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Each week PAPER will help you sort through your feelings about Mad Men by rounding up the best and brightest of the MM recaps. Read below so you can compare, contrast, and ponder while drinking your glass of water with a cocktail onion.
The company's thinking about going public, but Don's kept in the dark."We learn that SDCP is
considering taking the company public -- and here is where I will
disclose I am absolutely the wrong person to explain what this exactly
means except that Bank-y guy says it will be nine dollars a share (my
handy inflation calculator puts this amount into modern monetary means
of around $58) and Bert wants twelve. We also learn that Don doesn't
know about this yet (hmmm) and that everyone stands to make a million
dollars which in 2013 money is a gazillion, basically." --
EW"So, this whole time, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has harbored a secret
cell that has been working to take the company public? And the Mod Squad
consist of Bert, Joan and Pete? Don't get me wrong, I get why those
three would end up in the same boat: They all have reason to feel
excluded, marginalized and unappreciated, but we didn't have the
slightest clue that those three were really traveling in the same orbit,
let alone hatching complex and important schemes that would majorly
affect many characters' futures." --
Huffington Post"It's a pleasure to see the partners revel in their own potential riches;
Joan marvels at the idea of herself with a million dollars (about $6.5
million today) -- as rich as Roger, or Don. The only thing they've yet to
do before they take the firm public at $11/share is to tell Don." --
Slate"The stock offering felt even more sudden, and it was such a bolt from
the blue, I almost felt as if I'd missed an entire episode (I mean,
when's the last time we even saw Bert and Joan have a real
conversation?)." --
Huffington PostThough we saw glimpses of a good-guy Pete Campbell last week, he's back to being a dirtbag. First he
hits on Joan, then he hits up a brothel
where, oooops, he runs into Trudy's father, Tom. Trudy's father, in
turn, pulls the Vicks account. Pete can't do anything right, ever.
"Pete even has the gall to hit on Joan. (She says no,
loud and clear, and then tells him, 'I hope Clara reminded you
tomorrow's Mother's Day.' I love how she has become the moral center of
the office - or at least the center of restraint and discretion.)" --
EW
"Like a young child without impulse control, Pete indulges his delusions
of grandeur, tries to hit on Joan, tries to seduce Trudy, finally finds
a whore, and then of course it all goes South. (Pretty much every time
Pete tries to satisfy himself on this show, it gets ugly. He's the
anti-Don: He can't smoothly secure a sexual conquest without making a
gigantic mess in the process.)" --
Salon
"One moment Pete is out at the bordello having a fine time; the next he
sees his father-in-law--one of SCDP's biggest clients--and sets in
motion the loss of millions of dollars in annual billing. (One important
and oft-repeated lesson of this show is that if you have sex with
another human being it will ruin everything ever.)" --
Slate
"After all of his bloviating last week over the significance of Martin
Luther King's death, all Pete could focus on was how Tom selected a
"200-pound Negro" as his choice of company." --
Rolling Stone
"Pete's snottiness reached some kind of giddy peak this episode, but it
was hilarious. This character in high dudgeon is comic gold, and his
desperation rates at least a silver. I liked the subplot with him and
his father-in-law -- another example of personal animosity affecting
business, and thus a mirror of the Don-Herb stuff -- and I liked how the
script didn't question the fundamental hypocrisy of one man cheating
but being so outraged by his son-in-law's cheating that he takes money
out of his pocket as punishment. There are no repercussions." --
VulturePete falling down the stairs while he screamed at Don for firing Jaguar was the best.
"[Roger rerturns] to the office just as Campbell
learns that Don effectively ended the firm's relationship with Jaguar.
Pete sputters, falls down the stairs (I know this is terrible but ha!)
and spews vitriol at Don for ruining the IPO, of which Draper is still
unaware. It's a scene full of chaos and gaping employees until Joan
pushes the men into the conference room to figure out what's what." --
TV Line
"I'd be interested to know if that was originally in the script or if
Vincent Kartheiser accidentally fell in the course of rushing down the
stairs to confront Don in the scene, and then he just played it off as
if it were meant to happen?" --
Uproxx
"Vincent Kartheiser continued his alacrity with physical comedy as he
gracefully plummeted down the office stairs before unleashing his
wrath." --
Rolling Stone
"I have to steal from critic Alan Sepinwall, who, when he really loves
an episode of television, invokes the word 'dayenu.' 'Dayenu, for the
gentiles among you,' Sepinwall once wrote, 'is a song sung around the
Passover seder table listing all the things we have to be thankful for
in the Exodus story: if God had only freed us from slavery, Dayenu
(translate, 'it would have been enough'); if God had freed us from
slavery and taken us out of Egypt, Dayenu; if he had only taken us out
of Egypt and fed us manna, Dayenu; etc' ... If we had just watched Pete
fall down the stairs, dayenu for all time." --
Huffington Post
Joan also gets mad at Don for dumping Jaguar because of what she she had to do to win them in the first place. "What was the point of it all if Don is allowed to claim the moral high
ground? 'If I could deal with him, you could deal with him,' she says.
