Liquor has always been prominent on this show—especially this season with Don’s dizzying spiral into full-blown alcoholism—but on last night’s episode, we learned that while booze might be his downfall, it also was part of his success.
Right now, we’re somewhere in April 1965, as evidenced by Stan’s Playboy.
There were plenty of monumental events in American history that took place at this time: President Johnson sent troops into the Dominican Republic fearing “another Cuba;” 25,000 protesters showed up in D.C. for the first SDS march against the Vietnam War; and NY World’s Fair reopened in Queens. The dichotomous mood—of destruction and havoc and progress and hope—of the country was definitely present in last night’s episode. It was also very heavy on irony.
Take Stan Rizzo, SCDP’s new art director, for example.
He thinks he’s more open-minded and progressive than Peggy, because he’s a nudist and provocatively reads girlie mags in front of his female coworker. But then Peggy called his bluff by insisting that they get naked if that’s the only way he can get work done. (Nice high-waisted shorts, BTW. You’d have to pull them up to his neck to give him a wedgie.)
Ironically, for all his talk about being so cutting edge and tantalizing, he ended up creating an ad for cough drops that took place in a church.
And then there was Don and Danny, Roger’s wife’s cousin who was applying for a job at SCDP. Don scoffed at the kid’s one-note “the cure for the common…” slogan, as well as his overt plagiarism (by including ads he didn’t even create in his portfolio) and refused to hire him. Later, Don went on to have his own creative genius acknowledged when he won a Clio for his Glo-Coat commercial.
While it doesn’t take much of an excuse for the employees of SCDP to knock back a few drinks, they had pretty good reason to be extra celebratory of this coup: In 1965, the Clio Awards were expanded to include international work, which not only increased the competition, but also gave the winners global attention in the industry. (Which could be really helpful when trying to land foreign accounts, like that of Honda.)
But Don’s victory lap around the bar was momentarily interrupted by the execs of Life cereal, who finally showed up for their meeting at SCDP. They were delayed by the wind, which coincidentally, Don was three sheets to during his presentation. They didn’t bite at his initial idea, but drunk on booze and accomplishment, Don started rattling off tag lines to them, confident that he could win them over. One of the ideas he spit-balled was “the cure for the common cereal,” which is the same lame idea for which he’d mocked Danny. The Life guys loved it, ironically making Don a more egregious plagiarizer than Danny.