Pete lands a chance for SCDP to make a presentation to Honda, a rising Japanese scooter company making its entrance into the American auto market. Good news? Not to Roger Sterling, who refuses to work with Honda due to his memories of World War Two. The rest of the firm cuts Roger out of the loop and Bert, who has considerably warmer feelings towards Japan, coaches them on etiquette. Roger, however, comes back early, storms the meeting, and insults the Honda people, apparently dooming the deal. Don comes up with a plan to at least make sure they aren't shown up by CGC, a rival firm whose director Ted Chaough has been a thorn in Don's side.
While Don's neighbor Phoebe is babysitting Sally and Bobby, Sally goes into the bathroom and badly butchers her own hair. When Don sees the result he tells Phoebe to consider the sizable tip her severance pay, although he's less angry at her than he is fearful of Betty's reaction. Betty hits Sally when she sees, which upsets Don. This incident, as well as another in which Sally is caught "playing with herself" at a slumber party cause Henry to suggest Betty send Sally to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, Dr. Edna, gets Betty to agree to sessions of her own, without coming out and saying it.
Don talks to Faye Miller, again expressing skepticism that talking about your problems really helps. He winds up telling her more about his own problems than he likely meant to. She reveals that she isn't married or divorced, and that her wedding ring is just to discourage the wrong kind of attention from the men she works with.
This episode contains examples of:
- Always Someone Better: Ted Chaough likes to think he is this to Don, but as the events of this episode show, it's actually the other way round.
- Batman Gambit: As well as being a Kansas City Shuffle, Don's goading of Ted into breaking the Honda pitch competition rules also counts as one of these.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Don and Betty put the blame for Sally's precocious sexuality on each other's conduct: his string of casual partners and her new marriage. Sally's own comments make it clear that she's been affected by both of these activities.
- Call-Back: CGC now has the task of promoting jai alai.
- Betty's distaste for psychiatry stems from her own go nowhere sessions with Dr. Wayne. The mortifying knowledge that her doctor was feeding the details back to Don might contribute to her prejudice, too.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Pete calls out Roger for his bigotry against the Honda clients, telling him that it's been twenty years since the war ended and that he's really only doing it because if they get more business, the company would be less dependent on the Lucky Strike account, and in turn less dependent on Roger himself.Don: He's right
- Caught with Your Pants Down: The mother of one of Sally's friends catches her masturbating to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and drags her home to Betty.
- Fun with Subtitles: In play when the Honda executives, who can only speak Japanese, converse with their translator ... who is himself stumped by some of what he has to translate.
- Jerkass: Ted Chaough is given to Unsportsmanlike Gloating and doesn't seem to be a great boss.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Pete when he calls Roger on his anti-Japanese bigotry. Don agrees.
- Kansas City Shuffle: After Roger's behavior, it's clear that SCDP won't win the competition. So Don concocts a ruse to convince Ted that they're violating the competition rules by producing a full commercial instead of just a pitch. This doubles as a Batman Gambit, because Ted does exactly what Don expects and produces a full commercial of their own. This knocks CGC out of the running because they violated the rules, and wasted a lot of resources, which can no longer be used to compete against SCDP. Even better, Don gets to save face by withdrawing from the competition on the grounds that the rules weren't being followed, which impresses the Honda executives.
- Let Me at Him!: Roger tries to go after Pete when the latter calls him out, but Don blocks him.
- Lost in Translation: The Japanese executives can only speak broken English, and their translator isn't the best. Unable to understand Don's description of the creative room, he simply tells his superiors that he has no idea what the room is for. His services are not required when one of them makes a comment in Japanese about Joan's figure, though, as she has a pretty good idea of what's been said and tells him not to translate that.
- My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: Don goads CGC into shooting a full ad in violation of the pitch competition rules set out by Honda. When he withdraws SCDP from the competition as a result, the Honda executives are impressed.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Roger's trauma over losing friends in World War II keeps him from being objective about the proposed Honda campaign.
- Shout-Out: Ted's mocking present to Don of a bottle of saki comes with a label on which he's written "Help me, Honda", a nod to The Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" which was released in March 1965 — the month in which this episode is set ("Little Honda" had come out the year before).
- Also, Sally's reading The Twenty One Balloons by William Pene Du Bois ... which is very similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", which her mother read in "Three Sundays".
