Mad Man Season 4, Episode 8: It ain't easy being a working girl

Yeah, Don is cleaning up, Betty gets called out for being a child, there's stuff there, but I want to mostly talk about Peggy and Joan.

Joan's line, that now Peggy has made Joan just a meaningless secretary and Peggy seem like a humorless bitch, were pretty much the only options seemingly for women in the workplace.  You could be non-threatening and cajole and use the fact that you are a woman to wheedle things out of men or scold them like children, and Joan has this perfected; the problem is, at the end of the day, she doesn't have any real power.  She can't fire Joey for sexual harassment (Note: FUCK YOU, JOEY.  That "walking around like you're trying to get raped," comment makes me hope that right after you left the office with your things you got run over by a bus), and she can't control him, because that's the thing - any guy can always cut a woman down just for being female.  Joan can never really get the upper-hand, because some asshole can always just tape a drawing to her window to remind her of her place.  As a woman, you are ONE COMMENT AWAY from being cut down, from being made smaller, lesser than, powerless. 

Joan's comment to Peggy was because she was mad.  She has every right to be - she can't make the sexual harassment stop.  But it was unfair, what she said to Peggy, because there was no win there - if Don had fired Joey, then it would have been a man defending a lady's character and preciousness, and that would have been business as usual.  Joan's comment that Peggy fired Joey for herself is true, but not something bad - every woman who has to be in an atmosphere of sexual harassment, whether it is directed at them or not, is unsafe, and devalued.  But Peggy DOES value Joan, and I hope at some point Joan sees that.  Joan has never been one for sisterhood, but Peggy has. I wonder what will happen between them later - will Joan get over her jealousy?  As the feminist movement grows, will she be able to join?  I wonder.

Peggy is still awesome.  I love that Don tells her to just go fire Joey - she hesitates for a moment, realizing she has real power, and then she embraces it.  Also, when she is watching the dudes fuck with the vending machine, her comment, "I feel like Margaret Mead," made me laugh SO HARD.  But with Joey being gone - I mean, the art guy knows Peggy is not a humorless bitch and a prude - she's already shown him up.  And now that the guys know who is pulling the strings and that there is no culture of impunity, I am hoping they shape up.  That homosocial environment where guys try to see who can be the most childish and misogynist as a "joke" is a really sick, stuck place for everyone, and neither Peggy nor Joan have to put up with it anymore.

And apropos of nothing, I want Peggy's navy and red dress, the end.

Ok, guys, thoughts?  About Betty and how she can only interact with Don if she can feel smug and superior to him?  And the fact she is such a child?  And I really enjoyed watching Don on that date with the woman at the office whose name I forget, but that was nice, right?  And Don actually knowing enough about himself to onyl take her to her door, because that's as far as he could go?  And his attempting to quit drinking, with ALL THOSE SHOTS of alcohol all episode?

Have at it - what did you think?