Don and Peggy are interviewing Jane's cousin Danny for a copywriting position at SCDP. His book consists of other people's work he admires and five of his own ads that all have the tagline "The cure for the common X". Don laughs it off but Roger insists he hire him purely out of nepotism. Don's meeting with Life Cereal is cancelled, and he, along with Roger, Joan and Pete, is off to the Clio awards. The gang all get drunk at the ceremony, and Don wins for his Glo-Coat ad, but the Life executives are unexpectedly back at the office waiting for him.
Cue an embarrassing, drunken version of Don's nostalgia speech from "The Wheel". When the similarly drunk Life people aren't that impressed with the initial design and ask for more, Don blurts out every possible slogan that comes to mind, eventually using Danny's slogan (the cure for the common breakfast), which they love. Pete eventually takes control of the situation, and Don goes out and gets more hammered than we have ever seen before. He beds a jingle writer and wakes up to an irate phone call from Betty that he didn't pick up the kids when he said he would. Turns out, it's two days later, Don having got so drunk that he has no memory of what he did, although it is quickly revealed that he's in bed with another woman, who calls him "Dick".
Meanwhile, Lane plans on bringing Ken Cosgrove, Accounts, to the agency, angering Pete and reigniting their rivalry. And finally Peggy has to deal with a new art director, Stan Rizzo, who's arrogant, confrontational, and lazy. He won't even wear a suit to work, but he thinks Peggy is too uptight. When he makes a big stink about nudity, she one-ups him by getting naked. He follows sheepishly, unable to control his ... involuntary actions.
Peggy visits a recovering Don to warn him about the new Life tagline. Don offers Danny money for the slogan, but Danny wants a job. And he gets it. And it so happens that's how Don got his job in the first place: flashbacks throughout the episode reveal that in the early days of his relationship with Joan Holloway, Roger Sterling bought her a fur coat from a salesman named Donald Draper who wanted a job in advertising. Though Roger was not interested in hiring him, Don convinced Roger to let him take him to lunch and got him so drunk that when Don showed up at the office the next morning claiming that he'd been offered a job, Roger couldn't remember that he didn't really hire him.
This episode contains examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Roger, Don, and Duck all get very sloshed at the Clio Awards. As soon as he wins his statue, Don pretty much blacks out from that point onward. He doesn't even remember doing his drunken pitch to the Life execs, and he certainly has no idea who the second woman is.
- Call-Back: It was established back in Season One that Don and Betty met when she was modelling a fur coat that he was advertising. In this episode's flashback, Don's working in a fur coat shop, the slogan on the shop's poster is his work ... and Betty is the model depicted on the poster.
- Flashback Echo: The story of how Don managed to get a job at Sterling Cooper plays out alongside Roger reminiscing about how he "discovered" Don. Also, Danny gets a job that no-one had any intention of giving him, which has shades of how Roger actually "hired" Don.
- Funny Background Event:Danny: Do you know a good place to eat around here?Don: Tell my secretary you're hungry and see what she suggests. [shows Danny out the door]Miss Blankenship: [off-screen] I don't work for you.
- Gilligan Cut: During the flashback sequence, Don — who has turned up at Sterling Cooper to try and get Roger to give him a job — offers to buy Roger a drink. The latter protests that it's 10am. Cut to ... Roger and Don having pre-lunch drinks in a bar.
- Hidden Depths: Danny Siegal is smarter than his one-note portfolio would attest, and he successfully negotiates a job with SCDP with only an inkling that he is in a position of power.
- Holding Hands: At the awards ceremony, Joan does this under the table with both Roger and Don as the emcee announces the awards in the category SCPD has been nominated for.
- Jerkass: Stan Rizzo is introduced as a sexist, lazy, and sex-obsessed jerk, who refuses to treat Peggy as an equal until she calls his bluff and gets the better of him.
- Lost in Translation: In the flashback, a drunken Roger switches to French in an attempt to get the waiter at the bar to call him a taxi. What he's actually saying, though, is: "My name is Roger, I am a taxi".
- My God, What Have I Done?: Don has one when he wakes up on Sunday morning, realizing he had a bender the entire weekend, totally forgetting the fact that he was supposed to have the kids on Saturday.
- Nepotism: The only reason why Danny even gets an interview at SCDP (let alone a job) is because he's Jane's cousin.
- Noodle Incident: Everything Don does between bringing a woman back to his apartment on Friday night and waking up in the same apartment with a different woman on Sunday morning. Apparently, he ate a lot of French fries, claimed that someone was his sister and told the waitress he ended up in bed with that his name was Dick. Presumably a lot of alcohol was involved as well.
- Off the Wagon: Don falls off hard for the first time on the show, getting blackout drunk, going to bed with one woman and then waking up with another with no memory in between. On a minor note, Duck Phillips is back on the booze, and makes a fool of himself at the awards ceremony.Roger: I miss working with him.
- Raging Stiffie: Stan has been giving Peggy a hard time with comments aimed at her attractiveness and his more sexually-liberated-than-thou attitude. She decides to dare him to strip down while they work in the hotel and his reaction to the sight of her naked body becomes rather ... pronounced.
- Scenery Censor: In the nude hotel room scene, Peggy's boobs are blocked by the objects on the desk.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Don wakes up on Sunday morning with no memory of what has happened since he got really drunk on Friday night; he's even with a different woman than the one he went to bed with on Friday. Played with in the flashback, as Roger has no memory of hiring Don when they went drinking the previous day because he didn't, but Don is able to convince him that he did.
