Three Up, Three Down: Mad Men, "Severance"

Three Up

1. Ken Cosgrove. Ken's father in law is retiring from Dow, which gets Ken's wife thinking about how Ken shouldn't stick with a job he hates, and that he should quit so he can write. He's reluctant, but the next day he gets what he considers a sign: he's fired due to some ancient history with McCann. So he's ready to buy that farm, right? No. With all the movement at Dow, Ken gets hired to be their head of advertising. When Roger and Pete ask if he's firing SC&P, Ken gets to tell them that it's worse: he's going to be their client. Maybe this will be the basis of the advertising book he mentions to Pete.

2. Peggy Olsen. Professionally, Peggy has an issue with Topaz, as they're getting beaten badly by L'Eggs, the cheap supermarket pantyhose. This leads to a meeting with SC&P's colleagues at McCann, which goes poorly (moreso for Joan, who is the focus of the McCann double entendres). Peggy even gets a dig in at Joan for inviting the comments based on her appearance. On the personal side, Peggy winds up on a date with Mathis' brother in law, and it goes very well. They almost run off to Paris, but Peggy can't find her passport. In the end, she returns to her very Peggy mindset about how she wouldn't run off with a guy she barely knows, but she previously said that she's interested in the brother in law in the long term, which was hopefully not just the wine talking.

3. Pete Campbell. He's getting to take over from Ken as head of accounts, and he's so rich now he may have to buy an apartment building so he can keep his money. Not so great that Ken is going to have his nuts in a vice where Dow is concerned, but Pete's now big enough that his position may just be equal to his ego.

Honorable Mention: Ed Baxter. He's retiring, and will get to enjoy golf, his boat, and his adventures in cooking. His first dish? A Pop-Tart. It was very good.

Three Down

1. Joan Harris. She's fully moved into accounts, and is rich thanks to her partnership buyout, but she's still having issues being taken seriously, as seen in her meeting with McCann (though that may be a function of how McCann runs). She's also got some issues at SC&P, based on Peggy's reaction to their McCann meeting and her somewhat prickly meeting with Don about Topaz. Joan's response to all of this is to fake a meeting and go shopping, where's she's almost outed as a former store employee. So while she can afford the retail therapy, it's not going to help the bigger problems.

2. Rachel Katz. Dead of leukemia, which Don discovers when he tries to set up a meeting involving Topaz moving into department stores. She does appear in one of Don's dreams as a model (there's a casting call going on for a fur company), and tells him that he missed his flight. Not a main character, of course, but dead's dead.

3. Don Draper. In some sense he's back to being Don - back running creative and having enough women that his message service is basically a telebordello - but he's really taken aback when he learns of Rachel's death. He tries to pay his respects while Rachel's family is sitting shiva, but he's pretty much stopped at the door by Rachel's sister. She knows who he is, and asks Don what he wants. He mostly wants to know what happened and how Rachel's life went. While Don is processing Rachel's death, he becomes interested in a diner waitress who looks a little like Rachel. They have sex (she thinks a large tip that Roger left previously was some sort of advance payment for services), and at a later visit Don tells her about Rachel, at which point the waitress says that when people die, things get mixed up and people try to make sense of it. Which is kind of where Don is right now - he's getting divorced from Megan, kind of drifting back to his old life, and he has to process Rachel's death.

And can we take a second to ponder Rachel's statement in Don's dream that he missed his flight? Is this a reference to the flights he used to take to see Megan, or is it more general towards the show's flight and death imagery? Is Rachel telling Don that he cheated the Grim Reaper?

Honorable Mention: Mustaches. Both Ted and Roger are sporting some really gruesome facial hair.  You think all the work on the Wilkinson account would spare us from this sort of thing.