> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Fug the Show: Mad Men, "Lost Horizon" - URL: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/fug-the-show-mad-men-lost-horizon/ - Published: 2015-05-07T19:00:13.000Z - Updated: 2015-05-08T16:51:29.000Z - Author: Jessica - Tags: #wp, #wp-gallery, #slideshow, #Import 2026-10-07 07:41 ## Meredith ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2015/05/img_9949.jpg) I love Meredith and this dress that I am pretty sure I had in nightgown form when I was a very small child. She is the best. She is also re-decorating Don's apartment... ## Redecorating ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9948.jpg) ...with amazing skill and organization. I hope Meredith turns out to be a super successful interior designer. I mean LOOK AT THIS. ## Meredith ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9983.jpg) I'd also like to note, as I did on Twitter, that Ashley Tisdale HAD to have been up for this part and it has to be killing her that Weiner didn't give into his CW tendencies and go for it. Anyway, YAY MEREDITH, you cause no flames on the side of face. ## Shirley ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9926.jpg) Neither do you, Shirley! You look awesome in that outfit and I enjoyed that you bid farewell to Roger -- Shirley is going to Traveller's Insurance, because she didn't think advertising is "very welcoming to some people" -- by telling him that he is "amusing." (Roger is childishly piqued that Shirley is leaving him because he has to go to McCann and he doesn't WANT TO and he doesn't know that many people on his floor and it's full of OLD PEOPLE and he HATES CAROLINE and WHY.) ## Harry Crane ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9925.jpg) Like all right thinking people, I hate Harry Crane. But he causes no flames on the side of my face because he has nothing to do this week other than wear pants that are too short for him, making him look like the dillhole he is. ## Dennis Weaver ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9939.jpg) And I have no flames for Dennis Weaver, nor any for Peggy, who is just trying to watch *Gunsmoke* in peace when her secretary comes to her door... ## I love you, Peggy ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9941.jpg) ...and Peggy has to re-zip her skirt to go answer the door. Peggy, just put on pajamas as soon as you get home like everyone else! ANYWAY: McCann is dragging its feet on getting Peggy an office, up to and including suggesting she work in the secretarial pool (ALLEGEDLY temporarily) and sending her flowers...like they did all the rest of the secretaries. Peggy, wisely, refuses to go in until she has a real office. "Did you tell Don??" she asks her own secretary, who didn't, and then decides she won't tell him either. This is in sharp contrast to the way Joan has to handle her issues in this episode (not that I think Joan was wrong to go to her superiors to help; actually, I think of all of them, Joan might have been smarter to go to Don, but she couldn't, and we'll get to that. Joan's storyline caused me THE MOST FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE SO MANY FLAMES FLAMES ON HER BEHALF). ## Peggy at SCP ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9970.jpg) This means Peggy has to keep going into the deserted, empty office and pretend to work and wait for her office to be ready for her. That includes this wonderful moment, where she drops her coffee, realizes there's nothing to clean it up with, and then shrugs and walks away. ## Roger and Peggy ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9989.jpg) But eventually her office is ready -- she has to use a drafting table for a desk, but at least there's a phone -- and this wonderful thing happens. Peggy is walking through the empty halls of SCP (she'd had to get the news about McCann on the pay phone) and she hears organ music, and it's Roger, who is still there, packing up his personal items. Or, rather, "packing up his personal items." He's really procrastinating because he doesn't want to go to McCann. First of all: did we know SCP had an organ? Second: this entire part of this plot was delicious. Roger gets some vermouth from Peggy and then they both get a little (and then a lot) drunk, and then he gives her this painting that used to hang in Bert Cooper's office... ## It's an Octopus Pleasuring a Lady ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9987.jpg) "It's an Octopus Pleasuring a Lady," Roger explains. Peggy says, "you know I need to make men feel at ease," and Roger wrinkles up his face. "Who told you that?" he scoffs. INDEED. They have a great back and forth where Roger notes that you need to not get attached to your place of work, even if your name is on the door (WHICH HE IS), and Peggy notes that she hopes she'll have that problem one day. "Okay, hot stuff," Roger says, as he refills her drink, and then tells her a long metaphorical story about swimming and the navy and the war that is useful primarily for its kicker: "I did it. I just needed a push." DO YOU GET IT? ## SKATING ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0003.jpg) I kid, but really, it was great, and then we got this very classic *Mad Men* scene wherein Roger is playing the organ and Peggy is roller-skating through the empty halls of Sterling Cooper Price,. It seems right to me that the last we'll see of this office -- I assume, as it's basically demolished -- is Peggy Olsen sailing out of it, drunk and on wheels... ## HBIC ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0007.jpg) ...and then strutting, Octopus print