- Sally discovers that Don is not working, Pete lands a big account but is undercut by management, and Joan is forced to move some secretaries around after Lou and Peggy have some problems.
- It's Valentine's Day, but there is not much love in the air. Don is still not feeling the love from the other partners, his job situation of which he has not told anyone outside of the office, that including his family. Dawn at least has agreed to keep him in the loop of what is going on in the office as best as she can. Sally, who is in town unexpectedly for the day, drops in on him, which leads to a further rift between father and daughter. Peggy forgets that it's Valentine's Day until she sees a bouquet of roses sitting in her outer office which she assumes are from Ted. Peggy spends most of the day trying to figure out what to do with the roses and how to deal with Ted from afar. Pete is feeling neglected, by Ted but more by the New York partners, most specifically Roger and Jim. A coast to coast conference call also exposes a problem between Roger and Jim. These issues in combination lead to a problem for Joan in orchestrating a session of musical chairs, the problem which is exacerbated by input from Bertram. However, Joan may, through it all, maneuver her own much appreciated change of office scenery.—Huggo
- Don still isn't working but is keeping tabs on the goings on at the office courtesy of regular visits from his former secretary, Dawn. His facade is shattered however when Sally, who's lost her purse on a shopping expedition in Manhattan, goes to his office only to find Lou sitting in his office and her father nowhere to be found. When she confronts him, he lies as he has always done. They find middle ground however and surprisingly form a close bond. Sally's unexpected visit to the office has other repercussions. Lou wants Dawn replaced while Peggy also wants her secretary replaced. Joan is caught in the middle but finds a nice solution, thanks to Jim Cutler. In California, Pete Campbell is frustrated after the office in New York takes over a major client he's just landed.—garykmcd
- "Mad Men"- "A Day's Work" - April 20, 2014
Don's alarm clock goes off at 7:30 on a Thursday. He shuts it off and later wakes up at 12:34. We cut to him watching "Little Rascals" and eating Ritz crackers in his bathrobe. (His balcony door apparently shuts now.) He flips through a magazine. He marks where he is on a bottle of liquor and sits at a typewriter, a cockroach walks by. Later that night he's all dressed and cleans up the apartment. The doorbell rings. It's Dawn she's keeping him abreast of what's going on at the office: accounts, who's talking to who, giving him account information, answering the phone when Megan calls. He tries to offer her money on the way out and she demurs saying she's happy to keep him up to date and the money makes her uncomfortable. He makes her take a little bit and thanks her. She reminds him the cleaning woman comes tomorrow. He turns the TV back on.
Sally and her roommates are planning to go to the funeral for the mother of one of their roommates, Sarah. They plan to go to the funeral but ditch the graveside service and go shopping in the Village instead and then catch the train at Grand Central. They talk about how Sarah will miss school til Easter and wish their mothers were dead.
Pete and his galpal Bonnie come back to the office. He's all hot from landing the Chevy dealership account, they're separate from corporate Chevy. They start doing it on his desk when Ted, walks out of the office in the dark and bids them goodnight and congratulates Pete on landing the account without even noticing them on the desk.
Peggy, Ginsburg, and Stan ride up the elevator Friday morning. She compliments Ginsburg's work on Butler. She asks Stan to work on the art but he says it's Friday and he's got plans that night. They point out it's Valentine's Day. They realize she has no plans. Ginsburg says she has plans to "masturbate gloomily." Peggy arrives and sees roses on her secretary's desk and deduces they are from Ted Chaough and calls him and leaves a coded angry message that she relayed his message to the client and there's nothing he can do and the business is gone. Unfortunately, the flowers are actually for her secretary Shirley, from her fiancé but she never lets Shirley say this.
Roger arrives and Lou infoms him that Hershey just signed with Ogilvy. Roger did not know that. He's not happy.
On the train home from the funeral and shopping Sally realizes she left her purse at one of the places she went. She jumps off the train and says she'll catch a later train.
Shirley and Dawn chat in the break room about how Peggy mistook her flowers for her own. Dawn says she should say something and Shirley says she tried. They also joke about how the people in he office clearly mistake them for each other even though they look nothing alike, except of course for being black. Dawn tells Shirley about Don and how she's covering for him. Dawn tells her not to make trouble for herself.
Don has a lunch with another ad man named Dave Wooster. He wonders if Don is maybe fishing for a job. Don says he is not. Wooster says there have been a lot of rumors about why he's not working at the moment. Don confirms nothing. Another ad exec comes over, Jim Hobart from McCann-Erickson, and both he and Wooster shoo him away.
Sally goes to the office of SCP and is surprised when Lou Avery is in her dad's office. No one is around and he doesn't know what to do so he tells Sally simply that Don is not there and he's probably at home. She leaves, confused.
Peggy takes the flowers, increasingly angry, and "gives" them to Shirley.
The SCP partners have a meeting. Pete is telling them how he signed the SoCal Chevy dealer association but Jim Cutler thinks they should run it by Detroit first so the tail isn't wagging the dog and Chevy's their client and is their entrée to GM. Pete is livid. Roger agrees with Pete. Burt agrees with Jim. Ted tries not to take sides. Pete doesn't understand the problem since it's two separate entities. There is a lot of shouting and problems with the conference call "contraption." Everyone ends up hanging up and walking out and angry.
