*SPOILERS TO FOLLOW*
The imagery of Mad Men often walks a fine line between poetic and on-the-nose. But for an episode that opens and closes with Don in a foetal position, this one manages to stay just on the right side of pretentious. Todd VanDerWerff has a wonderfully in-depth analysis of all the Freudian underpinnings of this episode, so I’m just going to look at the episode on a more superficial level.
*SPOILERS* (All my reviews have spoilers but these are more potent)
I feel like I enjoyed this episode a lot less than most of Mad Men fandom. Some people have compared it (with knowing exaggeration) to the Games of Thrones’s Red Wedding in terms of the shocks it delivers, but for the most part the episode didn’t really hit me on an emotional level. The episode felt disjointed and lacked the seamless integration of plot lines that memorable Mad Men episodes share. The episode had no streamline momentum; each storyline peaked at different points, some ended there, some puttered on and in the meantime Peggy has a dead rat in her apartment.
I Likes What I Likes 