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Recap / Mad Men S 1 E 5 Five G

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Why would you do that to me?

Ken gets a short story published in The Atlantic Monthly, inciting envy among his colleagues and driving Pete to ask his wife to meet with an old boyfriend to help Pete get published. Don's younger brother Adam, who believed that he was killed in the Korean War and knows him as "Dick", stumbles upon a photo of Don in Advertising Age and tries to come back into his life. Peggy overhears a personal phone conversation between Don and Midge and shares the secret with Joan. Don can't let Adam back into his life because his painful past would leave him too much to lose at present, but after giving Adam $5,000 to start over he and his brother embrace in tears.

The episode contains examples of:

  • Burn Baby Burn: Before going to meet with Adam for the final time, Don burns up a family photo.
  • Double-Meaning Title: The "5G" in the title refers both to Adam's suite number and the amount of money that Don offers him to stay out of Don's life.
  • Exact Eavesdropping: Peggy picks up the office phone just in time to hear Midge calling Don, telling him to come over to her apartment.
  • Fish out of Water: Betty remarks that she's feels this way whenever visiting Don's office.
  • Go Seduce My Arch Nemesis: Pete tells Trudy to sway her ex-boyfriend Charlie into getting his story published, likely caring little for whatever it takes to get it done.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Both Pete and Paul towards Ken, quite explicitly. Pete goes out of his way to get one of his own short stories published somewhere, stooping to pimping out his wife in order to to do. Paul, meanwhile, shows open resentment to Ken in the office, tearing out a copy of the story from the magazine that Ken is carrying in front of the secretaries.
  • Hidden Depths: The first episode to show Ken Cosgrove as having some. He starts the episode happy about his short story being published, and goes into detail about two novels that he's also written.
  • Long-Lost Relative: Adam, to Don. Don is embarrassed that his half-brother managed to find him.
  • Saying Too Much: Peggy realizes that it was worthless to divulge information about Don's affair with Joan, since the latter didn't end up helping in any way that Peggy couldn't have figured out herself.
  • Troll: Joan offers Peggy advice on covering for Don, but needs to know what he's doing. Peggy gives her the dirt on Don being with Midge (which as it happens, he isn't) and Joan just gives her a generic cover story she would have thought of anyway. It's pretty obvious Joan just wanted to hear some juicy gossip.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Pete's reaction to hearing that his story will be published in Boy's Life, rather than somewhere more prestigious.

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