We had not expected that a tourniquet would ever be required in an episode of Mad Men — much less in the offices of Sterling Cooper. We ought to have seen it coming, we confess, when Ken Cosgrove drove the John Deere lawnmower through reception. But we didn’t, and neither did Guy McKendrick, the ghastly sack of glittering prizes who is not destined, in the end, to captain the parent firm.

Two things about the show: the horribleness of Brits and you’ll miss me when I’m gone. These themes are too intertwined to deal with separately.

When St John what’s-his-name (wake up, IMDb!) and Harold Ford present Lane with the stuffed cobra and tell him that he’s going to be transfered to Bombay, it’s as though The Jewel in the Crown has taken over the episode, and not because Bombay is in India. “Don’t pout,” says Harold (I think). “You’re best quality is that you always do as you’re told.” Lane struggles to drink the hemlock manfully, and he almost pulls it off. And we root for him! As does everyone at Sterling Cooper, now that they know what’s next. “They just reorganized us, and you’re the only one who got a promotion” — or words to that effect — says Campbell to Crane.

But then, at the “fête” — McKendrick’s word, never to be used by him again, one expects — some jackass fires up the John Deere and, the next thing you know, one of the secretaries has collided with Guy’s foot. How, we don’t see, and, frankly, I couldn’t imagine what happened. It is clearly arterial, though, as Crane and his colleagues are splattered with blood, which doesn’t happen when someone runs over your foot (does it?). Joan, as the wife of a passed-over resident who lacks “brains in his fingers,” saves the man’s life by calling for a tourniquet. But McKendrick does lose his foot, even if it’s for the greater glory of Roger Sterling’s deliciously inappropriate joke. More Brit horribleness: “He’ll never play golf again.” Ergo, McKendrick’s career is over, which even Don Draper doesn’t see right away.

Speaking of manfully, Don’s interview with Conrad Hilton is everything that’s useful about macho and nothing that’s bad. Don is not cowed by the great hotelier, but he’s not a jerk, either. The two men may have bonded in a country-club bar while playing hookey from two boring parties, but that doesn’t mean that Don is going to do free work for Connie. (By the way, was I the only one who was reminded of The Best of Everything by that jump-over-the-bar scene?

In the hospital waiting room, Lane buys Don a soda — imagine! Lane is going to stay on as liaison/boss after all, but we can tell that this is a good thing, if only on a devil-you-know footing. The crisis of the Londoners’ visitation and its bloody upshot have metamorphosed the pre-existing relationships. Lane, who says that he has been reading Twain’s Tom Sawyer stories, might well readjust his priorities in the wake of the stuffed cobra.

As for Joan, who thought that she was retiring, but who has been told by her husband that she needs to keep her job, or to find another one, everyone who has been watching the show since its launch is going to be glued to the set next Sunday night, dying to see if and how Joan swings a Sterling Cooper comeback. Meanwhile, there’s the slight problem that, while nobody at Sterling Cooper likes Roger Sterling anymore, viewers have never been crazier about him. I tip my hat to the first male to pull of the Joan Collins thing.

I cannot believe that I’ve been reduced by the excitement of Guy McKendrick’s limb loss to scribbling this breathless storytelling.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Mad Men. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.