MAD MEN 8/22 POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Loved this episode.  The scene with Peggy just riding the scooter around the empty studio lot makes me smile every time I think about it.

Good character development for Pete, who I've despised since he was Angel's son.  ;-)

I think the new blond woman (forget her name) who does the market analysis is shaping up to be a good match for Don.  Pretty and smart.

Last week when Don's secretary quit she said "It pains me to say this, but you're not a very nice person" which is EXACTLY how I've felt about him.  But I feel like Don might be evolving into someone who has learned from his past mistakes.  We shall see.

It was good to see Pete grow a pair in the office, and I'm glad the other partners backed him up. 

Yeah, no matter how offensive what Roger said was, it still comes off as funny and you like him.  And also odd is that the worse Betty gets, the more I want to see her.  It's like she's finally showing her true colors.

It is funny, when I saw the child psychiatrist, who's name was Edna, my first thought was that a side story-line would be that she married and then divorced a man with the last name Garrett.  She dropped her practice and ran an all girls school a few miles up the river in Peekskill. 

I couldn't get the lyrics "you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have..." out of my head after that.

And I was glad to see that they started to address the "politics" of the office.  Roger didn't try to sabotage Honda b/c he was anti-Japanese, he tried to sabotage them because he doesn't want Pete to have a larger book of business.  The whole Japanese/WWII was a pretense.  This was lead-in by the dumping of the clearasil account earlier b/c there was the chancde to make this account much large and threaten his Lucky Strike account.

Working in a similar service-industry where you are in many ways measured by your "book of business," I have first hand seen this exact thing play out.  In fact, I've quit a job over a senior partner having a large book of business going out of his way to block new work for others for numerous reasons (all BS) when the real reason is that it would diminish his power.

And I think people are being too hard on Betty.  She's a bad mother because she just doesn't know any better.  She's not nefariously mean (unlike the Soprano Matriarch), she's just a child.

I really enjoyed this episode - thought Don Draper and Pete were both great.  Also my first reaction about Sally was abuse by her grandpa, possibly while he watched TV with her.  Grandpa Gene always creeped me out last season...

Just finished watching this episode on DVR tonight (on the trainer)....love the show, loved the episode.  Brilliant idea to trick the competition.

I was very disappointed that the Barbie line of MadMen dolls look nothing like the actors.......just Ken and Barbie in diff. clothes...sigh. I would have loved a Roger and Joan doll (okay, and maybe a secret Don doll).......