‘Mad Men’: This magic moment

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This episode, dare I say, was blessed, magical, sent from the stars. I’m almost reluctant to blog about it in case I jinx the start of a winning streak. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re probably thinking that something big happened. It didn’t, but that’s OK. Sometimes the best TV is delivered in moments -- big, clever, imaginative moments. Funny, dark, odd moments. So yeah, as far as plot stuff goes, last night was no big deal, but as far as style, scene and character development? It was a beauty to behold.

Let’s talk about it moment by moment, shall we?

The grocery store slap: Repression and infantilization make a woman do nutty things, like slap her neighbor in the grocery store. Helen, the red-headed divorcee, confronts Betty in the produce section (where else?) about indulging her son’s request to snip off a lock of Betty’s hair. “What is wrong with you?” Helen asks, and Betty panics and stage-slaps her. After all, talking it out isn’t an option. That would require Betty to handle some messy, weird emotions. After the slap, Betty goes home and sulks with a glass of red wine, which is certainly offering better therapy these days than that spy-psychiatrist.

Who can blame Betty for splitting at the seams? Her week was hard. Draper invited Roger, pictured, over for dinner, and while Draper was in the garage looking for more booze Roger gets handsy with Betty, who admittedly enjoys the attention. Hasn’t she been trained to provide men with this kind of joy? Aren’t her beauty and youth supposed to be like a Macy’s window display, especially designed to elicit oohs and ahs? She tells her friend, the nosy one who comes to get the scoop on the grocery store slap, that as long as men keep looking at her that way, “I’m earning my keep.” But here’s the rub, Betty. You’re supposed to look beautiful and young for as long as you can hold your breath, but you can’t respond back, you can’t obviously enjoy the attention because then it’s your fault when the husband’s boss gets fresh. Then you asked for it.

The oysters: Not so fast, Roger. Betty’s not the only one who has to pay for that moment in the kitchen when you groped her waist and marveled at how she’s kept her figure. Draper may not seem like he’s holding a grudge, but make no mistake -- he was only waiting for the right opportunity. After lunching on a dizzying amount of mollusks and martinis, Roger and Draper are confronted with a broken elevator, a can’t-miss meeting with Nixon campaign brains and the cruel reality of crawling up some 20 flights of stairs. And Draper, in a tough, jokey but still macho way, gets his revenge. He pushes Roger to take the stairs at the same pace, despite having a good 20 years on the silver-haired coot. And my heavens, I just figured it out, with the help of my buddy Sean, that Draper paid off the elevator boy to say it was broken. Whoa, devious!

Here’s where those old-time lunches bite you in the ass -– had Roger had a turkey wrap and a bottle of water, he wouldn’t have found himself puking on the shoes of the GOP. Oh, but how splendid that he did. It was oyster puke, people, but it sent me over the moon. It was so awful. So perfect.

Pete’s dinner confession: Whereas Draper and Roger, for better or worse, have their identities as men figured out, Pete doesn’t know what to do with his masculinity. Where’s the line between being a good husband and a sissy minion for your wife? Standing in line to return a wedding gift is apparently an emasculating thing. The old hens in line just think you’re cute; the cute counter girl writes you off as some other woman’s wimpy foot soldier. So you get yourself a gun, only to get chewed out by your wife.

Pete and Peggy are lost souls together in the world of “Mad Men.” They are awkward, confused and sensitive. So of course she’s the perfect audience to not only take Pete seriously when he’s confessing to some primitivist fantasy about a time when men were men and women were women (even more so than in 1960), but to actually get rattled by it. Whereas the rest of us thought his wish to hunt and be served a hunk of meat sounded like a bad Ernest Hemingway story, Peggy was sold, lock, stock and barrel. She flitted out of Pete’s office, all heaving breath and quickened pulse. Only a cherry danish could calm her down.

“Mad Men” has seven more episodes to dazzle us with big, swooshing plot developments, and I have no doubt that the show’s creators will try their hardest, but I hope they don’t lose focus on these moments rich with emotional nuance, where seemingly “nothing” happens. It’s all in the details -– Betty’s abandoned cart, Roger fibbing about his lost tie clip. It’s the little things. We know your set decorator gets it, but now it seems like the writers do too.

-- Margaret Wappler