User Reviews

Pete is back. He first tells Peggy that he can't do it anymore since he is married, but then he learns more from other married guys. It looks like there will be more of him and Peggy. Hope they will make it interesting.

Don and Betty's relationship was also shown well in this episode. All the tension at the end. I have some trouble understanding why he did this.. The divorced neighbor Helen was a good addition. I liked that character. The conversation she had with the women in the kitchen was really well written.

Don on the morning commuting train is looking at a full page ad for Volkswagon. He is interrupted from his reverie when someone passing by, stops and calls him 'Hi Dick', for a moment, Don is startled. When he regains his composure, he shakes the man's hand. He is a former army acquaintance that he is only too glad to see him go away. This is an unexpected inside at a man that is hiding something from his past.

Pete Campbell is back from his honeymoon. In the elevator, he is greeted by some of his co-workers. As Pete opens the door to his office, he finds what appears to be a Chinese peasant family with chickens and all. It is a prank from his fellow junior executives. Pete stops by Peggy's desk on his way to a meeting in Don's office. Pete informs Peggy that he is married now, that way she will not get any ideas about a relationship with him.

Joan comes in to where the girls are getting coffee with her paperback copy of "Lady Chatterley's Lover". She passes it to one of the secretaries indicating the reading will be too racy for Peggy, who gets interested in Joan's recommendation to read the book. Peggy wants to read it, but Joan advises her not to read it in the subway because she will attract undue attention.

The meeting with Rachel Menken does not go well. All the creative team come up with does not satisfy her. It is perfectly clear no one of the men had taken the interest to visit the store to even suggest a plan for the advertising campaign, something that Don promised to remedy right away. As Rachel is going, Don accompany her to the elevator. Don who is clearly attracted to her, kisses her, but informs her he is married.

Don is wakened by his daughter Sally, whose birthday is going to be celebrated that afternoon. Betty asks her husband to put together the playhouse they are giving the girl. Don spends time doing so, going to the garage refrigerator to get beer. Francine has come to help Betty, who mentions she invited the new neighbor Helen Bishop. Francine is surprised because not of the women like her presence in the area.

The celebration finds all the grownups together and the children running around. When Helen Bishop arrives, everyone show not being comfortable with the woman. One man, approaches Helen offering to be a friend to her son. She flatly refuses the suggestion because she tells him, point blank, she knows what he wants. Don is asked to go get the cake at the bakery. He never returns on time, prompting Helen to bring a frozen cake so Sally can blow the candles. When Don reappears, he has a big dog as a present for his daughter.

Ed Bianchi directed the episode that was written by Tom Palmer. This chapter in the series takes a look at the scare in trying to protect a secret Don Draper is trying to hide. It also zooms in the life in suburbia for a divorced woman in those years and the hypocrisy that surrounding the inter action of women left alone at home and how they saw a threat to what they considered to be their happiness.

Good performances are what makes this series the success it has been. Jon Hamm is perfect as Don Draper. The regular cast does wonders under the guidance of Mr. Bianchi.

Domestic bliss, my ass. Don is miserable. He obviously yearns for the playboy nature of the single life but is shackled within the role of the All American Family. His wife prepares for their daughter's birthday party, inviting the neighbors and their children. Don, prior to this insufferable experience (drinking and drinking as he puts together his daughter's playhouse), was kissing on a female client who wants his firm to help her establish her store as a premiere spot for wealthy clientèle that want to pay substantially for her products which will no doubt push away her current customers which flood the premises due to low bargain prices. Campbell returns to a "Chinamen" with chickens in his office much to the delight of his co-workers. Meanwhile, Campbell puts up a front that marriage is really the bomb while obviously still smitten with Peggy. "Lady Chatterly's Lover" gets passed around between women in the office and while Joan tries to dissuade flippantly Peggy's desire to read it (perhaps a slight against her preconceived "homespun values"), she had it at her disposal. A single mother joins the birthday party (Darby Stanchfield, of Scandal on ABC) and is scrutinized by the other busybody wives seemingly hostile due to her freedom absent domestic servitude and their colorless ideals regarding proper behavior as a woman with a child. Don goes out to get the birthday cake and doesn't return in time, with Stanchfield's Helen offering a freezer cake that Betty appreciates. I swear that Anne Dudek has been in EVERYTHING quality television…her agent is boss. Dudek is a pregnant neighbor with too much time on her hands, with plenty of comments about people spoken to her close buddy, Betty. Betty conceals a great deal and allows her friends to say whatever comes to mind. I wonder when that calm exterior fractures for good? The goofy immaturity of the men in the firm can clearly at times annoy Don, and Campbell's visual congratulatory nature regarding the honeymoon is obviously hogwash. What you see on this show is people living shallow lives and often pretending to be what they are not. Helen seems to be a genuine article, a good mother who is divorced from the same pattern of living the mothers/wives in her neighborhood hold as necessary. Helen is an empathetic figure mainly because she doesn't adhere to falsehood domesticity and instead lives her life openly and honestly much to the chagrin of her peers. Don's misery won't subside as long as he desires to escape his current situation. This episode lets us see that he is under a false identity, and that someone from the war calls him a completely different name. At the beginning, this is brought up and not mentioned again…a detail that is planted in our minds for a later date. Amusingly, the VW bug gets noticed in Playboy as the firm execs can't seem to escape its article while failing to come up with a catchy slogan for a product they seem stuck on how to promote successfully.

