev. insightful recap), Slyvia claimed she felt ashamed and quit. We know that Don is never a guy that get attached to someone and he is not depending on her psychologically. But I would say it’s a mutual dependency. Slyvia didn’t need to depend on Don to stop. She had the power to do it herself.
Mutual dependency found further expression in the incident of Joan. Suffering a pungent ache, Joan was helped by Bob the nice guy. Joan, a partner, still depended on Bob to fake to be bothering her all the way across the office so as to escort her to the hospital. Due to the fact that Bob ran into Burt and knew somehow his future in the firm wasn’t looking good first and then noticed Joan was under the weather, it was fair to doubt Bob did it partially for his own good. But his quick response, little trick, care and gentlemanship would still be very charming to any women, let alone the single mother Joan. Later, the powerful did do the young a great favour and helped him to stay in the firm.
Talking about young and powerful. The beautiful combination of the two was back in office with Don Draper - welcome back, Peggy!
This episode showed the two bosses of Peg came together, displaying the two contradictary ways they worked with her. With Ted being all-time very nice, Don just couldn’t help being cold and mean. I almost forget the real dynamics between the two because their last goodbye was so tenderly heartbreaking and the brief meetings were warm. But, as Peg disclosed, Don never invited her out for a dinner, not to say to ask her back. Come on Peg. Don only ‘asked’, or beg to be precise, his lovers. Beg them to stay. To be with him. But you were not one of them. That made you truly special.
Special. Special was the motif of this episode. Ads men take pains to think the way to present their clients products as the most special one, even though they are as lame as margarine. Even in the hospital scene, Bob showed his wit to woo a client to the nurse on duty - to attract her attention, to make her believe herself to be special because they counted on her speciality.
Don wanted to feel special. To feel being serviced, and the service had to be discreetly thought about after hours in an empty hotel ensuit deprived of anything entertaining. But he realised he wasn’t the special one, not above the clouds. Regardless how frustratingly eloquent Don could be, Ted was the philosopher above the cloud - after all, Ted was the guy ‘who flew us up in his(client’s) own plane’.
For some, the plane ascends to escatsy, to the masterpiece of God, but for others, the plane descends to hell. The episode, again ladened with death allusions and talks, finally gives me a reason to forgive it. It was indeed a period of rioting, of shooting, of innocent men and women dying. No wonder of the gloom and doom.
In the end, the flight was safe and sound. All you need was some belief - believe that ‘above the clouds, it’s sunny as summer’. To find belief? No easy for Don.
Odds and Ends
The way Ted asked the blonde girl at meeting to continue the report is just…charming. Oh my. How did he do that? To pretend to be a shortsighted?
已完结
