By now we know better than to assume that what first meets the eye is casual reality on "Mad Men". Everything looks calm and content as the episode opens to Phoebe the nurse babysitting the kids so Don can enjoy a date night (God forbid he actually spends time with his kids). But while Bobby and Phoebe watch the long-expired cartoon "Top Cat," Sally is chopping off her hair in the bathroom. When she's caught, Sally asks Phoebe if she and Daddy are "doing it" - and follows with a wildly inaccurate description of what she thinks "doing it" is.
Clearly, Sally's acting out has circumstantial roots, but the kid's well-being is merely an inconvenient misalignment to her parents. Don, righteously enraged at the scissor job, fires Phoebe, telling her he'll have to endure a river of shit from Sally's mother. Which, of course, he does, but it's Sally who gets the full force of the furious mother's anger. She goes overboard, slapping Sally hard, which leads to Henry playing the cool head. He raised a daughter, he explained, and kids do these things. It's not the end of the world.
"You're soft, you know that?" says Betty with a loving affection that tells us that Henry's going to be around for a while. Unfortunately.
This episode is called “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” the name of a book that Don consults for tips on impressing the executives at Honda during a pitch for their account. The book is a telling study in the contradictory nature of Japanese society, and how the elements of shame and guilt juxtapose one another throughout the culture. Fittingly, alternating guilt and shame is the undercurrent of the episode.
On the business side, the shame begins with silver fox Roger Sterling, who badly missteps business protocol with a racist outburst towards the Japanese Honda representatives. Anyone remembering his blackface stunt from Season Two is fully aware that Roger has never been exactly a beacon of racial sensitivity, but his prideful loyalty to war buddies who died fighting the same race his company is lining up to do business with stands in the way of the SCDP's progress.
Watching Pete stand up to Roger was a triumph of true ambition, and Bert Cooper finally made himself useful by grasping the tradition of Japanese gift-giving that helped considerably during the courting process, allowing them a next-round pitch meeting. Roger eventually comes around for the greater good, though through gritted teeth.
The biggest challenge to follow is getting the upper hand on their chief competitor Cutler Gleason Chaough, which now has Clearasil and jai alai, and is telling everyone who will listen that they're "nipping at the heels" of SCDP and eager to get the upper hand on the hottest ad company in town.
So what's the best way to one-up the competition after putting yourself far in the hole at the start of the race? Why, to announce that you're bending the rules and shooting a commercial, of course! Nevermind that the Honda people laid out a very specific set of rules by which contenders for their business had to apply, or the fact that the budget for the commercial would bankrupt them!
Of course, they never actually planned to shoot the commercial. As we watch Peggy casually doing circles on a scooter around and around an otherwise quiet closed soundstage, we're shown cuts of the competitor hearing of the commercial plans and scrambling to put their own TV spot idea together.
In a move of sheer psychological brilliance, Don arrives solo and empty-handed to the meeting with the Japanese, and proceeds to tell them they violated the terms of their contest by seeing Chaough's TV ad, so he's resigning from the account. This resignation impresses Honda, resulting in Sterling Draper Cooper Price being frontrunners for the account. The tidiest mindf*ck bow you could possibly tie.
Returning to the home front, Sally becomes the center of yet another debate when she's caught masturbating at a sleepover while watching "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." with a friend sleeping nearby. The friend's mom marches her back home, convincing Betty that she need a shrink.
We discover that Faye the Researcher isn't actually married through a conversation with Don in the office kitchen, which unfortunately looks like a seed planting for a future trainwreck romance between the two.
"Why does everybody need to talk about everything?" Don asks, irate at the concept of his daughter being in therapy. When Faye responds with "If you love her and she knows it, she'll be fine," it's impossible not to be taken aback by how simplistically she hit a soaring bullseye from 400 yards out. That's all Sally needs. It's all Betty needed. It's what every female who's ever been in Don's life (not Dick Whitman's, but Don's) has ever needed. And not gotten.
When Betty visits the child psychiatrist, Dr. Edna, for a consultation, it becomes abundantly clear to both expert and mother that Betty needs a shrink far more than her developing daughter. The episode ends with Sally and the maid Carla in the doctor's waiting room. Carla's concerned sadness adds more gravity than we want to give to the moment, because deep down I suppose we're hoping that Sally will turn out alright.
But with parents like these, we should know better.
Check out my previous "Mad Men" episode recaps from Season 4 below.
Review: Mad Men 4.07 'The Suitcase'
Review: Mad Men 4.06 'Waldorf Stories'
Review: Mad Men 4.04 'The Rejected'
Review: Mad Men 4.03 'The Good News'
Review: Mad Men 4.02 'Thank You For Bringing My Keys'
Review: Mad Men 4.01 'Public Relations'
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