Don has a meeting with Heinz's vinegar and beans representative (a lead he got from Faye in Chinese Wall) who is open to ideas but afraid that Don's agency won't be around much longer.
Dr. Atherton sets the agency up with Phillip Morris, who's developing a new brand of cigarettesnote . Since SCDP has a longstanding history with tobacco, it's seen to be their best bet. As it turns out, Phillip Morris was just using them as leverage to get a better deal with Leo Burnett.
Don runs into Midge, who is now married. Sadly, she and her husband are both junkies, and she was looking for him to buy one of her paintings. When he asks her why she doesn't quit, she says it's heroin and she just can't stop. He buys a painting and, on the verge of discarding it, he's inspired. After consulting no one, he takes out a full page ad in the New York Times turning the agency's failure into a principled stance against the tobacco industry. The staff are impressed, the partners are horrified, Cooper quits, and Ted Chaough is thrilled.
But Don insists that doing anything was better than nothing. Nobody's talking about Lucky Strike anymore. And what do you know, they're being asked to do a campaign against smoking. It's pro-bono, but it's a start.
Sally has been spending time with Glenn, with the two bonding over being children of divorce. However, Betty finds out and decides that, after almost two years of camping out in Don's house, it's finally time to move!
To keep the company afloat, the partners have to put up a huge amount of collateral ($400,000, in the neighborhood of $3.7 million in the early 2020s) for a loan. Pete doesn't have that kind of money, and when he applies for a loan himself, Trudy think's he's looking for a house in the suburbs. When he explains himself, she forbids him from giving them anything. This mysteriously turns out not to be a problem, as Lane reveals that Don paid for him as payback for keeping is identity safe.
But they're not out of the woods yet, and the episode ends as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce begins a mass layoff.
This episode contains examples of:
- The Bus Came Back: Midge, who engineers a seemingly chance meeting with Don. She and her husband are heroin addicts. Don buys one of her paintings out of pity, and it inspires him to write that advert.
- Call-Back: To "The Gypsy and the Hobo":Peggy: If this was a dog food, we'd change our name.
- Also, when Don asks Peggy what she thought of his ad, Peggy replies, "I thought you didn't go for those types of shenanigans.", which Don chuckles at.
- Comically Missing the Point: With regards to Don's advert.Danny: Is he going to quit smoking?
- Droste Image: Discussed by Sally, who describes the image of a woman holding a butter box (which depicts a woman holding a butter box, etc) on the Land O'Lakes butter packaging.
- Friendship Moment: After finding out that Don has paid Pete's share of the collateral, Pete raises his mug in a toast to Don, who acknowledges the gesture with a nod.
- Gallows Humor: Stan's reaction to Bert interrupting the employees' speculation about redundancies with the news that he's leaving.Stan: I didn't think they'd start with him.
- Historical Domain Character: Among the people who have been trying to call Don is Emerson Foote — a real-life ad man who quit McCann Ericson in 1965 because he didn't want to represent the tobacco industry any more.
- Mean Boss: Roger, with one of his best lines (and that's up against some pretty stiff competition):Well, I've got to go learn a load of people's names before I fire them.
- Prank Call: Ted pulls one of these on Don, pretending to be Robert F. Kennedy.
- Put on a Bus: Danny is one of the employees fired by Don at the end of the episode.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Bert Cooper quits the firm after Don takes out a full page ad in the New York Times without consulting the other partners.
- Shout-Out: Apparently, Midge thought her husband looked like Dylan Thomas when they met.
- Take That!: To the tobacco industry, courtesy of Don's ad, entitled "Why I'm Quitting Tobacco".Recently my advertising agency ended a long relationship with Lucky Strike cigarettes, and I’m relieved.For over 25 years we devoted ourselves to peddling a product for which good work is irrelevant, because people can’t stop themselves from buying it. A product that never improves, that causes illness, and makes people unhappy. But there was money in it. A lot of money. In fact, our entire business depended on it. We knew it wasn’t good for us, but we couldn’t stop.And then, when Lucky Strike moved their business elsewhere, I realized, here was my chance to be someone who could sleep at night, because I know what I’m selling doesn’t kill my customers.So as of today, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce will no longer take tobacco accounts. We know it’s going to be hard. If you’re interested in cigarette work, here’s a list of agencies that do it well: BBDO, Leo Burnett, McCann Erickson, Cutler Gleason & Chaough, and Benton & Bowles.As for us, we welcome all other business because we’re certain that our best work is still ahead of us.
- Voiceover Letter: We hear Don reading that ad out loud.
- What the Hell, Hero?: This is how the other partners react to Don's ad in the New York Times, which was done without their knowledge.
