Mad Men - Recap: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

This is the case for no other character more than Don Draper (Jon Hamm), whose identity itself is a fabrication. And now, he's falsifying his way of life, pretending to still be living the way he's always lived in order to keep up appearances. It's telling that he spends all day eating Ritz crackers, watching Little Rascals, reading magazines, and strategically marking lines on bottles of liquor to conserve what little he has left. This is a Don without purpose. Sure, he gets interest from an ad agency this week, and it's even clear that he's still a valuable commodity to agencies in the world of advertising. But this doesn't feel like the same Don to which we might be accustomed.

While it isn't new for Don to be putting on a facade, there's something kind of sad about him putting on a suit merely for the two-minute visit from Dawn, who brings by materials and offers her own report on what's happening around the office at Sterling Cooper & Partners. It's like a kid dropping off a sick classmate's homework and telling them about some crazy thing they missed during recess. All the stories in the world don't compare to actually being there, in the thick of it. He knows this, but he also knows that appearances are everything -- not just to clients, but to loved ones. And so he lies to Sally (Kiernan Shipka) about his employment status. Yet putting on a suit and talking about having been at "the office" can only sell a lie so much. "A Day's Work" is an episode about the corrosive nature of lies, and the ways in which the damage of dishonesty can be both undone, and made worse, by the truth.

Credit: AMC

This feels like a far more literary season than in years past, as each episode seems to occupy a particular thematic context. It would be easy to just write an episode about dishonesty and leave it at that, but there's a certain kind of poetry to how Don suddenly finds that Sally is basically the only woman in his life with whom he can be honest. It's a realization that comes after a bit of a journey: basically, while out with her friends on Valentine's Day, Sally loses her purse and decides to track down her father at the SC&P offices...only to discover that he's no longer working there. And so she waits for Don back at his apartment. Yet when he returns, having taken a business meeting with a rival ad agency, he lies to Sally about where he's been, claiming to have been at the office the entire time. Fed up with dishonesty and finding it peculiarly sad to have caught him in this lie, she tells him to "just write the truth" when he asks what he should put in his note to get her out of trouble for having missed her train. This is in stark contrast to the ad execs with whom Don just had lunch, men who note the rumors surrounding Don's departure from SC&P and state they don't care what the truth of the matter is.

It's one of many telling phrases in the episode, although none is more poignant than Sally's matter-of-fact declaration to her father: “It’s more embarrassing to catch you in a lie than it is to watch you lie.” It's like a weird reversal of the epiphany she has about her father in the Season 6 finale, where his honesty about where he came from prompted her to see him in an entirely new light. Here, Don comes clean about his troubles at work, and even answers Sally honestly when she asks if he even still loves Megan (he does, apparently). When he drops her off at home and she plainly states "Happy Valentine's Day. I love you," it feels earned. By treating his daughter with the respect that honesty confers, Sally responds by accepting her father even with all his personal troubles, letting him know that nothing has changed between them. It's a solid storyline that both Hamm and Shipka deliver exceedingly well.

Credit: AMC

However, while I generally found all the dishonesty-based storylines compelling, they couldn't all be as poignant as Don and Sally's. In one of the weirder subplots in some time, Peggy's secretary, Shirley, receives flowers for Valentine's Day. Walking past Shirley's desk, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) sees the vase and assumes the flowers are for her. Moreover, she assumes they're from Ted (Kevin Rahm), and while it's played for laughs, I think there's a certain sadness to how Peggy clings to a worldview that has her at the center. Whether it's flowers or what she perceives as her team's lack of creativity (as in last week's premiere), everything has to be about Peggy, in her mind. And such is the case here, as she sends coded messages to Ted through a secretary in which she tries to convey that his little plan to win her back won't work. Of course, it's clear she's secretly pleased with the flowers, which is why it becomes more and more difficult for Shirley to come clean with Peggy. However, Shirley ultimately has no other choice once Peggy decides she needs to throw the flowers away for being "cursed". Shirley confesses they're from her fiance, and a crestfallen Peggy gets tearfully enraged, arguing that if she'd have just come clean, she would have understood. “You have a ring on,” Peggy declares. “We all know you’re engaged. You did NOT have to embarrass me. Grow up.” She storms off, leaving Shirley to feel guilty, since lies of omission are condemned in equal measure this week as outright dishonesty. Elisabeth Moss is tremendous with what basically amounts to an off-color romantic comedy subplot, and it goes a long way in furthering the narrative of just how lonely Peggy has become.

Credit: AMC

The rest of the episode is mostly good, although some elements were more interesting than others. I love Joan (Christina Hendricks), but I felt her story -- in which she's swamped by responsibilities, namely moving various secretaries around the office because of how much they annoy their superiors -- to be a bit of a retread from last week. Although I guess Bert Cooper's (Robert Morse) casual racism makes for some strangely amusing moments ("I’m all for the national advancement of colored people, but I don’t believe people should advance all the way to the front!"). And it all leads to Joan getting a promotion from Jim Cutler (Harry Hamlin), who is apparently the real power in the office now, even more so than Roger (John Slattery). It's something Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) quickly finds out when, during a conference call, Cutler declares that he will not be managing the account he worked so hard on getting for the agency. This brings back some more classic Pete resentment, as he proposes starting an ad agency with Ted, only to determine that Ted is too feckless to actually be of any real use. The only real comfort he gets is from real estate agent Bonnie, who provides a match for him in the ambition department. She's career-oriented in the same way Pete is, although it's hard to know at this point if she carries the same sort of baggage caused by years of being passed over. Either way, I like the character, and I like her potential in having a real effect on Pete.

Credit: AMC

"A Day's Work" is an episode that is as solid as they come, owing to a theme that's basically universal: whether big or small deceptions, everyone lies. But people are defined not only by how they respond to dishonesty, but to how they decide to make amends for it when they're the ones being dishonest. Mad Men is a show with characters for whom dishonesty is a way of life, yet it seems that here, in the first half of its final season, that might really be changing.