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Recap / Mad Men S 6 E 10 A Tale Of Two Cities

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Be slick. Be glib. Be you.

Set against the backdrop of the 1968 Democratic National Convention and ensuing confrontation between police and protestors in Chicago, the partners try to decide what to call the confusingly-named merged agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Cutler Gleason Chaough. Don, Roger and Harry travel to Los Angeles to meet with clients. The three attend a Hollywood pool party where they meet Jane's cousin Danny, who's now in the movie business. Don smokes hashish and hallucinates about the soldier he met in Hawaii and a pregnant, hippie Megan. He's actually face down in the pool and is saved by Roger.

Back in New York, Jim has a confrontation with Ginsberg. Bob, who tries to defuse the situation, is given the Manischewitz account as a punishment; after reassuring a near-paranoid Ginsberg, he meets with them and later reports that they are putting the firm on notice. Joan meets a client for cosmetics giant Avon. Seeing this as her opportunity to bring some legitimacy to her status as a partner (and wanting to manage the account herself), she deliberately cuts Pete out of a meeting. After a scolding from Ted and Pete, Peggy saves Joan with a fake phone call from Avon. Ted informs Jim that he has broken through the management layers at Chevy; Jim adds Bob to the account. When Don and Roger return, Ted and Jim announce that they have agreed to compromise on the recently merged firm's name, which will henceforth be "Sterling Cooper & Partners".

This episode contains examples of:

  • An Arm and a Leg: Don's hallucination of PFC Dinkins has him missing an arm.
  • Artifact Title: In-Universe, the firm's title is once, since two of the people it's named after are dead, and the abbreviation SCDPCGC is a mouthful. That said, the most obvious answer — to just drop Pryce and Gleason — leads to "SCDCC," which Don points out (correctly) just looks like a typo. It also has the unintended side effect of leaving both Joan and Pete out of the title despite being partners; their insecurities on the topic motivate much of their actions over the course of the episode.
    Duck Phillips, on the phone with Pete last episode: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Cutler Gleason and Chaough? Who the hell's in charge?
  • Artistic Licence – History: Roger's explorer analogy is all over the placenote .
    Roger: We're conquistadors. I'm Vasco da Gama, and you're ... some other Mexican. We’re gonna land there, buy whatever they’ve got for the beads in our pockets. Our biggest challenge is to not get syphilis.
  • The Bus Came Back: Danny re-appears in this episode — Don, Roger and Harry encounter him at the California pool party. Danny's now a hippie movie producer. Appropriately, Life Cereal — the product that used his only tag-line ("the cure for the common...") gets a mention during a business meeting that Don and Roger attend.
  • Call-Back: Roger, Don and Danny's conversation touches on latter's departure from SCDP in "Blowing Smoke"; Danny says he quit, but Roger correctly recalls that he was in fact fired. Also, Don hallucinates about PFC Dinkins, the soldier he met (and whose beach wedding he attended) in "The Doorway".
  • Cool Car: Even though Harry should have got a Chevy for the California trip, what with SCDPCGC having their account and all, there's no denying that the red Mustang is cool.
  • Drugs Are Bad: Smoking hashish on a hookah pipe makes Don hallucinate, before he blacks out and almost drowns in a swimming pool.
  • Everybody Must Get Stoned: Most of the party people are — that hookah can take six at a time. And at the end of the episode, Pete of all people steals Stan's spliff and takes a drag.
  • Groin Attack: After one joke too many about his height, Danny punches Roger in the balls.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Pete's fear of Jim and Ted trying to take over the company from within is dismissed by Don. However, going by what Jim says to Ted about firing the SCDP creative team while Don and Roger are away, he may actually be onto something.
  • Mushroom Samba: Don takes hashish while in the party in Hollywood Hills. He ends up hallucinating about Megan — a pregnant, hippy version of Megan, no less — being at the party. He also sees PFC Dinkins, who tells Don that he was killed in action.
  • Shout-Out: Danny wants to make a film out of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
  • Skewed Priorities: Megan seems more upset and scared by the unrest in Chicago than she was when rioting happened in New York City (which is where she lives) back in "The Flood".
  • Stock Footage: Several characters watch news footage from the period about the rioting in Chicago.
  • Swapped Roles: This episode has Joan and Peggy somewhat swap roles as mentor/mentee when they try to land Avon Cosmetics.
  • Trojan Horse: How Pete sees Ted and Jim conceding on the name "Sterling Cooper & Partners" or "SC&P". While neither of them will be name partners anymore, they have taken over the business of the firm. Don dismisses Pete's concerns, and says that the two businesses should fully integrate.

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