She's not wrong, but I'm still glad to see the last of gross Herb. She's
also not wrong that Don doesn't really ever think of himself as a 'we.'" --
EW"But Joan is the most hurt...One minute the reward for an evening of prostitution with Herb
is a million 1968 dollars; the next Draper has screwed it up again." --
Slate"Don fired Jaguar as a client after enduring one indignity too many from the loathsome Herb, and a long-suffering Joan ferociously and gorgeously read Don the riot act in front of half the company." --
Huffington PostSDCP merges with Peggy's agency, Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough."[Don and Ted] realize that the presence of both of their firms -- small
agencies with strong creative teams - is a mutually assured destruction
of sorts...Chevy will likely
take their ideas and use a bigger firm to implement them. (One can
assume this is what happened with the Ketchup account they both lost
earlier this season). Thus the idea to merge the two agencies is born,
and Chevy bites." --
US News"As fortune would have it
Ted Chaough's firm is also pitching Chevy. We learn one of his partners
has cancer. In the universe of this television show it suddenly becomes
obvious that SCDP and Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough must merge. It's a
neat solution to a lot of dramatic constraints that were created by
sending Peggy away from Don." --
Slate"I wholly loved how [Peggy] gave those two men
some serious side eye as she exited Ted's office. I'm sure she was
wondering how the hell those two massive egos would co-exist at one
agency. Sure, it's all joy and celebration and confusion now, but what
would the day-to-day workings of the business really be like? Peggy was
excited, terrified and resigned all at once. (She instantly knows she'll
have to do a whole lot of mediating between those two men.)" --
Huffington Post"By
the end of the episode, the agencies had agreed to merge. The last
scene was Peggy typing out a press release announcing the deal. What?
Huh? Oh, okay, fine. Awesome." --
Vulture"The merger of SCDP and CGC could be seen a mile (or at least 40 minutes)
away, but at the very least it shakes up what was already becoming a
tired season of '
Mad Men.'" --
US News
Roger is in this episode more, thank god."This was a great Roger episode that proved that Rat Pack-ish,
host-of-every-party attitude could benefit the firm. Everyone's
constantly making jokes about Roger's disengagement from the daily life
if SCDP, and he is disengaged. At the same time, though, Roger's got
skills that nobody else at the firm could dream of having, and he put
them to use here...Roger could sell heating oil to Satan." --
Vulture"Roger decided not to phone it in for once, and he actually closed. Boo-yah!" --
Huffington Post"Enter Roger, like a silver fox knight." --
US News"There were so many little ways in which we were reminded that these
people actually know what they're doing: Roger didn't actually hit the
sauce when he was trying to win over the Chevy guy, and just before they
got on the plane, he did what a good accounts man would do in that
situation -- he assured Don everything was fine back at SCDP, even when
it surely wasn't. And that's on top of the moxie he showed in pumping
(ahem) the airline employee for information about potential clients. He
even knew to dump the spare copies of "Sterling's Gold" before heading
to the airport -- maybe he can get rid of the extras by giving one to
every Chevy executive in Detroit." --
Huffington Post"Who knew Roger even drank water?" --
EW"The scene of Roger leaving for the airport was just wonderful: the hat,
the travel bag, the copies of his book, the way he left the room and
then came back in. Charming as hell." --
Vulture"If we had just seen Roger actually get off his ass and reel in a big
potential client like Chevy while romancing a hot stewardess, dayenu." --
Huffington Post
Trudy and Pete are finally done because, unlike Don, Pete insists on bringing everything to the surface.
"Trudy's expression after Pete told her what he saw in the whorehouse
was devastating. She acted as if she were more offended by Pete's
disclosure than by the act itself, but you could tell that it destroyed
her. Nobody likes to picture their father in circumstances like that,
and as justifiably furious as Pete was, I wish he hadn't told her." -- Vulture
"Pete would have happily salvaged his marriage, but he blew it up instead." -- Huffington Post
"Trudy and Pete may actually be soul mates; the only difference between
them is that Trudy wants to pretend to have the perfect life, whereas
Pete can't pretend anything. 'Couldn't we just pretend?' Trudy asked him
when his dalliance with their neighbor was revealed in this season's
second episode. 'I let you have that apartment! All I wanted was for you
to be discreet.' But Pete is anything but discreet; he has no
self-control. "Don't you dare criticize my father," Trudy warns him, not
wanting to know a thing, but he tells her about catching her dad at a
whorehouse anyway. 'He left me no choice,' Pete says. 'You had lots of
choices, Peter,' Trudy replies. 'We're done, get your things.'" -- Salon
"Other men could've chosen differently, of course. Trudy would make the
perfect happy-fake wife for Don. But Pete can't be fake (which is a
little strange, for an account executive), and his assessments about
what's wrong with the world around him are usually accurate. (Last
week's 'It's shameful!' was one clue to that.) It remains to be seen
whether this flaw/quality will be Pete's undoing, or save him from the
much darker fate that awaits the pretenders in his midst. -- Salon
Megan's mom tells Megan to save her marriage by dressing more
seductively (like she was wearing a burlap sack around the house prior
to this?) and to realize that her success as a soap star must be
intimidating to Don.
