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Either way, a few moments later she runs to the bathroom because she doesn’t feel well…. anndd… BLOOD! AHHH! Did they really need to show a little-girl-vagina-shaped-blood-stain on the panties? We couldn’t have inferred? Sally FREAKS and runs straight out of the museum. I still remember my first period. I was at camp and even though I was expecting it, I still thought I was dying. When Megan gets home, Sally’s gone – she took a cab all the way back to Betty’s! Glen also shows up looking for Sally, and Megan’s very suspicious until Betty calls to say she has Sally (“I think she just needed her mother. BOOM sucka.”) Megan lets Glen stay until his train, and cooks him up some foods.
Betty’a mad at Sally for her escape act at first, but then Sally comes in for a big hug, and its so sweet.
I remember how much I cried and missed my mom that first time! Wahhh! There’s no stranger feeling. Once Sally has calmed down, Betty gives her a soothing speech about womanhood. “Everything’s ready for baby, when you want one. And maybe you’ll have a beautiful girl, and you can tell her all this.” Say what you will about Betty, she has her moments.
That same Monday morning, Roger and Don wait for their appointment with Dow Chemical. After nearly two hours, they’re finally let in to the wood paneled old boys club office. Don dismisses their talk of Lucky Strike and the letter and immediately launches into one of his hungriest and most intense pitches ever. The theme is that complacency is death, that success is never enough, that “you get hungry even though you’ve just eaten”.
His point is that even though Dow’s ad agency has a cushy job maintaining their 50% of the market share, they should be gunning for 100%. He gives a little taste with a Napalm slogan: “When America needs it, Dow makes it. And it works.” A simple slogan for a very controversial product. We don’t know if the old Dow boys bite, but they sure look interested despite their repeated claims to be happy with their current agency. Roger almost squees his pants to see the old, crazy driven Don back: “I’ll buy you a drink if you wipe the blood off your mouth.”
The next morning, Joan starts to suspicious when she can’t open the door to Lane’s office. She has Pete look over his office wall, and the look on his face – and those of Kenny and Harry, who can’t resist peeking too – tells her something horrible has happened.
When Don and Roger return from their meeting, only Pete, Joan and Burt are left, and they’re waiting for the coroner. Lane hanged himself in his office. Don refuses to leave Layne hanging there, and busts down the door to cut him down. You can practically see the mortality in Roger’s eyes as they lower him to the couch.
Man. He doesn’t even look like Lane anymore; his pace is puffy and swollen and red. He looks like a dummy.
The five partners open Layne’s suicide note. It’s a resignation letter. “Boilerplate.” No explanation. Only Don knows why Lane bit it, and he ain’t telling.
When Don arrives home, he’s probably expecting the comfort of a beautiful woman. Instead, he gets Glen.
Surprisingly, instead of whooping Glen’s ass, he offers to drive him all the way back to school. At first, they form a super depressing team, with Glen lamenting that nothing ever turns out well.
Don tries to redeem a horrible day by granting Glen’s number one wish: letting him drive a car.
28 Comments
I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this, and my feeling is that it was in character. Lane seemed to think that there was no turning back and he couldn’t bare anymore humiliation in his life. He doesn’t always make the right choices, he’s not the guy that girls flock to, he’s not the fun guy…he’s seen as the boring accountant. An accountant that couldn’t keep up with his own finances in check, so in a way he probably saw himself as a complete failure. When you feel you’re too old to start over, and have that unbearable feeling of utter defeat, sometimes you do seek a permanent solution.
If we even look at the relationships between himself and his wife as well as his own father, there didn’t seem to be any real love. It was money and stature. He lost both. He was never able to live like he truly wanted to, but lived like how everyone expected him to. If you think back, I don’t think Lane EVER got ANYTHING that he wanted. And he failed them, and most importantly himself. He just didn’t have the strength to try anymore.
I am truly saddened by this arc and didn’t want it to come to this, but really to me, I think it was the only way it could. In the next episode, I think this will tie with everyone elses’ stories. They are all trying to find a reason to live and what makes them happy. They can grab life by the balls and do what THEY want, or live for someone else. Either way, the ultimate choice is theirs.
Like what happens with most suicides, we don’t see it coming, but once it has arrived we look back and see how it has been sending out signals for quite some time. Lane deteriorated all this season. Out of character? Do we really know anyone’s character or just what we think their character is? Lane didn’t show it to those around him, but we got to watch it all happen this season and part of last season, when he was forced to give up his Bunny and watch how he allowed his father shame and abuse him. He was worn down and worn out.
