Season 6 Episode 13: In Care Of

The episode, In Care Of, centers on family relationships leading up to Thanksgiving. It is also plays on the phrase that the U.S. Postal Service uses for forwarding mail to another person or location. Part of the drama of the episode is finding out who will be moved (forwarded) out to Los Angeles to start a new life. Stan volunteers; Don decides to go; Megan wants to go; Ted wants to go to save his marriage; Don swaps places with Ted; Megan will go without Don. Then we find out that Pete will be going with Ted.

Don gets drunk on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Don says that God must have had a bad year because of the assassination of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King (God was not taking care of them). When the evangelist says that they were not true believers, Don (off camera) hits him. Don  spends the night in a drunk tank. In the morning, he quits drinking. Part of his "12 step program" is to tell the truth, which he does at the Hershey meeting and with his kids when he shows them where he grew up. Don's drinking is mirrored with Sally. Sally is caught drinking and being drunk at school. Both are suspended from their respective workplaces. Sally also uses a fake ID to buy alcohol. She, like her father, assumed another's identity. 

Before Don's turnaround, he hears Stan's pitch to go to California. When he stops drinking he tells Megan his idea for moving to California and repeats Stan's words saying that he would like to have a "one desk office" and "build it into an agency" and being a "homesteader". Don doesn't have his own dreams, he copies the dreams of others because he has not come to terms with who he is or what he wants.

When Dot is lost at sea upon the S.S. Sunset Princess*, Manolo, as a nurse (and we find out as a husband) failed to take care of her. When Pete and Bud talk about the expense it would cost to bring Dot's "killer to justice" they decide not to spend the money, justifying that "she liked water" and now she is "with Dad" who died in a plane crash in the ocean. Pete and Bud also did not take care of their mother in life, by out sourcing her care taking, and in death, by pursuing "her killer" (if indeed she was killed). 

Roger also does not take care of his daughter and son-in-law. When Brooks (his son-in-law) asks for money for a business venture, Roger declines. Margaret asks how to get on the "list of girls that you give money to." By not taking care of her family, she bans him from Thanksgiving. 

Roger and Ted are both mirrored in their jealousy for women: Roger is jealous of Bob when he sees them talking together. Ted is jealous of everybody and he shows up at Peggy's apartment saying that "I don't want anyone else to have you". What was humorous was when Roger is invited over to Joan's house for Thanksgiving and sees Bob carving the turkey. It is almost a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting except that Bob is wearing an apron like a woman.

When Don is told to "take time off" from his job, Peggy moves into his office. Peggy, Don's protege, will take care of the creative accounts while he is gone. 

During the Hershey meeting, Don says, "the wrapper looked like what was inside." Don came clean because his "wrapper" (persona) did not look like what was inside. It was not the Norman Rockwell family painting. The season plumbed the depths and darkness of Don's world. The final episode has Don looking up (hope), surrounded by his children. He has rediscovered that his salvation is through his sense and belonging to family, which for him, is a day of thanks.

* a fitting name for a ship for an elderly WASP matron to disappear from.

Season 6 Episode 6: For Immediate Release

"I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit."
- Anna Jarvis

The episode opens on a Saturday with Joan, Burt and Pete talking with a banker about the value of the company. If the stock of SCDP is offered on the stock exchange, the partners will become rich. The underwriter says to Joan, "your papers are spotless, my compliments to the chef." After he leaves and while sharing a drink together, Pete says to Joan, "everybody wants you" and hints that they should sleep together. She rebuffs him but says when she is leaving, "don't forget, it's Mother's Day tomorrow." 

The roots of Mother's day began as a pacifist movement and goes back to post Civil War. It was an effort to reunite families that had been divided by the warring sides. But it wasn't until 1914 that Congress made it a holiday due to the efforts of Anna Jarvis. Jarvis, however, when she died in 1948, regretted that it became a holiday due to it's crass commercialization. 

Except for Megan, there are no children shown in this episode. And all the women shown who are mothers, Joan, Trude, and Marie, are not seen as "mothers". The women want to be seen as professional (Joan) or as sexy and desirable (Daisy, Megan, Maire, Peggy, Trude). Marie tells us that she hates it when her grandchildren call her to wish her a happy Mother's Day. She also offers her the flowers that she received from Megan to Dr. Rosen as a gift to his wife. The only woman who played the traditional role of mother wasn't even shown: it was Hazel, the TV sitcom that Ted wanted to watch, but "couldn't get the reception." Motherhood had left the building.

Peaches' story about the dog who had a litter in an oil stain in their garage, where each puppy "had a nipple" had Don rejoin, "I love puppies". Motherhood is sexualized by the men. Roger tells Daisy that his mother died so she will have sex with him. Pete tells Trude, "we'll maintain every other aspect of our marriage, except what matters" when Trude denies Pete sex. Marie tells Roger to "forget my name" when he's a no show for the dinner with Herb and Peaches. She thinks it's because she's not attractive because she is a mother / grandmother. 

Fathers take it on the chin here: Don is oblivious; Dr. Rosen borrows wrapping paper from Megan as he is putting something together at the last minute; Dr. Rosen's son is going to take Sylvia for a walk in the park; worst of all Pete and Pete's father-in-law, Tom, meet at a brothel (party house). Tom becomes incensed with this (guilt?) and pulls his advertising business from SCDP. He tells Pete that Trude, "is his Princess" and Pete "is not fit to be a father". Tom is so wrapped up envisioning his daughter in the traditional mother role that he can't identify with the fact that he and Pete share a common interest in having sex with prostitutes. 

Relationships are juxtaposed and compared: Pete and Trude / Roger and Daisy. Don and Megan / Peggy and Abe. Peggy is back down in a windowless apartment building which she shares with a junkie who defecates in the hallway and street kids who hang out on the stoop throwing firecrackers. She fantasizes about Ted* when she kisses Abe. She wants out of there. She's told us in this episode that she doesn't like change and it is a shock to her when the two firms merge. Peggy and Pete's trajectory are going down while Don and Roger are seen going back up. The two advertising firms merged by necessity. It was a successful "Hail Mary" pass that worked at the last minute: they landed the XP 887 (Chevy Vega) account, a car that was later to be shown to have a history of design problems that resulted in numerous product recalls. 

* A literary joke: Ted is reading "Something" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It could have been called "Anything" as Emerson never wrote such a work.