Mad Men Season Two Episode Four: Road to Nowhere?
ByI’m starting to wonder.
By episode four, season one, all the basic plot points that would provide the season’s arc — Rachel Menken, Pete vs. Don, Betty’s shaky hands, Peggy’s misadventures with the pill — had been set in motion. After episode four of season two, another dark and meandering affair like the episode preceding it, we are not quite there yet. Episode four gives us Don’s views on household management and corporal punishment, Peggy’s crush on a man of the cloth, Roger coming out of the old adulterer’s home to sleep with an expensive escort, more of Bobbie’s Lucretia Borgia-meets-Marlene Deitrich routine and a crushing moral lesson for Stirling-Cooper over the American Airlines account. 
Of all of these, only the American Airlines plot seems to have any real juice. If you’ll remember back to episode two, Don (Jon Hamm) was vehemently opposed to SC dropping their existing client, Mohawk Airlines, to clear the decks for a pitch to AA. Don smelled the AA pitch for what it was — a long shot, undertaken in desperation by Duck (Mark Moses). Well, the chickens come home to roost in episode four — SC is thrown into overdrive to complete their pitch for the airline’s business on time.
The morning of the presentation, they find that Duck’s buddy at AA who promised them the account has been fired. Demoralization all around. Don goes home, smashes a plastic robot, gets a shove from Betty (January Jones), shoves back and reminisces about his long-dead, dirt farmin’, ass-whoopin’ dad. (Or rather, Dick Whitman’s dad. If you’re reading this and haven’t seen season one yet, it is going to take more than an internet episode recap to make this all make sense for you.)
Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) spends much of this week’s episode back in Brooklyn, avoiding her illegitimate kid and flirting with a visiting priest (Colin Hanks). This does not sit well with her older sister (Audrey Wasilewski), who alerts the Father to the existence of Peggy’s child through a crafty confession. More great pre-Vatican II moments in this episode, from the punishment doled out to adolescents who act up during mass, to the Palm Sunday household decorations.
Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) is all but MIA again this week. Although he does show up for an impromptu Sunday afternoon work meeting dressed in a tennis outfit I am not even going to try to describe.
Bobbie’s (Melinda McGraw) back. She has a really bad/good idea for a TV show for her insult comic husband Jimmie (Patrick Fischler) and needs Don to help her get some changes made to his Utz contract. She helps Don, right there in his office, with Joan (Christina Hendricks, temporarily Draper’s secretary), on the other side of the door but well within earshot. I think this is going to be an ongoing thing — blackmail?
Again, the aborted American Airlines pitch seems to be setting us up for some sort of multi-episode conflict. So far it was the season’s only big, complex morality play, with Don clearly coming out on top. Next episode: Don goes duck hunting?
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