Mad Men: season four, episode eight

SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching season four of Mad Men on BBC4. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode eight – and if you've seen more of the series, please be aware that many UK viewers have not done so…

Will Dean's episode seven blog

Episode eight: The Summer Man

"We're ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had." Don

The voiceover is often the last refuge of a screenwriting scoundrel. It's a cheap trick, but Weiner and Co have earned it. With Anna gone, Don is left with no one who knows him to talk to. His response is to write down his feelings like a teenage girl – and, as you'd expect, he reveals plenty that we've previously only been able to read from the careworn creases on Jon Hamm's face.

The voiceover begins as Don swims off the booze at the NYAC. "They say as soon as you have to cut down on your drinking, you have a drinking problem," he muses, letting us know that he knows he's in trouble. A lot of The Summer Man is about redemption, rebirth and longing for a happiness that never really existed. Satisfaction, if you will. And a lot of it – particularly Don's tweed blazer – reminded me of the California episode in series two, with Don's "baptism" in the Pacific replaced with one in the pool. "I tell you I was blind, but now I see," says Miss Blankenship, post-cataracts, picking up the theme.

This was an instant shift in tone from the dark hues of The Suitcase. I loved Don swaggering out of the club to the Stones as a black couple and some pretty perfumed girls pass by. The times have a'changed. And as goes the zeitgeist, so goes Draper. He still looks battered but intent to make a better go of things – trying to subtly decline hard liquor, trying to make things up with Bethany, turning up to Gene's birthday party and taking control by listing his aims:

"1 . Climb Mt Kilamanjaro. Go anywhere in Africa, actually.
2. Gain a modicum of control over the way I feel. I want to wake up and be that man."

The girl most likely to replace Anna seems to be Dr Miller, who Don, having heard her in the Phonebox of Relationship Death, persuades into a date. When Faye first appeared it seemed odd that the actress was an Italian American (Sopranos vet Carla Buono). Indeed Insomniac506 also spotted her hidden Jersey accent. She, like Don, has remade herself to fit in with corporate Manhattan. Her dad is a candy store owner with connections in the restaurant trade and Faye has dyed her hair, changed her voice and (maybe) Anglicised her name to get work. Her psychologist's way of speaking (as Aesop's sun) draws Don out brilliantly. And to prove that he's grown up a little bit he even refuses to take her back to his flat. He wants only what he can't have. He can't get no satis ... you get the picture.

"We have everything." Betty

The chance encounter with Don and Beth at the restaurant confirms Betty's suspicion that Don is waltzing around Manhattan like Alfie. Her jealousy is enough to make Henry symbolically remove the last of his things. I loved the scene with the Francises driving back from Manhattan with Betty right back where she was with Don. This is juxtaposed with a very relaxed Don in the back of the cab with Bethany. But this means nothing. Eventually even Betty realises she's the lucky(ish) one.

"Let me tell you something about the big ragu. We're creative and she's just an overblown secretary." Joey

Joan and Peggy's roles as feminist counterpoints was drawn into horrible focus tonight. Last week we saw Joey denigrating Joan's authority by refusing to clean up. This time, he insults her in front of everyone before uttering the heartless: "What do you do around here beside walking around like you're trying to get raped?" He soon gets his comeuppance when Peggy fires him. Peggy, of course, thinks she's riding to Joan's rescue but actually only further undermines an already undermined woman who is in any case more worried about her husband going to Vietnam than some silly boys drawing dirty pictures.

If Peggy had just got rid of Joey and said nothing, things might have been better. But obviously having her honour "rescued" by a girl she'd been training just five years earlier is of little comfort to Joan, who can fight her own battles thankyouverymuch: "All you've done is prove to them that I'm a meaningless secretary and you're another humourless bitch." The sad thing is, I suspect she can't fight them. When Joey delivered the rape line, Joan should have fired him on the spot (or given the little sod a slap). She has the authority but couldn't bring herself to use it.

Notes

I was certain that someone was going to get crushed by the vending machine, Mackendrick style.

I like how the writers used Harry's Casting Couch moment to help highlight Joey's pomposity. But then give Harry this line as Joey is booted: "Give me a call, we'll have a drink!"

Joan complains of her office not being a thoroughfare. Speaking of which, this great SCDP floorplan was doing the rounds last week.

Lane's office is becoming a slightly odd homage to New York. As well as a Mets pennant his desk sported some horrible statuettes of the Empire State and the Statue of Liberty.

Don on the dirty drawing: "Narrative? Forced perspective. Are you sure Joey did this?"

Culture Watch

What a great moment when Don gets his swagger on as the very apt Satisfaction (No 1 in the US in July '65) booms out of my TV, as a black couple walk past and Draper acknowledges a new dawn. "Summer's coming. I smelled it." Even Miss Blankenship is rocking shades ...

"Are you a Felix or an Oscar?" Bethany has just watched Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. She might even have been in it. Don thinks of himself as an Oscar, but admits he's more likely a Felix.

20th Century Tales

Observing the primitives trying to shake the vending machine Peggy jokes "I feel like Margaret Mead" after the anthropologist.

John is eating a lovely-looking Dinty Moore beef stew.

Don's TV shows news of US troops encountering Viet Cong guerillas for the first time. "I hope it's not another Korea," he muses.

Don bumps into Henry and Betty at Broadway restaurant Barbetta.

Henry gains Gov. Rockefeller's endorsement for new mayor John Lindsay. Lindsay's man is eyeing up (and indeed ran) a presidential bid in 1972. He wants Henry to run it. Will Mad Men end where it began? With the fall of Nixon?

Here's the cover of Life magazine Henry was referring to. And a gallery of all of 1965's.

Don looks up at the Barbizon building (no men allowed beyond the first floor) after he lets Bethany out of the car.

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