It is Valentines Day at SC&P. Sally and a couple of schoolfriends are in the City to attend the funeral of a classmate's mother, but they sneak away and go shopping. However, Sally loses her wallet and tries to find Don at work for help getting home, not knowing that he is on leave. Lou Avery, the new creative director occupying Don's office simply states that Don is not there, evading all questions by suggesting she try Don at home. Then Lou angrily reprimands Dawn, his secretary, for not being at the office to handle Sally, telling Joan to move her. Don finds Sally in his apartment; he claims he was at work and offers to drive Sally back to school. During this journey, he opens up to her and tells her why he got suspended from work. The eat at a diner and Don suggests leaving without paying; he is impressed that Sally finds this wrong.
Joan, having moved Dawn up to the front of the office in reception, is reprimanded by Cooper that there is a black woman on the front desk. Peggy finds flowers on her secretary's desk, believing that they have been sent to her when they really belong to her secretary, Shirley. Peggy, believing that Ted sent her flowers, delivers belligerent phone messages to him, and then decides to tell Shirley to get rid the flowers. When Shirley reveals that the flowers were in fact meant for her, Peggy tells Joan to send Shirley somewhere else, a nearly impossible job, for she cannot put black secretaries up front. A solution is found when Joan realizes she has two jobs — managing the office and managing her accounts. She then decides to moves upstairs to officially become an account woman and give Dawn her old office and the job of managing the secretary pool.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Alone Among the Couples: A floral sort; Peggy and Dawn are just a few women we see who don't get flowers for Valentine's Day. Joan's yellow roses (in contrasts to the secretaries' reds and pinks) are revealed to from her son (presumably ordered by her mother).
- Brutal Honesty: Discussed; Don relates how being honest about himself (during the Hershey pitch) got him suspended from work.
- Dysfunctional Family: The Drapers.
- Everybody Smokes: This was the 1960s, but these are teenagers and it is noteworthy they are all shown smoking.
- Flowers of Romance: Played for Drama with Peggy and Shirley.
- Half-Truth: Sally tells her father that she got out of school to go to a funeral, and lost her purse. She neglected the facet of the story where she did not go to the funeral but went shopping with her friends.
- Internal Reveal: Sally goes to SC&P and finds out that Don isn't working there anymore. By the end he's told her about the disastrous meeting that got him put on leave.
- Lies to Children: Don tells Sally that he was at work. She knows he's lying because she went to look for him at the office before going to his apartment.
- Never My Fault: Peggy appropriates the flowers her secretary Shirley got from her fiance, thinking they're from Ted, to Peggy. When she finally learns the truth she somehow makes it Shirley's fault for getting flowers in the first place. Also Lou, who criticises Dawn (and asks Joan to replace her) after Sally showed up and he had to deal with it after he'd sent Dawn out on an errand.Lou: It's not my problem. None of this has anything to do with me.
- Rebuilt Pedestal: A flabbergasted Don manages to pull this off with Sally.
- Shockingly Expensive Bill: Don decides that he and Sally should leave the diner without paying upon receiving the check.
- TV Teen: Aversion in that Sally is much more of a credible person than anyone who fits this trope. Though she stills fulfills it in her rebellion of sneaking away to go shopping and openly smoking with her friends.
- Took a Level in Badass: The usually meek Dawn tells Lou off for his attitude in general, pointing out that the reason why she wasn't at her desk when Sally turned up was because she was using her lunch break to buy his wife a present.
- Valentine's Day Episode: Set in Valentine's Day 1969, has a lot of roses and talk of presents with a several reds and pinks showing up in the costumes.
