It's July 1, and Sterling Cooper is informed that three PPL muckey-mucks are coming from London the next day for a two-day visit/observation. Everyone is ordered to get their desks in shape, and the boys are all told they'll need presentations prepared for July 3, which is extra-annoying for everyone, as that was supposed to be a holiday. On top of that, the next day is Joan's last at SC as Greg is getting the news about the Chief Resident position that night and she is preparing to be a Lady of Leisure. The other girls are planning a surprise party for her, which isn't a surprise for long when Hooker spills the beans. Unfortunately, but not as much of a surprise to us as it is to Joan, Greg comes home in the middle of the night drunk and finally admits that not only did he not get the position, but his boss told him he'll never be a surgeon, at least not in New York. I guess his hands are more adept at forcing himself on women than on surgical procedures. He announces coldly that Joan will have to keep working after all, which is horrific timing considering she's as good as gone from Sterling Cooper now.
The Brits arrive the next day with a young guy in tow who seems important, but who no one knows at all. They go into a meeting with Pryce and congratulate him on his good job there, and then reward him by giving him the boot to the Bombay office. At a lunch meeting with the execs they show a restructuring plan that puts this new Brit, McKendrick, in charge of the office with Don and Cooper. Roger is actually left off of the chart altogether, which they claim is just an oversight; they hand-write him back in, but this clearly spells out that the future might not be so rosy for our silver fox. After dropping this bomb the Brits go out to tell the rest of the office, and there's an office-wide champagne toast to the "good" news as well as to Joan for her last day. They give the office the rest of the day to party, so everyone lets their hair down as people are wont to do when drinking glass after glass of champers at 2pm. Smith find the John Deere riding mower that Ken brought in the day before as a token of him landing the John Deere account, and after he joyrides a little he hands the controls over to Lois. Lois, however, is both drunk and doesn't know how to drive, and she manages to lose control and drive straight over McKendrick's foot, spraying all of the boys with blood. Joan, because she's awesome, immediately leaps into action and puts pressure on the wound while shouting directions -- she saves his life but ultimately not his foot. That means Pryce is going to be sticking around for a while after all.
Don was not there for the carnage as he got a call from Conrad Hilton's office requesting a meeting. It turns out that the "Connie" with whom he had drinks at the country club during Roger's Derby party was in fact Mr. Hilton himself. Unfortunately the meeting isn't because Conrad has a funny feeling about how his heirs might turn out to be famewhoring idiots and is looking for advice about how to prevent his children from procreating. Instead, he wants free advice from Don on his next ad campaign. Don reluctantly gives his opinion but seems to be on his way to possibly landing Hilton as a new client. He's called out of the meeting when Joan phones to notify him about the bloodbath at the office, and he meets her at the hospital where they have a nice and rather sad goodbye.
Things aren't really rosy for Don at home either, since Sally isn't sleeping without the lights on because she's terrified that baby Gene is her grandfather come back to haunt them all. Betty is wholly unsympathetic and she and Don finally get in a fight about her naming the baby Gene considering that Don and Grandpa Gene loathed each other and it's traumatizing their firstborn. She won't budge on the name, so Don steps up to help his poor daughter and manages to get her to accept the baby as just a baby, and not her crazy deceased grandpa. His job and marriage might be a mess, but it's pretty awesome to see him step up and finally be the parent Sally needs and who he never had himself.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Thanks very much to
Lauren S for covering the recaplet for me on Emmy night when my DVR suddenly decided to go on strike. Because of that, I'm pursuing an unusual course for me of charging right into the full recap without having seen the episode before. If I seem more clueless than usual, that's why. Most likely.
Don, dressed in casual wear with the paper under his arm, turns Sally's light off, but she sits up: "Daddy, no." He flips the switch back on and asks what she's doing up, as it's 10:30, and she tells him she's afraid of what will happen when he turns out the light. He consents to leave a lamp on for her, gruffly but fondly adding that if she'll pick up the mess in her room, he'll get her a nightlight. He doesn't mention what will happen if she doesn't, but I'm thinking she'll get a scary clown bed like Homer Simpson once made for Bart. After a look of momentary concern over Sally's phobia passes over his face, he leaves...
...and we cut to another source of trepidation, an interoffice memo from Pryce informing the SC employees of a mandatory and imminent meeting on the main floor. After Pete notes that Ken is late and Paul presciently speculates that they're going to be made to work over the holiday (the current date is July 1st), Hooker pompously gets everyone's attention, and a wide shot of everyone assembled lets me see that my guess was correct and Kurt is still working there. Yay! Now if he'll just introduce Sal to the world of gay bars we'll really be getting somewhere. As Don walks in (late to another Pryce-run meeting, don't you know), Pryce, with Bertram and Roger flanking him, announces that the Chairman of the Board of the mother company will be paying them a visit, starting the next day and continuing into the one following, which means that the office will be staying open, and it's hilarious to think that this is Putnam, Powell, and Lowe's little way of getting even for the War of Independence, no? Pryce plows through the resultant disgruntled murmurings to announce that they need everyone to continue to operate at "the height of their productivity," and I'm not going to name names but I think in certain cases he might want to set the bar a little higher. Once Pryce is done, Bertram asks Don if he and Roger might have a word, while Joan disgustedly walks off for reasons that have not yet become apparent. When she's gone, however, Olive tells the other girls that they'll "move it" from lunch to the end of the day, and a flurry of exposition follows that tells us that Joan's last day is the 2nd (although, as Lois points out, it now may be the 3rd) and Greg's supposed to find out about the Chief Residency as well. This moves Peggy to go get some money, as she thinks they should buy Joan something, and while I certainly agree she could use the gift I'm not sure even this group's combined efforts could afford the going rate for a new husband. Hooker then accosts Harry and Pete and informs them they'll need to give a presentation on the state of television for Wednesday morning, as well as account updates, and by the way, Paul might want to shave his beard. Paul predictably gets all "Well, I NEVER!" for a moment until a small smile appears on Hooker's face: "That was a joke." HA! Hooker just went waaay up in my book, and the look on Harry's face suggests he feels the same way.
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