'Mad Men' Season 5, Episode 7 Recap - 'At the Codfish Ball'

Dazzling pitches, family arguments, misery, blowjobs... this episode had everything!

It was bookended by Sally talking on the phone to Glen (yep, that whole thing is still going on). Sally is about to do a lot of growing up this episode, and not necessarily by choice.

But let's start with Peggy, whose boyfriend Abe is clearly uncomfortable being around her at work. He hurriedly excuses himself during a conversation about Playtex, and worries Peggy when he insists on meeting her for dinner. Joan makes the suggestion that he might be planning to propose, which gets Peggy's hopes up way too high for any of us to believe that it will actually happen.

Sure enough, Abe asks instead if Peggy wants to move in together. The scene was a wonderful reminder of just how good Elisabeth Moss is at this whole acting thing, in case the award nominations weren't enough evidence: the expectant look on Peggy's face that turns to shock, frustration, and acceptance, all with the same smile plastered over it, is heartbreaking and very nicely done. As for the last lines of the scene ("Still wanna eat?" "I do"), they were maybe a bit on the nose.

Peggy's mother bluntly disapproves of this arrangement, by the way, and has a few pretty good lines of her own, mostly about eating cake and getting cats.

Most of the episode, though, was focused on the Drapers and the Calvets. Sally and Bobby end up staying with Don after Pauline trips and twists her ankle on the phone cord (Sally's fault, of course), and Megan's parents are down to visit at the same time, suddenly giving Don and Megan a full house.

Tensions run high, as Megan's father Emile clearly disapproves of Megan's new lifestyle and her new husband. That isn't made any better by the fact that Marie, Megan's mother, is "competitive" and flirts with just about everyone she can, including Don. If Emile's socialist leanings didn't have him disapproving of Don, that certainly did.

Emile and Marie's marriage troubles become clear when Marie compliments Don on his upcoming award, to be bestowed upon him by the American Cancer Society for his letter jabbing at Lucky Strike, one too many times. He's clearly jealous, especially after his latest attempt to get published failed.

Besides the troubles at home, things are actually going reasonably well for Megan and Don, especially when Megan comes up for an idea for Heinz. It's an idea so good that even Don didn't think of it, and she even manages to evade losing Heinz as a client, guiding Don through the perfect pitch at dinner, finally convincing the bull-headed Raymond to go with their pitch.

But at the Cancer Society event, everything falls through: Don learns that these people won't work with him, knowing that he "bit the hand," so to speak. Pete, in his limited screen time, manages to crush Emile's spirit by feigning interest in his work to show Emile what he does. Emile turns to Megan and chastises her for "skipping the struggle and going right to the end" in all this, saying that she gave up on her passion so that she could jump right into the wealth and comfort of her current life.

And Sally, despite her previous maturity in administering first aid to Pauline, dressing up nicely for the event but heeding her father's wishes in not wearing makeup, and even trying the fish at the dinner, manages to spot Marie playing Roger's skin flute during the event.

The last shot of that ballroom scene, with three generations sitting at the table in complete misery, was a perfect juxtaposition to the pitch for Heinz: generation after generation, enjoying meals together in happiness. If there's one thing we can take away from "Mad Men," it is that the promise of advertising, and the facade of that entire generation, is all a lie. Nothing was ever, nor will ever be, so pristine.

That shot could have been the end of the episode as far as I'm concerned, but there was a little value in bookending the episode with Sally talking to Glen again, and replying to his question of "How's the city?" with a simple "Dirty."

Other thoughts:

- Emile's line of "One day your daughter will spread her legs and fly" was horribly awkward, as so many things involving poor Sally are.

- Notice the concerted effort to put an even bigger focus on smoking (the close-up of the cigarette in Marie's hand, and Joan and Peggy smoking during their conversation) in an episode that had Don getting an award from the American Cancer Society.

- So much fun to watch Don really work a pitch again, especially with Megan playing it with him. Loved the moment of "we hadn't thought about it, but that could work." My guess is this isn't the end of the workplace struggles with Don and Megan, though, and the novelty of his wife being better than he is at this will wear off pretty soon. He's still Don.