Don comes home to find Sally. She explains. He lies about his job. She is disappointed. He says he'll drive her back to school instead of putting her on the train. She tries to put him off but he says it will be nice.
Lou storms out of his office as Dawn returns. She has bought his wife some perfume. He's mad that she wasn't there when Sally came in. She says she has to call Don. This makes him even madder and says he can't believe she's not apologizing to him. She apologizes as he slams the door in her face.
Dawn calls Don and clues him in so he now knows that Sally knows that he lied to her about being at the office.
Lou calls Dawn and Joan into his office. He wants Dawn off his desk and he's wicked rude about it. He says she can stay but not with him. Dawn points out that she was out because she skipped lunch to get his wife's perfume which she wouldn't have had to if he had bought it ten days ago when she reminded him. He is unmoved. Joan is livid.
Joan moves Dawn to reception and the receptionist to Lou's office.
Roger calls Pete and tells him to suck it up and he's gone over to Jim's side and they have to loop in Chevy and Bob Benson. Roger hangs up while Pete makes his case.
Pete storms into Ted's office, livid, saying he's completely invisible and doesn't even know what he's aspiring too since Ted's office isn't much bigger than his. Ted offers to switch offices. Pete says he wishes Ted would consider starting their own agency. Pete wonders why Ted is even there since all he does is sit around and mope. Pete says he's not going to talk to him anymore and they should both pretend they're in New York.
Sally and Don drive. He asks her about Sarah's mother. He busts her for going to his office. She says she doesn't have to tell him anything and he's yelling at her. He asks why she would let him lie to her. She says it's more embarrassing to catch you in a lie than it is for him to be lying. He accuses her of being manipulative like Betty. Sally, emotional, points out how hard it was to go to his apartment wondering if she might run into the woman he was cheating on Megan with (Sylvia) and maybe have to have an uncomfortable elevator ride while Sally smelled her hair spray. He softens at this. He apologizes. She asks him to stop talking. He says he needs to stop for gas.
Peggy sits on her couch smoking and drinking and is told by Shirley she has a call from Ted's secretary. She tells Shirley to tell Ted's secretary that she has no intention of talking to him today. Peggy comes out and asks Shirley to throw the flowers away. Shirley finally explains the flowers are from her fiancé. Peggy is embarrassed and gets mad at Shirley for embarrassing her and takes out all her Ted anger on Shirley. She says to her "you have a ring on, we all know you're engaged, you did not have to embarrass me, grow up!" She goes back into her office and regrets it all immediately.
Burt sees Dawn at the front desk and goes to ask Joan to move her from the reception desk. Even though he's all for the advancement of colored people he doesn't want them to advance to the reception desk and he asks her to move Dawn. Joan rubs her head.
Pete goes to see Bonnie at one of her open houses to complain about the loss of the Chevy account and have some sex. He brought her open house sign in. She says she will see him at 5. She says she loves his flowers and him and but also the 15 strangers who might buy this house. She tells him a story about a house she once sold for $108,000. Before the sale went through the house burned down. She'd worked on the sale forever and could've lived for a long time on the commission. He says it's not the same. She says it's worse, she's in sales too not some housewife complaining about oatmeal in the carpet and she says an act of god is when you know things are really against you. She tells him she thinks that's the thrill, their fortunes being in other people's hands and grabs his butt. He grabs right back but then the doorbell rings. She asks him to take her realty sign back outside.
Sally and Don sit in a diner not talking. And she won't eat either. She says she should call her friends. He said he wanted to talk to her. He explains what has happened at his job and how he was forced to take some time off and admits he doesn't know what's going to happen next and it's up to the folks at SCP and he was ashamed to tell people. She asks if he's not working why not go be with Megan. He said he wanted to fix this problem even though he doesn't know how. She asks if he still loves Megan. He says he does and sees her every few weeks and talks to her all the time. Sally thinks he should just tell her he doesn't want to move to California. She goes to make her call. When she returns he has ordered her a patty melt and reiterates he doesn't want other people to know. He says he hates she had to go to a funeral. She says she mostly went so she could go shopping. He doesn't believe that. She sighs and notes that she is "so many people." Don pretends to Sally like they're going to dine and dash. She thinks this is crazy and then he pulls out his wallet and pays. It's cute.
Peggy goes to Joan and asks to have Shirley reassigned. Joan is at her wit's end with this. Just then Jim Cutler enters and she's all "what do you want??" He realizes at that moment that Joan is working two jobs. She says she's not complaining. He notes that someone else could probably take over her office manager duties (especially since she's a partner) and that there's an empty office upstairs on the accounts floor and offers it to her. She happily takes it. So, Joan moves upstairs, Dawn moves from reception to Joan's old job and, delightedly, Joan's office, and Shirley goes to Lou, and white reception girl goes back to reception.
Joan runs into Roger as she moves into her new office. He's taken aback. (He also sent her flowers on Valentine's Day "from" Kevin.)
Roger and Jim ride the elevator down together and Roger tells him he set Pete straight. Jim says he's glad to hear it and says he'd hate to think of Roger as an adversary.
Don drops Sally off and just as she gets out she leans in and says "Happy Valentine's Day, I love you."
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