'Mad Men': Requiem for a lush

Sunday's Mad Men opened everyone from secretaries to the elevator operator to Roger Sterling reacting to the death of Marilyn Monroe, but the real tragedy for the folks at Sterling Cooper (some of them, anyway) played out later in the episode.

The next round is on these spoilers.

Fred Rumsen hasn't been much more than a punchline for much of his time on the show -- hell, his drunkard's personality is right there in his name. But the story of his downfall illustrates the care with which Mad Men is made. Even the seemingly minor characters have complete personalities and lives, and to see Freddie get forced out of his livelihood, his identity, was fascinating and touching and sad and generally just wonderfully done.

For starters, let's raise a glass to Joel Murray, who played Freddie's resignation and sadness and confusion about being shown the door just about perfectly. Bill's little brother knocked it out of the park.

I also loved the way the episode contrasted Fred's issues, and those of other people at the office, with Betty Draper, who's apparently come unmoored since she told Don to stay away. Seeing Betty in a housecoat -- she owns a housecoat? -- self-medicating and just generally opting to check out of her life for most of the episode was startling. Here is a woman who we've almost never seen with a hair out of place, who even when she was shooting birds out the air or spilling to her therapist last season was always impeccably pulled together.

Whether she's still reacting to having her eyes opened to Don's cheating or at the prospect of having her the idea of her perfect suburban existence destroyed, I'm not completely sure (it's probably some of both). But she's clearly not the Betty we first met last season. Would that person even have considered setting up a possibly illicit liaison between her riding partners Sarah Beth and Arthur? Bringing another extramarital affair into the world doesn't really seem like the best way to deal with your own.

Don has basically given up trying to persuade her to let him come home, noting that if her mind is made up, he can't do much to change it ("I thought you could talk anyone into anything," she snaps back). At the office, though, he tries hard to convince Roger to spare Fred's job, to the point where Roger tells him his loyalty is starting to become a liability. He also takes the chorus to task for their merciless (though on-the-money) portrayals of the pre-client meeting loss of bodily control that leads to his firing in the first place, calling Paul, Ken and Co. a bunch of "teenage girls" who feed on the drama of others' lives.

So what do Don and Roger do to break the news to the guy with the drinking problem that he's being let go? Take him out and get him drunk, of course. The extended sequence with the three of them at dinner, and then in the underground casino, got steadily sadder as Freddie started to face the uncertain future ahead of him, capped by his resigned "Goodbye, Don" in response to Don wishing him a good night.

Peggy is equally upset at Freddie's firing -- as she reminds Pete (and us), Rumsen was the one who gave her the first shot at writing copy, and now she's taking over his job. She also understands better than her colleagues what it's like to be the person everyone talks about, and hates that she gets promoted (to a position that's at least equal to, if not above, that of Paul) under such circumstances. As Don notes, though, she can't pick the manner in which she rises; she just needs to own the fact that she's pretty good at what she does.

More notes from "Six Month Leave":

• And, oh yeah, Roger is leaving his wife for Jane, Don's soon-to-be former secretary. Wow. We learn from Mona Sterling that Roger took Don's assertion that "you have to move forward" in life a little too much to heart. Also: Jane? Really? Obviously there's been a lot more to her relationship with Roger than the brief moments we've seen, but I doubt I'm alone in thinking that Roger was either A) finally giving into his caddish nature or B) leaving Mona in a last-gasp effort to win Joan's affections once again. There was a good bit of misdirection at work here too, as throughout the epsiode Jane seemed to be trying to curry favor with Don with the cover story for Sally and the buying of new shirts and the concerned looks Don told her not to shoot his way. That, clearly, was not the case, which almost makes me wonder whether Roger wasn't feeding Jane some of these ideas.
• Speaking of those shirts: They came from Menken's, Rachel's department store. That was one of two oblique references to Rachel in the episode; at the casino entrance, Don tells the doorman he's "Tilden Katz" -- Rachel's husband's name.
• Jimmy Barrett was also at the casino, and Don clocks him one after seeing him. As several others note, Don is surely not the first to punch Jimmy in the face, but it was a rare loss of control from our man. "A real Archibald Whitman maneuver," he later describes it. And who's that? Roger asks. "A drunk I used to know."
• Did you notice the repeated shots of people stretched out on couches in the episode? Freddie and Betty wake up after passing out drunk, and Joan, Pete and Don have their quiet time interrupted when people barge into their offices (or, in Joan's case, when Roger comes back to his to find her seeking refuge and thinking about Marilyn).
• Marilyn Monroe died in early August 1962, which means we're about six months from where the season started. And the book Betty's reading is Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter, which was published that year.

Did Freddie's departure catch you off guard, and what do you make of Betty's meddling with her friend's life? Share your thought's on this week's Mad Men.

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