McWeanis I REALLY liked this recap. I love the way you ask questions about things as if you’re in a conversation with the readers. About Lane, I felt that his arc made sense. He wanted the American Dream so badly and he could never quite grasp how to go about living it. I thought his character was good for the show because it highlighted how crass and unprincipled the other men on the show can be because they’re unencumbered by a sense of history or having to live up to their role in a class system the way an Englishman would be. Don and Roger can rewrite themselves at the drop of a hat (or they think they can; not sure where the writers really come down on that) but for Lane the only way to make an “elegant exit” is to kill himself.
Where do you come down on Megan? I think she is just unrealistically perfect. She always says just the right thing! Give me a break.
Love the Mad Men recaps, thank you for spelling out things I would typically not get on my own. A cancelled check is a check that has cleared the bank, and the funds had been paid, therefore cancelled , as in not good anymore. (I’m really not a know it all, just years of my life wasted in the banking industry)
I wish Joan had been the one to discover the forged check. I really do. Of course, this is Mad Men world, and Matthew Weiner is in a competition with Joss Whedon over killing off the popular characters. Anyways, if Christina Hendricks does not win an emmy for this season (her face when she registered Lane’s death was heart breaking), I’ll send Lane’s dad over the pond to pimp slap the emmy voters.
Don did the humane act, as far as firing Lane was concerned. Lane could have been arrested, and Don was absolutely correct that you can’t trust someone who runs the finances if they forge checks. Especially in your own name. But as soon as Don started implying that Lane could make a fresh start, I wanted to yell “Don, you never had your dad beat your grown ass with a cane!”. Of course Lane could have never made a fresh start. Not with his rigid upbringing and background and family. He was just never enough, and it’s a sad end to a sad story.
Ken Cosgrove has been awesome for about three seasons now. But who knew he was such a ball-buster? That’s pretty hot, actually. Maybe he’ll take over the Punching Pete Campbell duties now.
This has to be the best recaps of yours that I’ve ever read. You reminded me of Loula’s MM recaps, where she’d expand on the themes of the episode and bring out the insights that we were supposed to have been given. I know you felt attacked when you first started recapping this show because you were trying to find your footing, but this recap is the intelligent, character-driven analysis that we MM fanatics wanted all along. It’s the kind of show it is. Great job.
Yes, what Elmstreet said. I hope you can stay with this show because you’re doing it justice and that’s no easy task.
Wow, Matthew Weiners kid is creepy and unattractive, plus he can’t act at all. Nepotism at it’s best!
Yes, that kid is a definite clunker in a great series. Sucks the life out of the screen. The only justification for him will be if his character turns into a serial killer. He’ll be great at that.
@kloewent and @itchy, I actually like the Young Weiner as Glenn. Glenn is always supposed to be socially awkward, so I think it’s more of an acting choice than him sucking the life out of the screen.
Well, Mrs. Itchy agrees with me. And she’s ALWAYS right. She’ll tell you that herself.
My feeling is Weiner has no idea where he’s going with Glen so Weiner Jr probably has no direction other than “be ambiguous.”
@ Maryedith – On Megan, she is definitely too good to be true, and she has too much fire to settle down and be an abiding housewife like Don wants. Don has blinders on, and he won’t see it coming, but she will leave him.
I hear what you’re saying, and it’s certainly the majority viewpoint in the things I read about the show, but I don’t know… I somehow think whatever goes wrong with Don and Megan won’t be Megan’s fault. In the Zooby Zooby Show, Megan told Peggy that SCDP was full of cynical people who couldn’t enjoy anything. The season has borne her out, to the point that Peggy had to leave. I think that if something happens between Don and Megan it will be that Don cynically misreads and misjudges something innocent on Megan’s part. Because Don doesn’t Get the Sixties. BUT it will all be pretty ambiguous and open to interpretation. IF something happens.
About the 13-day thing, Lane was expecting to receive a bonus, which would have allowed him to pay back his “loan.” When the bonuses were cancelled, he was screwed.
I like the Ken character, wish they’d do more with him, the idea that he’s a good writer but that he’s conforming to expectations by not writing.
And I like the Megan character too — always seems to know how to handle Don. If anyone leaves anyone, it’ll be her leaving him.
Meanwhile, I’m getting tired of seeing Fat Betty. Bring back January Jones. Please.
@itchy — Do you think Lane was an embezzler? On other sites (which I was ONLY reading whilst waiting for this recap) there were lots of discussions about embezzlement and how Don didn’t have choice but to do what he did because Lane was an EMBEZZLER. I could see that that was the case from Don’s point of view, but I thought Don’s point of view was seriously limited. I know people who embezzle money lie to themselves about paying it back, but the show didn’t give us any indication that Lane would not have paid it back as soon as he got it. All he wanted to do was stay in the States and work at that job. So, he wasn’t really embezzling, was he?
It doesn’t matter if he would have paid it back. He was clearly and illicitly taking funds from the company (to pay for something completely unrelated to the company). To make matters worse, he forged someone’s signature in order to do it. Another felony. Don was letting him off very lightly. Very.