"At her mother's urging, Megan plays into Don's hero complex. 'I love
you like this,' she says. 'Desperate and scared?' he asks, joking but
also revealing his core self. 'Fearless,' she replies, feeding him her
fantasy so he can play his part dutifully. She says she wants him to
feel just like Superman. -- Salon
"That was one fabulous dress on Megan. She may have gotten Don worked up
that night, but Marie's not wrong about how he probably feels about
Megan's status right now: She's ascending the ladder of success a little
too quickly for Don's taste. Like just about every other relationship
in this episode, Don's marriage is by no means on stable ground." -- Huffington Post
"Megan took her mother's advice and has been igniting Don's libido as
the way back into his heart, down playing her own self and success to
make him happy, which again feels like a season or two ago (and I can't
imagine will last)." -- Collider
Peggy has the hots for her boss.
"Peggy finds Ted on his office floor trying to watch TV. He's clearly
spooked by the weight of the knowledge of his partner's illness and the
amount riding on this Chevy account. After getting in her face and
begging her not to call him nice, he kisses her -- and ugh, I've been
sort of waiting for this to happen all season. Peggy doesn't pull away
but Ted quickly does and apologizes." -- EW
"I feel like I'm cheating on Stan's beard by saying this, but I'm a fan
of Peggy's new crush. Unlike Abe, at least Ted wouldn't try to convince
Peggy that her Terrible Apartment is not terrible (raise your hand if
every scene set in that flat gave you flashbacks to your worst-ever
living situation, one that you always hoped would get better and just
never did). I have been hoping that Peggy would take Stan to be her
lovah, but Ted and Peggy also make sense together: They're both driven,
creative perfectionists who don't have to explain to each other why
their work matters to them (Peggy works because she defines who she is
through her job; Stan works because his paycheck allows him to buy
weed)." -- Huffington Post
"I could easily die laughing at the fact that, in Peggy's sex fantasy,
Ted's on her bed reading a book titled 'SOMETHING' by Ralph Waldo
Emerson. (Though it's easy to see why that fantasy exists: Abe's a pill,
and if Stan ever ended up in Peggy's bed, he'd probably be really
stoned, wearing a stained shirt and most likely asleep)." -- Huffington Post
"Peggy goes into a reverie that involves changing undershirt-wearing Abe
to a turtleneck-wearing Ted reading the mythical book Something by Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Take from this what you will. Or go back and read your
copy of Sterling's Gold. She kisses dream Ted passionately. Oh, Peggy." --
EW
Peggy and Abe move into a sketchy apartment on the Upper West Side. Peggy is miserable."Now [Don's] back in Peggy's as well, appearing at Ted's office like a
David Lynch phantom and trying to make the merger sound like a great
opportunity for Peggy while congratulating her on buying a sketchy
apartment with Abe on Manhattan's Upper West Side." --
Vulture"Poor Abe is a sweet man, but he talked Peggy into a living
situation that's already making her unhappy, and he's just not enough of
a star to be her equal; at various times this seems to have bothered
both of them. This new work situation is going to cause all sorts of
trouble for her, romantically as well as professionally." --
Vulture"Peggy arrives home to explain about the poop on the stairs, probably
from their junkie tenant upstairs. This leads me to believe that she has
bought an entire brownstone and I don't need my inflation calculator to
know that this is a very good investment. But for now, Peggy seems a
little freaked out about how much more shabby than chic her home is." --
EW
"
Peggy and Abe are living out this Desperate Characters/A Meaningful
Life-type adventure where they're fixing up a place in a rough
neighborhood (hot jazz, shit on the stairwell). Unlike the characters in
those novels, Abe seems to understand what he's getting himself into.
