Mad Men Recap: Penny Layne

Recaps

By McWeanis | Thursday, May 24, 2012 | 7:52 pm | 10 Comments
Posted in: Mad Men, Recaps

In which Layne is screwed, Joan tries to get screwed, and Harry screws Paul’s woman.

Some of you have been pointing out that this season doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and this episode is a great example. The characters than loomed largest this week were two of my favorites, Joan and Layne, but I was still bored and confused. Also, what’s with the Harry focus?? Bring back Betty!

 I’m not sure when exactly Layne’s money troubles began, but he’s in deep now.

the faced of fucked-ness.

He gets a midnight call from England with mixed news: he won’t be going to jail, but he has to pay $8,000 to the British government, stat. (Did he do fraud or tax evasion? Take out a big loan to start SCDP? Been paying to see Dolores on the side? I don’t know.) The internet tells me that $8,000 1966 dollar is equal to about $50,000 dollars in 2012 money. AKA, yikes.

From past experience with Layne as one of the most upstanding and reliable people on the show, I would have expected him to confide in someone (probably Joan or Don), or try to find some legitimate solution. For some reason – pride? privacy? the fact that the other partners treat him like shit already? – Layne takes the dishonest route. First, he goes to a banker in a ratty, random office. Have we seen that banker before? The building didn’t look very legit. Telling the banker that SDCP’s clients are being slow to pay, he takes out a 50k loan. Then, he tells the partners that the firm miraculously has a $50,000 surplus. Again, for perspective, thats like 350,000 2012 dollars. Because nobody besides Layne and Joan have any idea what the fuck is going on financially, they don’t question it at all, and decide to hand out Christmas bonuses. Unfortunately for Layne, the other partners decide to delay their bonuses til after Christmas, if at all, since Mohawk workers on on strike, and to use the money for initial capital for Jaguar instead (more on that below).

about to punch self in face

His plan having backfired, Layne sneaks into the office in the middle of the night to forge a check to himself from Don.

He also has to lie to his wife, uncharacteristically snapping at her during the first scene and then later lying that he’d be lonely without her at Christmas so discourage her from returning to London for the holiday; she doesn’t know they can’t afford it, or their son’s school tuition for that matter.

sweet little lies

As the finance guy, he’ll probably get away with it for awhile, but somehow this struggling firm is going to have to pay back that loan, and my guess is Joan will be the first to figure out what’s going on. I don’t know if she’ll tattle on him; their strong relationship seems a bit strained since The Kiss.

Frankly, I’m having trouble with the believability of this storyline. Layne’s too smart for this. I know he’s having a bit of a spiral, between the Pete fight and the inexplicable Dolores incident, but I wouldn’t expect Layne to so thoroughly set himself up for failure.

 

Last time we checked, SCDP had lost their chance at Jaguar thanks to a misplaced wad of chewing gum. Now, Layne’s friend “Bazooka Joe” is out at Jaguar, meaning Pete has weaseled the firm back into the running. (As usual with Pete’s news, nobody is as excited as he is.) At the beginning of the episode, Don doubts Jaguar will ever come through – the car company is just toying with him.

the very embodiment of hope and excitement.

By the end, he’s back to his “inspiring” speeches of old about working until you drop. What caused this transformation? The ladies – Joan and Megan.

Joan was really the star of this episode, which I am of course thrilled about. Joan has always been a strong woman, but she’s also let men take advantage of her. Since having Kevin, she’s going all out in the independence department. First she kicked out her nasty rapey husband Greg. Now, she’s rejecting Roger’s money. After his stupid LSD experience, he’s finally excited about the baby and wants to take care of him financially. (He’s also very, very drunk, as it’s the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.) Roger likes to make a lot of his LSD experience, but I don’t really think he’s changed at all. He also thought he took a great leap forward after his near-death experience, and look where that led – another divorce and a bastard baby.

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McWeanis
About

first thing's first: the origin of "mcweanis."

It is not because I have a giant weanis (look it up) although it is usually unusually bulbous and crusty.

it is in fact because as a child i was dubbed Weanie (it rhymes with my first name, because i'm awesomely named)  by my older sister Drunk, which my friends co-opted and which eventually evolved into weanis and finally mcweanis or MC weanis depending on how gangster i am at the time.

i am a huge nerd of all kinds, especially tv, books, and school. i'll be going to harvard law school in the fall cause i'm so SCHMANCY! i plan to put my excellent time management skills to work in balancing my courseload and my must-watch-tv-load.

10 Comments

  1. 1
    BlueCanary
    Posted May 24, 2012 at 9:07 pm

    I swear, I spent most of the episode convinced that was Juliette Lewis.