Oh, also, I have my own summer camp period story. Not me, of course. But one of the girls, must have had hers for the first time while swimming. Because there she was, freaking out, with blood trickling down her leg. Except within seconds, she was surrounded by an entire phalanx of females and their towels, who shielded her from view and got her out of there.
I found that extremely impressive.
When it happens to someone else, it really is like it’s happening to you. I’m not surprised at all.
That’s funny about Lane; I didn’t see it as unrelated to the company because it was to keep Lane AT the company. But I can see that you’re right, itchy. It was just interesting how it happened right after the Joan thing. The letter of the law gets broken all over the place; whether to prosecute depends on how the characters interpret the spirit of it.
Oooooooooh
Do you think Lane was gung-ho about Joan becoming partner so that she WOULDN’T be doing the books anymore….thus she (and everyone else) wouldn’t know about the check? At first I thought he just liked Joan and wanted her to succeed, but now it may have been part of his plan…….sadly, plan failed when Cooper randomly checked out the finances.
Either way, I really liked Lane. He was a good guy, hard working, and I loved the role he played during the “Sterling Cooper” defection. I think he always felt he was a disappointment to everyone (remember his father beating him with his cane?) and this was all the he could handle, the final straw. Very sad, he’ll be missed.
I thought it was ironic how Dick Whitman used Don Draper’s name to forge a whole new life for himself, while Lane forged it for one check to cover back taxes on money he used to help finance the new agency’s start-up costs. One man goes on to build quite a good life for himself and then stands in judgement of the other, who for 3 years straight took losses he couldn’t afford. Yes, he should have been more like an American and come out and asked for help. He could have been upfront with his wife about not having the money for their son’s private school. Of course, this is the same woman who never wanted to leave England to begin with. She only became more complacent because he kept giving her everything else she asked for. And he owned a stake in the company, so certainly he should have been able to use it as some kind of collateral with the partners. All year, he tried to be anyone but himself. He was so obviously unhappy. He fantasized that he was the guy with the hot girl on the side. He tried to land the Jag account. But in everything he failed. And he burned all his bridges with his connections back in England when he left for SCDP. He couldn’t accept the idea of going back to England as a failure. Don should have known that, but he’s been oblivious to everything happening around him for most of this season. If there was anything that could bring down SCDP in an instant, it will be the truth coming out about Don’s real identity. It won’t matter that all his accomplishments were truly his own. They will only think about his forgery. I wish he had shown more compassion towards Lane, but just as he wanted his brother to go away, he wanted Lane to go away, too. And Lane sure did go away. Just like his brother, he left permanently.
I think it was to stop her asking for the $50,000, Annie. Which was why he looked conflicted about it afterward.
It was definitely to stop her from taking the money — they’d planned to pay her from the bonus fund, which would have exposed him right away.
I think Dick/Don was fully aware of the irony of firing Lane. If he’d had a nastier character, he would have let Lane stay, and use his knowledge as leverage. But in the real world, the Lane character was played out and the actor was probably looking forward to moving on anyway, so this was a pretty good exit.
Itchy–in all of the interviews I read, Jared Harris didn’t sound happy at all with no longer being part of the cast.
Who would? Not many television roles for self-effacing Brits these days. Although he was pretty good as the evil genius in Sherlock Holmes.
McWeanis,
A little disappointed that you didn’t mention the comedy of Lane’s first suicide attempt. I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. Life is like that: at the moments of deepest despair, sometimes there is comedy. The guys had been alluding all the time to what a “lemon” Jaguars were at the time, how unreliable they were, and sure enough, just when he needed to depend on it to kill himself, damn thing wouldn’t start. I loved how he broke his glasses into two pieces right before he tried turning the ignition. Then, after it wouldn’t start, he had the hood up holding one piece of the glasses to one eye to try to see what could be wrong in the engine that was causing the failure to start. That black humor in the situation was quite rich. I almost expected his character to take all that as a signal from the Universe that suicide wasn’t the way to go.
I also loved how his wife “bought” the car by writing a check. That so illustrates how little most women of the time knew about finances because bank accounts were usually controlled by men. [Part of the training I received as a naval officer was in counseling people who thought that as long as they had paper checks, they somehow magically still had money in their bank account to cover whatever amount they wrote the check for.] It also made me a little nostalgic for the days of “playing the float” before automatic check scanners and instantaneous transfers of money from accounts came into existence.
Oh, also there was the irony of the fact that she said, “I wrote a check.” That’s exactly what Lane did to get himself into trouble. So, there he is in a vehicle purchased by “writing a check” to attempt to erase the disgrace he brought upon himself by “writing a check.”
Fabulous ep and recap.