under her arm and lit cigarette in her mouth, right on into McCann. Not caring about putting any men at ease, and proving, once again, that everyone looks hotter in sunglasses. Peggy, I hope you end up owning the lot of them. ## OH DON ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9924.jpg) Speaking of men. Let's talk about Don. Whose plot took the silver in the FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE sweepstakes, only because (a) nothing could make me as ENRAGED as the SEXIST FARTBAGS at McCann and (b) This whole mess is in many ways of Don's own making, while Joan's is thanks to THE SEXIST PATRIARCHY. That said: if this show ends up with Don Draper arriving at Elisabeth Reaser's door and them, like, heading out to ride the rails together, I'm going to be irked. ANYWAY. Important news. Don's windows don't open, so how the hell is he supposed to throw himself out of one? (Also: symbolism, etc.) ## DAN SCOTT ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9933.jpg) Also part of Don's current Life Problems: He works for these raging jackholes who are really really happy to have finally landed him but are THE WORST for lots of reasons and say things like, "we're a shirtsleeves operation" and also are sexist soulless bastards. ## BORING ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9956.jpg) And for once in his life, Don Draper experiences what we have all experienced. Being in a meeting -- this time, for Miller Lite, with "half the creative directors in the company," per Ted, who is LOVING THE CORPORATE LIFE -- with a shitty boxed lunch and a boring boring bro droning on... ## Brilliant ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9957.jpg) ...under this amazing "Truth Well Told" sign. And Don looks out the window and sees an airplane flying past the spire of the Chrysler Building, and he just GETS UP AND LEAVES. And he basically doesn't come back to the office at all. He goes on complete walkabout. ("He does that sometimes," Roger says to Jim Assface Bossman at some point. Jim Assface Bossman is enraged that all of his ass-kissing of Don cannot keep the man sitting in a boring meeting. And that moment, when Don looked around at all these dull suits and thought, "BYE FELICIA" and just left...we have all wanted to do that. Sometimes, we are all Dick Whitman.) ## Sometimes a Cigarette is Just a Cigarette ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9964.jpg) Betty, of course, is sucking on her cig and reading her Freud when Don comes in to pick up Sally (to take her back to school), but Sally has already gotten a ride back with her friends. ## He Does Massages! ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9967.jpg) This is, obviously, a very congenial scene; Don is clearly a little nostalgic. I sometimes think he just wishes he could go back to a time when he and Betty were married and the kids were little and he was undisputed king of the hill at work. (He forgets that he was incredibly miserable.) But the closer is really nice; he tells her he'll let her get back to work, and she tells him she's always wanted to do this. (We can leave aside the fact that there really isn't a basis for that in past seasons, as far as I can remember) and Don says, "knock 'em dead, Birdy." You two crazy kids, please DON'T get back together. ## Bert Cooper ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9975.jpg) Instead of going back to the office, Don decides to just keep driving and whilst driving he has a welcome visitor in the form of one Bert Cooper, who tries to tell him not to go look for Diana -- for that is what he is doing because sometimes this show does not understand when the Sour Brunette With Whom Don Is Inexplicably Obsessed is annoying rather than interesting. "You shouldn't do that," Bert says. "That's not going to stop me," Don says, because he and Roger are both children this week. "Remember *On the Road*?" Don asks and everyone groans. "I've never read that book. You know that," Bert says, and is too polite even as a ghost to disappear when Don starts yapping about "riding the rails." DON YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ROMANTICIZING THE HOBO LIFESTYLE. NOTE: Friend of GFY Carrie said to me last night, and I agree with her, that the show DID have to find a way to get Don out of the office for this episode, because it would have been out of character for him not to get involved in the Joan plotline, and if The Powers That Be wanted Joan out, for whatever reason, I think they needed Don unavailable, because otherwise he would have stepped in. I think. ## UGH ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9998.jpg) And so then Don does this very stupid thing because he's Don Draper. He DRIVES TO DIANA'S EX'S HOUSE and pretends he's a collection agent looking for Diana Bauer: No Relation to Jack but her ex -- Mackenzie Astin! -- sees right through it and tells him to leave. He wisely points out that no collection agent in the world dresses like Don, nor drives Don's car. Fun fact: that house in the distance behind them is the house they used for Samantha and Darren Stevens in *Bewitched*, a very successful show about advertising indeed. (Poor Darwood. He'd never have just walked out of a meeting unless someone had accidentally turned him into a pumpkin. Don't get me started on *Bewitched*. I have SO MANY THOUGHTS, including that once you realize that everyone is drinking on that show constantly you can never unsee it; and that it's actually quite subversively feminist.) ANYWAY. Mackenzie Astin is like, "dude, you are not the first guy who's come out here looking for Diana, but