Three episodes in, the plot of Mad Men thickens and takes on a whole new layer of complexity, adding a juicy bit of mystery to the story of Don Draper and his men at Madison Avenue.

Marriage of Fiagro starts with Pete Campbell returning to Sterling Cooper after his honeymoon. At work, he is reunited with Peggy but tells her their sexual encounter two episodes ago was a one-off deal. Don, on the other hand, has two very different problems to deal with: the obvious attraction between him and Rachel Menken, and a man who seems to recognize him on the train, only this guy refers to him as Dick Whitman and claims they were buddies in the army. On the home front, the Drapers have a birthday party and invite several people, including a shunned divorced woman, but Don appears to be concealing a considerable weight of sadness amidst all the joy.

Aside from the apparent goof of Don's house being totally different from what we saw in the pilot ("apparent" because differences between the first episode and the rest of the season, which is produced at a later stage, are quite common), this third hour of the show is virtually perfect, boasting gorgeous visual details and splendid plotting: the Pete/Peggy subplot gains dramatic substance with just one brief scene, while the sudden introduction of the Dick Whitman mystery adds to the compelling, tragic nature of the main character. Who said the advertising business is all style and no content?

Donald Draper, our main male character, is at work. The newly married man came back from his honeymoon for there to be Chinese and chickens in the chief's office. The staff paid them to be in there.

Donald has a meeting with his co-workers and a woman dressed fancily. They discuss how she could attract more customers and talk about a car ad whose ad is more attractive than the actual car. Donald admits none of them has been to her store on Fifth Avenue.

Don and this woman goes on a "date" to her store where she gives him cuff links. Cuff links are at the ends of the sleeves and link the cuffs together. She leads him outside where there are dogs kept in a fenced area. She tells him how she used to talk to the original dogs a lot. She made it a bylaw to name each generation of dogs the same names.

She looks at Don sadly with this look in her eyes. She talks about how she spent most of her childhood in the store as her dad was working. She has just one sister and she said it was easier to handle the dogs. Don gets the impression she is sad thinking she was unloved and he tells her don't tell me you were always unloved and proceeds to kiss her.

She moves in for the kiss with tears in her eyes, looking as if she felt so lonely for most of her life. Don admits he is married and she is disgusted.

Don and Betty are in their bedroom in the morning when the daughter comes in as it is her birthday. Betty reminds him to set up the playhouse. He does it as he drinks beer. Betty has her hair in curlers and when she takes them out her hair is beautiful. She makes drinks and I love this scene - her fingers are beautiful and hands are adorned with jewellery. Her nails are pink and overall her hands look so feminine. She mixes drinks elegantly with a spoon and places it on the table.

She offers drinks for everyone and tells them what is offered at the party. Kids will have peanut butter sandwiches as she knows they all eat those. Kids run around as the adults stand up very tall and still.

Betty asks Don to film the party as he always forgets and to get the cake. Don is doing the bare minimum - throughout the entire day he seems so lazy and reluctant to do any fatherly things.

Betty invites an outcast to the party - a divorced woman with a son. Betty invited her only because she saw her buying balloons. The other mothers are dismayed. This woman is the only one who comes in with pants and a present with Christmas wrapping paper. She enters the home without the owner's presence. Betty reacts with forced little smiles.

Don goes out to get the cake but does not come home. One couple leaves early after the man thinks there will be no cake. The divorced woman offers to bring a cake she has and Betty gratefully accepts. The cake is brought in and it is a tiny cake and kind of messy. Betty tries to cut the cake with force as it is very hard and she narrows her brows.

Don is shown sitting in his car then is home. Betty comes in to find the kids with a dog and Don exhausted. Betty does not know what to say. Don picks up his daughter and wishes her a happy birthday. Once out of his grasp his daughter reaches to hug the dog.