Peggy's showing signs of stress; fortunately, she can fantasize about
Ted, her boss, reading Something by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a perennial
spank bank favorite." -- Complex
Was it a good episode? "Watching "For Immediate Release" is like riding a rickety old wooden
roller coaster that thrills you with its seemingly unsafe twists and
turns and leaves you feeling sore for a couple of days...The firm was
up, it was down, and then it was up again maybe." --
VultureBut when "Mad Men" decides to truly go for it, in terms of s*** getting
real, it's really hard to top, often because it layers so much humor and
observational perfection into all the conflicts, confrontations,
meetings and incongruous alliances. --
Huffington Post
Self-portrait illustration by Lacey Micallef
Thanks to Joe Fresh, the schlep from Manhattan to Randall's Island for the upcoming Frieze New York art fair (May 10th-13th) will be a lot easier -- and a lot more stylish. The fashion brand, which is also sponsoring the Frame Section at the art fest (a section devoted to galleries that have opened within the last six years), will have a free shuttle service that picks up Frieze attendees outside the Joe Fresh Flatiron store (110 Fifth Ave.) and takes them to and from Randall's Island. Besides avoiding a 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' scenario (or, okay, multiple subways-and-a-city bus scenario), guests who take the Joe Fresh shuttle will be gifted a tote bag designed by fashion illustrator Tanya Ling -- while supplies last. 
Each week PAPER will help you sort through your feelings about Mad Men by rounding up the best and brightest of the MM recaps. Read below so you can compare, contrast, and ponder while drinking your glass of water with a cocktail onion.
Scene from Frieze 2012
Piece on display at PULSE New York 2012
Tyler Matthew Oyer, Gone For Gold Courtesy Cirrus, which will appear at Cutlog
1. Suzy Menkes is not a fan of the Met's new punk exhibit, "PUNK: Chaos to Couture." Menkes wrote an article for 
2. After being mum on the matter for months, it turns out Steve Carrell will in fact make an appearance in the final episode of The Office. Thank god: what would The Office have been without Michael Scott? [via 
4. Gabourey Sidibe on accidentally dating a gay dude: "Who hasn't dated a gay dude?" [via 
5. There's a restaurant opening in Harlem called "Harlem Shake" on May 16th. We want to go, if only to see if there's a Harlem Shake flash mob on opening day (there has to be, right?). [via 
6. Citi Bike, the city-wide bike-sharing program that allows members to pick up, ride, and drop off bikes at various docking stations throughout NYC, will finally launch on Memorial Day weekend. [via 
7. According to British newspaper the 
Apparently someone asked George Clooney why he won't ever run for political office and this was his response. [via 
This is awesome: ahead of their series finale on May 16th, the cast of The Office went to Scranton, PA to say goodbye to their 
When we're not caring about "is my Twitter locally-sourced?" [via 
Wutttt???? 
Veep don't care. [via 
Two cats share a tender moment until one of them is like, "Eff you, you lying piece of shit!" It goes downhill from there. [via 
Good morning, sunshine. [via 
For a new TV series, a British television channel commissioned an artist to paint modernized versions of historical figures. Above, here's William Shakespeare as that freelance guy you see every morning drinking a Red Eye and working on his Macbook at Toby's coffee in Williamsburg. Below Shakespeare is Marie Antoinette looking like a celebutante who decided not to go to college and start her own handbag line made out of expensive python and alligator skins instead. Later she met this sort of cute/sort of weird foreign guy at an after-party during the Olympics and it turns out he's a prince or something so her family encourages her to get hitched. And, lastly, here's Elizabeth I as Tilda Swinton. [via 
L8r sk8r. [via 
Jon Savage is the foremost authority about punk, both first-hand as a wild child himself in London and, later, as the author of England's Dreaming, his authoritative history of the movement that shook Europe and the U.S. to its core almost 40 years ago and the current subject of this year's Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Savage was in town a few weeks ago for the Tribeca Film Festival screening of Teenage, a documentary based on his book of the same name, I managed to snag the scholarly pop historian for a sit down.
2. In
case you were wondering about how long Downton Abbey will run, here's a not-so-helpful clue: show creator Gareth Neame said "I would rather let the
show run between four and 10 years, I imagine." He then noted that "I
would rather that we picked the right year (to end) and that in 20 years
time the show was loved rather than we went on a season too long and
people fell out of love with it." [via 
3. 
5. Mustache transplants are now a big thing in Turkey. [via 
7. There are plans in action to "create a new neighborhood on the waterfront" of North Greenpoint which include a dozen towers, a new public elementary school and two "green spaces." A ton of protests have already started and it's being called "the ugliest, scariest, most horrible plan." [via 
Joshua Jackson wins Best Photobomb of the Night at the Met Gala...[
...but Jennifer Lawrence's photobomb of SJP comes in at a close second. [
Dress by Internet. [
New favorite tumblr alert: 
Uh, the potoo is our new favorite bird. Where have these Jim Henson Creature Shop creations of the nature world been all of our lives? They're like a cross between the Phillie Phanatic and ancient feathered frog-dinosaurs and we're in loooove. [
A very under-sung candy. [
Stills from Mammas courtesy of Sundance Channel.
Above: Frieze founder Amanda Sharp.