Mad Men: 6×04 “To Have And To Hold” Recap

Race has always been an issue mostly in the background or only a secondary development in the show, but that looks like it’s changing with the introduction of personal story line for Dawn, Don’s secretary. We see how people take advantage of her, and how she lets them just for the off chance they consider her a friend. Dawn was caught signing out a coworker who had left early. Joan, who is basically the head of the secretarial staff, is getting tired of being treated like, well, a secretary. It takes a visit from Joan’s sister (along with helping her sister get laid) to remind Joan of how great her life is, job and all.

So after Dawn gets caught covering for Scarlett, Joan is furious and fires Scarlett on the spot. Harry, who has been building animosity towards Joan for being made a partner through what he considers prostitution, confronts  all the partners at a meeting. At this point, he has just met with a client and sold them a television special, bringing is tens of thousands of dollars for the agency.

He bursts into their meeting  with a list of demands. 1) Scarlett not to be fired since Joan shouldn’t have any real power, and 2)He demands to be part of the partners meeting and to get recognition for his great achievements . After making a scene, calling Joan a whore, and storming off he gets most of his demands met. He gets to keep his secretary and gets paid the full commission on his sale, but no seat at the adult table for him.

Meanwhile, Dawn goes to meet her sister to discuss her sister’s upcoming wedding. Worried about being fired, Dawn tells her about her day and how “everybody’s scared there: women crying in the ladies’ room, men crying in the elevator.” Dawn resolves to keep her head down because she wants to keep her job, and isn’t getting married like her sister is. The term independent woman applies here. We see Dawn, like some of the women before her (Joan and Peggy) begin shying away from the notion of just having a job until she finds a husband, and looking more towards having a career. When Joan gives her more responsibility as a “punishment”, we can expect to see big things for Dawn in the future.

Megan’s career is skyrocketing. She was told that her role on the soap opera was going to be greater and that she was going to get her own story arch. There is one problem though, she would have to do a make out scene with the lead actor. Since it’s all acting and not, real, she saw no problem with it. Don on the other hand, basically calls her a prostitute for getting paid to make out on television.  It doesn’t help ease Don’s mind when just earlier that week the couple had a dinner date with the writer and main actress of the soap opera, only to find out that for dessert the other couple wanted to swap partners. You gotta love those swingers.

Ok, maybe Don is being a little unreasonable, but let’s just look at the week he’s had. He spends all week secretly preparing a pitch to Heinz ketchup, only to find out that they are not the only agency also pitching, one of them being Peggy’s. After Don presents, he listens outside the door to Peggy’s pitch. The entire pitch sounds like a really bad knock off of Don Draper. At one point she even tells the Heinz people a line Don told her 3 seasons ago. Unfortunately no one get the account in the end, but not just that, the Heinz beans people get wind of the meeting and drop them as client. You can’t win them all, but Don seems to be losing everything, maybe even his patience. At least he has a sexy doctor’s wife to keep his mind off how bad his life is becoming.