This was a slightly good episode. I mean that literally: it was both slight and good. A question for the Hollywood insiders: What does the listing of 2 ampersands in the writer's credit more likely indicate? That a writing team wrote the episode with Matt Weiner overseeing? That it was written piecemeal with Matt Weiner overseeing? That it was in need of "punch ups" by another writer with Matt Weiner overseeing? Curiosity.

After the run of character heavy great episodes recently, culminating in last week's outstanding "The Suitcase", it might be easy to consider last Sunday's episode a let down because of its seemingly innocuous content. It definitely felt like a light, almost breezy episode. Maybe I'm influenced by the fact that the episode was titled "The Summer Man". But no, I don't think so. I think this episode was a let down on its own merit. We had some discussion in the last post on "filler" episodes and what makes them. I subscribe to the notion that one cannot determine "filler" until the end of the season. However there are episodes, of which I feel "The Summer Man" is one, that while they aren't "character" so much as "plot" driven, the events that occur could have been placed in any other episodes, any other time during the season, and worked. The absence of Roger, Pete, even Danny really, and seconds of screen time for Pete & Lane, make it seem to me that these scenes and events were thought of yet not nailed down as to when in the season they should occur. Danny I think is the real clue here as he was introduced 2 episodes ago as a symbol for Don's out of control behavior and failures, featured as much as anyone not Don & Peggy in the last episode, and is nowhere to be found in this one even though the episode stays heavily focused on the Creative Dept.


The things that happened in the episode HAD to happen for the season to work the way Matt Weiner wants it to, and the events tell a story and have a point of view Matt Weiner wants to give voice to, so the episode acts as a light storytelling device with as little character exploration (mostly Don, a little Betty & Henry) as possible. Perhaps I can explain.


What had to happen:


Don had to get his swagger back some time. Matt Weiner showed us Don the Disembodied Drunk for 7 straight episodes and knew he had to give us back our Draper 1.0 sometime. We got to bear witness to his rebirth in this episode as Don embodied "The Summer Man". The opening voice over of the dialogue with Don describing his new found senses of everything, much like we all do when the seasons change, noticing things anew. I know exactly what he's getting at here as I love when the season gets warmer and I start to notice women dressing different, showing more skin. Don, as we learn, is cutting back his alcohol intake and exercising by swimming at the NYAC. As such he is getting his sober senses back and is looking with a new vision at the world, at least one that's not shaky and blurred all the time.(1) What is to come for Don the rest of the season I won't pretend to know but I believe Weiner needed for Don to face it somewhat renewed. He also needed to renew the viewer's belief and interest in Don. As the episode plays out we're treated to Don coming back with new vigor. We're also treated to the women in his life taking notice. He's not drunken and clumsily hitting on each pretty face. He's not drinking away entire days going to bed with one woman and waking up with another. He's cool, calm, and in control. And the women are going nuts for it.


Don and the Doctor had to happen. For whatever reason. I am not very interested in this development. I'm just not. (2) But we had to have it happen, and it happened in this one episode.
Betty had to come to terms with her hatred of Don and the way its affecting her new life with Henry. What we've seen of Betty, and Henry, this year has been in the context of Betty being angry with Don. Or with what she thinks Don is doing to her. Henry realizes that Betty is still too wrapped up in feelings for Don and it is disrupting their marriage. I doubt that Betty even knows what her feelings for Don are at this moment although she definitely wants to believe they're all negative. I can't believe that though because she cut eyes at him during that entire dinner, "had" to get drunk just to endure it, and when recounting the night to Francine remembered the girl's name perfectly. Had that last long gaze from Betty not made it to the final episode I would be of the opinion that she's let the negative shit, and Don Draper himself, go. But the way the shot lingers on her watching Don play with Gene makes me wonder if its just the negativity that's gone. (3)


So, to me, those things had to happen during the course of the season and "The Summer Man" was where Matt Weiner chose to place them. I think it helps that there wasn't much else going on so the focus was clear and significant.


The other storyline, the culmination of the employment of Joey, seemed to me to be the "filler"(3) and was Matt Weiner's way of portraying the kind of thing he discussed in that Rolling Stone interview. Joey was just a plot device to describe youngsters with no respect for seniority or experience, convinced they know everything. How many times during the episode did Joey say he knew exactly what was going on, or say he knew exactly who someone was, or describe "types" that are "everywhere"? Don't really care that he's gone although I will miss Don getting zingers off in his direction. Line of the night (regarding the Tally Ho pic of Joan fellating Lane): "Narrative...forced perspective...you sure it was Joey?" HA! (5)


My biggest complaint with the episode, and why I gave it a low rating, was because I don't think Joan's snootiness at the end made any sense. Like whatsoever. I agree with OldPro above that Joan is a dinosaur. She's an outdated, old fashioned, prototype and is very much what Joey describes her to be. She went tattling, and lying, to Don practically begging for him to fire Joey. It doesn't stand to any reason that she would have the opinions she expressed to Peggy at the end yet act in the way she did earlier in the episode. All the people who were there to witness Peggy "rescuing" Joan were there in the office to witness Joan asking Don to "rescue" her. How come she's so offended then? Its not because Peggy's a woman because that wasn't her complaint. Her complaint was that now those people will think she needed rescuing at all. But. she. did.


LOVED Don noticing Henry ignoring him and summing him up all at once, having dinner with the doc and making the heartbreaking observation that Gene thinks "that man is his father", hearing the doctor's advice, and marrying the two. Its the same thing he's been saying all along about people telling you everything about themselves, that you can know a man by what he shows you. He applies that to Dr. Gambino's words that his son only knows about the world what Don shows him and BAM!! my man does the right fucking thing and shows up in his own house to spend a birthday with his baby boy.



(1) - I wonder if there's a symbolic relationship between Don seeing things clearer now and Ms. Blankenship not seeing things so clearly anymore. I haven't caught it but maybe someone else can see it.
(2) There is a nagging suspicion I have that her words "you're going to be married again this year" (paraphrasing) is going to ring true. That its going to be obvious to everyone in the world that those two should be the ones getting married. That Don will do the wrong thing and marry the young girl he doesn't think too highly of. Too much supposition, I know...for all I know Don's condescending description of the young girl may signify her departure from the show.
(3) - Betty without negativity?!? Say it ain't so!!
(4) - Sorry!!!
(5) Close second for line of the night: "Oh Betty, you have terrible luck with entertaining"
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uunnhh...despicable me