So Glad to Meet You: Mad Men Season 2, Episode 5, The New Girl

Peggy is our new girl and this episode finally sheds some light on how she got from denying her pregnancy and her baby in a mental hospital back to moving up the ladder at Sterling-Cooper. Now I'd read a few predictions that Don must have had something to do with Peggy being able to have a three month leave from work, but I have to admit that when she walked into that Police station to bail him out, I was surprised! Watching Don struggle with who he could call made me a little sad for him, because he shows his real face to so few people, there's almost no one he can call when he needs help. But in walked Peggy, ready to pay his bail, shelter his mistress and forget the whole thing happened. Bobbie kept asking Peggy why she was doing all this, but even before they showed the flashback, the answer was clear. Don knew her biggest secret and kept it, so she would have no problem keeping his.


The flashback was an incredible piece of acting from Jon Hamm. Those intense eyes looking down at his protege, fully aware that she is at a crossroads. "Peggy listen to me. Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened." In the last episode, I thought that show and it's writers were pushing Peggy as another Don, but now we know that it is actually Don who has created Peggy in his own image. He knows that you can build a life on lies, and he pushes his every problem so far out of his view that it no longer exists for him on the surface. And it isn't that he is unaware that the lying and fakery make him unhappy and unfeeling, it's that he knows that without it his life would be much much worse. He understands that Peggy giving up her child will scar her, but he is sure that the life she wants will be worth that scar, as it was for him.


His attraction to Bobbie makes more sense here as well, with her line "This is America, pick a job and become the person who does it." Even when standing next to Rachel, one of the only people Don felt comfortable with, Bobbie still compares favorably. She is a woman who crawled her way to the top and became who she needed to be to get there. Don is not unfamiliar with that idea. He is attracted to women who defy society, who have the strength to become what they want. Bobbie may be a bit obnoxious, but she uses what she has at her disposal to become successful, and that is something Don respects.



I liked the dynamic between Bobbie and Peggy, and I think Bobbie became a bit of the audience-proxy in those scenes, which also made her a bit more likeable. She wanted to know what Peggy was getting out of helping Don after their drunken car accident. What makes Peggy tick? It is a question that has a complicated answer, for sure. I also liked Bobbie giving Peggy a bit of advice. She can't be Don, because she's not a man. And maybe she can't exactly be Bobbie either, but she can use some tricks from both of them. I don't know if I can see Peggy using her femininity as a weapon in business, but I liked it when she called Don by his first name without even the tiniest stumble. Peggy does want "that corner office" and she is learning that being great at her job, even being an incredibly loyal employee aren't going to do it alone. I can't wait to see Peggy demand a little respect from her co-workers, as well as from her boss.

One interesting (possible) revelation that we learn in another of Peggy's flashbacks is that "the little one" may not be her child! Peggy's sister Anita was hugely pregnant when Peggy gave birth, and we have only seen one little boy around the house! I am not sure what that means for Pete and Peggy's little one, but it is something that I was really surprised by. I also thinks it casts Anita's confession from last week in a different light. I saw her as resentful that Peggy had cast off her child on her without any acknowledgement, but if her child is not in the picture, it makes Anita seem a little more nasty and bitter. So where is Peggy's baby? Given up for adoption? Could Anita's baby have died and she took Peggy's for a replacement? Could Peggy's baby have died? I am sure this information will be meted out slowly over the season.

Pete's storyline fell by the wayside for me, as it just reinforced things that we already know. Pete is fertile, Pete and his wife do not have a good relationship, and Pete is a jerk. I like Vincent Kartheiser a lot, but next to the main storyline, Pete's problems just didn't pull me in the way they have before.


For "B" plots, I liked the "Joan's engaged" storyline much better, mostly because of that great scene with Roger. (My love for Roger is already well documented!)
Christina Hendricks and John Slattery were great together, giving each other those sly little smiles during their talk about marriage. It reminded us that Roger could never be happy with one woman, not even Joan, and that he doesn't think anyone else with half a brain could be happy with just one person either. Joan is great, and I hope Roger's prediction that her marriage would mean the end of her career at Sterling-Cooper is wrong. I have a feeling that he may be right in his assumption that marriage isn't going to make her happy, and make actually make her feel restrained and yearning for freedom as it does him. On a shallow note, I am not loving Joan's hair this season! I thought it looked much prettier and less wig-like throughout Season 1.

The final scene brought us back to the Draper home, the dark heart of this show. After sharing the news of his high blood pressure with Betty (as a lie to make his drunk driving accident more palatable), she denies him salt to keep him healthy. Don gave her the same kind of look her gave her in "The Benefactor" when she got his watch engraved. Love tempered with guilt, and the feeling that all the forgetting he does makes him forget some really important things (not just Peggy's money!), the fact that he does love his family and they love him.