she is TOXIC so RUN AWAY." (What he really tells Don is that he probably needs to find Jesus, but the rest is implied.) ## IMG\_0011 ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0011.jpg) So Don just drives away and KEEPS DRIVING. He drives, to quote Celine Dion, all night. He picks up a hitchhiker and, to the tune of Bowie's "Major Tom," drives off into the sunset. (This was the episode out -- and it was a good one -- but of course not the out of our recap because of FLAMES.) ## FLAMES ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9928.jpg) And at last we have arrived at the episode's most ENRAGING PLOT LINE. Please note: I am not enraged because I think this was dumb or poorly done. On the contrary. I am enraged because it's SUPPOSED TO BE SO ENRAGING OOOOOH I HATE YOU MCCANN. Anyway, these ladies -- and one of them has gone Full *Maude* in her vest -- come in to meet Joan and also try to get on all of Joan's accounts. They're copywriters and they teach us a few things: McCann is bureaucratic as hell; they have a bitch session at The Oyster Bar that's not "consciousness raising," but rather "purely consciousness lowering \[drinking gesture\]," so there's your ace McCann copywriting at work; and they are kind of eye-roll-y about Peggy, which does not sit well with me. ## FLAMES ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9935.jpg) BUT WHAT REALLY DOES NOT SIT WELL IS THIS. ## FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9936.jpg) DOUCHEFACE MCGEE here totally bones a phone call with Avon because he didn't read Joan's brief. He literally speaks over her, is a total bro of the highest order, and then invites the client to golf DESPITE THE FACT THAT SAID CLIENT IS IN A WHEELCHAIR. And when Joan asks him WTF is his problem and Why T F didn't he read her memo, he says, "I'm sorry. Who told you you got to get pissed off?" in this very combative way. And I would have leapt across the desk and throttled him. "I thought you were going to be FUN," he says, patronizingly as he leaves. BURN IT ALL DOWN JOAN. BURN IT ALL DOWN. ## DAMN YOU DAN SCOTT ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9961.jpg) OH BUT IT GETS WORSE. Joan tells Dan Scott (and Pete, who is only in this episode briefly to tell Joan that he wants her on one of his accounts; Pete will, I hope, take out his shotgun of yore and threaten some people next week) that she can't work with Dickhead, and Dan Scott is all, "oh, I'll take care of it," and the way he plans to take care of it is by working with her very very closely AKA very subtly but unmistakeably intimating that if she wants to keep her accounts, she's going to be servicing HIM as well. (The phrase, "nothing is going to come between me...and your business" is used.) YOU GUYS I TOLD YOU DAN SCOTT WAS GOING TO START RUINING LIVES. It's what he *does*. ## Bruce Greenwood ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9973.jpg) Joan sort of tells Bruce Greenwood what is up and his suggestions are: lawyer up, or let him call in "a guy" to threaten the assorted parties. ## Joan and Jim ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_9995.jpg) But Joan -- because this might have worked at SCP and also because this is actually probably what you're supposed to do -- goes to Jim, and tells him that she doesn't feel her accounts are getting "the right kind of attention," and that at SCP she had more independence. She cannot work with Dan Scott. And basically, Jim tells her he doesn't give a shit about her SCP partnership or her accounts. "I'm perfectly happy to take my half a million dollars and be on my way," Joan tells him. Jim stands up at this and says, "I bet people always say you're the type of gal who doesn't take no for an answer. But no." And then he goes on to tell her to Deal With It, or expect a letter from their lawyer. And Joan goes, "I wonder how many women here would to speak to a lawyer. I think the Equal Opportunity Commission has one." AND IT IS ON. Jim says women LOVE McCann and Joan says she's pretty sure they don't. "I think the second I file a complaint, I'll have the ACLU in my office, and Betty Friedan in the lobby, with half the women who marched down 5th Avenue. I guess you didn't see the headlines about what happened at *Ladies Home Journal.* Or *Newsweek*." Jim is unmoved until Joan notes she'll have no issue finding a reporter willing to embarrass them, at which point he offers her fifty cents on the dollar to leave forever. ## Joan and Roger ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0008.jpg) She takes the deal. Roger talks her into it. ([And here's an interesting article about why she would have lost the lawsuit, if she'd sued them for sexual harassment](https://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/05/04/3654297/joan-lost-sexual-harassment-suit-mccann-erickson/?ref=go-fug-yourself.ghost.io).) And then she takes her Rolodex and she walks out. Meet you outside with the matches, Joanie. [Fug the Show: Mad Men, "Lost Horizon"Anyone who watched One Tree Hill was not surprised by the turn of events in this week's episode. Dan Scott once set someone's grave on fire (by accident, in fairness, but it was the grave of his brother WHO HE MURDERED). That said, the behavior of certain persons in this episode was ENRAGING, prompting me to -- for the first time ever watching this show -- tell a variety of them to eff off. Ergo, this week's Mad Men ranking methodology is THE AMOUNT OF FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2015/05/img_9949.jpg)](https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/fug-the-show-mad-men-lost-horizon-05-2015/)