Mad Men recap – season six, episode 11: Favors

SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching season six of Mad Men. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode 11.

Catch up with Paul MacInnes's episode 10 blog here.

'Imagine every time Ginger Rogers jumped in the air, Fred Astaire punched her in the face!' – Ted Chaough

"You are the sweetest man," says Megan Draper on learning that her husband is helping the neighbour's son dodge the draft. "You make me sick!" screams Sally Draper, who has just caught her father having sex with the neighbour's wife. Don Draper is stuck between a rock and a hard place: the rock being the thing he wishes he were for his wife and daughter, the hard place being … well, let's just say it's a euphemism.

Burning priapism has helped Don to lose one marriage already, never mind any number of other, non-codified relationships. Being caught in flagrante by his offspring is a first, though. With bodies at an awkward angle, gormless facial expressions and non-artfully dishevelled clothing, Don and Sylvia's tryst was a tawdry sight even for the TV viewer. What it may have done to Sally is anyone's guess, though if you were to take a punt you'd probably go for something on the more damaged end of the spectrum.

Exposing Sally to Dad getting it on with a stranger seemed to have a wilful perversity to it. A perversity on the part of the show's creators. Only a season ago, after all, she had to watch her step-grandmother pleasuring Roger Sterling. It seems that if there's illicit sex happening, Sally is going to sniff it out by accident. On the other hand, perhaps it's more surprising that Sally hasn't caught her father in bed before now.

The irony, though, is that Sally only saw what she did as a consequence of her own adolescent lustfulness. She had tricked her way into the Rosen household in order to make sure their Mitchell didn't learn that she liked his butt. She had declared her affection for his behind in a game of consequences only for precocious friend Julie to later post the declaration to Mitchell as a letter (or at least claim that she did). If only Sally hadn't liked that ass, things would never have reached this pass!

She did like the ass though and as a consequence, Don is going to find any attempts to paint himself as a good man are likely to prove a bust. Even at the beginning of this episode though, things were very different. While Sally likes to play herself off against Megan, refusing to call her by her name, she idolises her absent dad. She claims ostentatiously to her mother that he is "supporting my dreams". By the end of the episode though, this man is reduced to spinning a feeble yarn about his having been comforting Sylvia (rather than comforting his own libido). A few weeks ago, after her encounter with Grandma Ida, I suggested that Sally, despite all she has gone through, might grow up to be the one adult in Mad Men who is not fucked up. The odds on that have receded I think.

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The mystery of Bob Benson has been solved! He's gay! Of course you may have mistakenly been thinking that the mystery of Bob Benson had less to do with the orientation of his sexuality and more to do with why the hell he was popping up in the SC&P offices all the time and whether he had some masterplan to climb to the top of the company/go a bit homicidal. As it turns out, though, all he really wanted was Pete Campbell. Which, now I think about it, makes him even weirder than I suspected.

The revelation comes about as a distraught Pete looks to Bob to help him expunge vivid mental images of his mother having sex with sexy Spaniard Dr Manolo. Expunge them Bob does, first by encouraging Pete with some motivational language, second by making a subtle pass at him (their knees touched, it was electric!). The look on Pete's face when this pass comes to pass is perhaps the best of the series so far. It's restrained, but still manages to convey combination of disgust, discomfort and the sort of "why does it always happen to me?' expression you'd get from a sitcom patriarch. Pete ends the episode hurling an empty box of cereal across his dungeon.

As for Bob, where does he go from here? Pete may consider gay people to be "degenerates", but he didn't give the impression of being about to use Bob's secret as a chance to lever influence, as Don once did with Sal Romano. Perhaps he'll change his mind, though, and the threat of being outed may temper Bob's ambition. However, it was the mysterious root of all that ambition which made Bob Benson intriguing and as a viewer I hope that this week's revelation isn't intended to act as some kind of explanation.

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Don's mercy mission to help his neighbour's son avoid the draft so that he could then have sex with his neighbour's wife also prompted other plot developments this week. First, it brought his bitter rivalry with Ted out into the open. Well what it actually brought out was Ted's perception that there was a bitter rivalry. Don seemed a little bemused by the idea and when Ted offered to fix Mitchell Rosen's problem in return for a quashing of hostilities, he could barely believe his luck. "That's it?" says Don, unaware that his dilettante-ish approach to work (I'll do it when I want, and on my terms) has been interpreted by milquetoast Ted as straight-up competition. A deal is struck, but if one side never thought they were fighting what is there to stop it happening again in future?

The consequence of the deal means that SC&P will pursue business with cranberry magnates Ocean Spray, rather than citrus potentates Sunkist. The good news for the company is that its roster of blue-chip companies continues to expand. The bad news is that we'll never get to see Roger juggling oranges again.

This week's notes

Why hasn't Peggy sold her house? Probably because a fixer-upper needs to be fixed up before it can be sold at a profit. But we also get to see Peggy slowly coming to terms with her apartment via the narrative device of a mouse. At the beginning of the episode she is squealing in its presence; by the end she's sitting contentedly on her sofa, stroking a cat.

While we're on the subject, have Peggy and Pete ever got on so well as we see them doing in that upstate diner? Obviously it's booze-enhanced, but we're definitely made to feel that there's some kind of connection or common ground between the two. "Please tell me you don't pity me. Because you really know me," says Pete at one point. Which is almost touching.

Stan Rizzo has a girlfriend. Well done Stan!