    They don’t have vwry many episodes left in the season, so I’m not sure how they plan to tie up any of these hanging storylines. At this point, I’m just waiting to see whether Don or Megan will bail on that misery first.

  2. 2
    MrsMiaWallace
    Posted May 24, 2012 at 9:09 pm

    Great recap! I’ve said it before but I really like that you go storyline by storyline instead of real-time fragments, it must be more work but makes the recap so legible!

    I agree that this episode and this season have had extremely high intensity drama and tension but low low low on actual action. Also I have a hard time even remembering who Paul is and Harry is barely a blip. Where is Betty!!??

    I agree too that Joan will discover Harry’s blunder-but I’m hoping he goes more extreme before this is all over-he does still need to find cash for the school… As for Don and Megan, I still think she will be the one to leave him or cheat this time-he actually seems to have settled down but she is not going to accept his silence and domineering like Betty did.

    And THANK YOU for the Juliette Lewis pic, I KNEW that chick reminded me of someone!

  3. 3
    maryedith
    Posted May 24, 2012 at 9:41 pm

    It’s hard to see the trees for the forest in an episode like this. The overarching symbolism does push the plot forward but reliance on it makes individual conversations extremely clunky and obviously hard to act. Even Peggy was struggling with her lines, I thought. One “symbolic” thing that “happened” was that Don used Mao’s famous “Great Leap Forward” line in his motivational speech. This lets us know, I guess, that the Jaguar campaign is going to bomb. But mainly what’s “happening” is The Sixties! and I have to say I’m not thrilled by this. I know all about the damn sixties. They’ve been shoved down my throat since I was a tiny child. I know that it was The Greatest Decade Ever and that Change Happened and Megan represents this and Don better Get With the Program and find some Enlightenment. Ok so there was a little irony about the Hare Krishna girl being a hard-headed business exec but at heart I think the writers believe in the damn sixties and want to take us there. AGAIN.

  4. 4
    MrsMiaWallace
    Posted May 24, 2012 at 10:21 pm

    @MaryEdith – AMEN!

    I did not realize it until you pointed it out but the main thing that has me drifting away from this show is the era shift. This show started with a time period that is not often explored the way they did and showed us a unique perspective of Americana culture. The shift is going in an old familiar and beaten to death direction and I could not be less interested.

  5. 5
    emily
    Posted May 24, 2012 at 11:53 pm

    I am for one am glad that there is less Betty this season what is the point of showing her she is not married to Don anymore. They can still have Sally on and not show Betty. The two worst episodes of this season were the ones that featured her there is really nothing left to say about her. Plus if they get rid of that terrible actress January Jones they could use the money on stuff like better sets. This show being leisurely pace is the one of the many things i like about it along with the acting and writing it reminds me of reading a great book.

  6. 6
    SparklePony
    Posted May 25, 2012 at 5:18 am

    The card on the flowers was signed Aly Khan because when they were at the bar Don mentioned that during his first week at Sterling Cooper Joan received so many flowers he thought she was dating Aly Khan.

  7. 7
    ChaCha
    Posted May 25, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    @ maryedith and mrsmiawallace–think how it was for us who lived in the sixties and had to ride from one era into the next at breakneck speed.

    @emily–the sets are perfect replicas of sixties decor. If they get rid of them, then the show has lept to another era. It’s okay if you hate sixties decor…some of it was ugly– obviously drugs weren’t the only things the sixties was experimenting with!

  8. 8
    emily
    Posted May 25, 2012 at 2:28 pm

    I like the sets especially the cool looking furniture in Roger’s office i really should have said with the money they save on firing her they could use it towards the show.

  9. 9
    Elmstreet
    Posted May 26, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    McWeanis – Lane owes so much money because of the British tax rates on his expatriate earnings. Since he hasn’t become an American citizen yet, he’s having to pay on both sides of the pond. I was curious about this too, but I read the Mad Men recaps on Tom And Lorenzo (originally Project Rungay) and they’re pretty informative about details like that.

    If Joan doesn’t find out about it first, Don will when the forged check goes through. If anything, Lane would be lucky if it’s either of them. Joan didn’t tattle on Roger when he confessed to losing Lucky Strike, she just wished she’d known earlier so she could have fixed the situation like a boss. I don’t think Don would tattle either, he would actually most likely be sympathetic once the whole situation came out.

    Yeah, I’ve been spending awhile thinking about how this one might play out because I really like Lane and I don’t like seeing where this arc is going (even though I’m totally intrigued).

  10. 10
    maryedith
    Posted May 26, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    What happens to Lane will probably depend on how it goes with Jaguar. I’m a little confused, though. It looked like Lane’s story was going to be about following bored, slutty housewives around, didn’t it? Then he disappeared. Then he punched Pete. Then he disappeared. Now he’s forging checks. Or — cheques.

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