Mad Men’s 10 Best Episodes

8) The Other Woman (Season Five, Episode Eleven)

Written By: Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner
Directed By: Phil Abraham

The world of advertising looks clean and sleek from the outside, but it’s a dirty business. That point certainly comes across in one of Mad Men’s most harrowing hours, “The Other Woman,” when the partners of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce sink to a new low to land a car account that could ramp up business.

The episode is one of many hours from the drama to focus on the wonderful women of the show. Here, we realize the different paths of Peggy and Joan, the show’s two best female characters. Peggy feels isolated from her job at the agency since she is not working on the Jaguar account and thinks her talents are better suited elsewhere. She shops around some offers before finding a good one with SCDP foe Cutler, Gleeson and Chaough. Just when Don is prepared to give her a raise, she gives him her two weeks’ notice. His disoriented expression tells us what we already know: he needs her more than she needs him.

Meanwhile, the partners need Joan, but for a very different and quite tasteless reason. Herb, the head of the dealer’s association and a pivotal voice at the auto company pitch, demands a night with Joan as a prelude to sealing the business for SCDP. The reaction should be horrifying. Instead, the four partners (not including Don) vote for Joan to prostitute herself for the sake of the company. She gets a 5% stake and a partnership – but she clearly isn’t happy with this being the thing to bounce her to the top of the heap.

In one of the series’ most finely edited sequences, Don’s pitch to Jaguar – where he compares the car to a prized woman one can now attain – intercuts with Joan’s visit to Herb’s apartment. As the characters on Mad Men have often objectified Joan for her voluptuous body, Don speaks of the car’s painted curves. As men have lusted after her, they salivate over the chance to have control over the road. (In the most sickening moment of the episode, we see Herb react in delight to the tagline: “At last. Something beautiful you can truly own,” likely thinking back to the previous evening.)

Joan and Peggy both earn more power in “The Other Woman,” yet the reasons couldn’t be more different. The last shot of Joan is her woeful stare at Peggy as the copywriter walks out of the office. The last shot of Peggy (and the episode) is an exuberant walk into the elevator, with the Kinks’ guitar strumming on the soundtrack. In a subplot from the episode, Megan heads to an audition in Boston, only to find herself subjected to more judgment about her looks than her acting talent. She could have been the next Peggy when she worked at SCDP, but she is now slowly turning into Joan.

Best Scene: The three-second glance between Don and Joan at the partners’ meeting is a whole scene in and of itself. Peggy’s goodbye a few minutes later is a magnificent runner-up.

Line of the Hour: Pete Campbell, in the slimiest he has ever been, brings Herb’s request up to Joan and proceeds to condescend and make Joan feel bad for putting the company at risk. Then, he gives this dark jewel: “This was an act of desperation. I hope I haven’t insulted you. That’s all that matters to me.” One only wishes Lane Pryce was in the room to swiftly punch him in the face a few times.