| "The Suitcase" | |||
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| Mad Men episode | |||
Don falls asleep in Peggy's lap. |
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| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 7 |
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| Directed by | Jennifer Getzinger | ||
| Written by | Matthew Weiner | ||
| Production code | 407 | ||
| Original air date | September 5, 2010 | ||
| Guest stars | |||
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Blake Bashoff |
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| Mad Men season 4 | |||
"The Suitcase" is the seventh episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Mad Men, and the 46th overall episode of the series. It aired on the AMC channel in the United States on September 5, 2010. The episode is almost entirely centered around the characters of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), and the relationship between the two. Critical reception of the episode was very positive, some declaring it the show's best episode. Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss submitted this episode for consideration for their nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor and Actress in a Drama Series, respectively, at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards.
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The episode focuses almost entirely on the characters of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss). A deadline is looming over a campaign for the suitcase manufacturer Samsonite. As the rest of the office leave to follow the May 25, 1965[1] Ali vs. Liston fight, Don makes Peggy stay behind to work on ideas. Don does not know that it is Peggy's birthday, and that she is planning a romantic dinner with her boyfriend Mark (Blake Bashoff). Mark has invited Peggy's family along as a surprise, and when she tells Don, he says she can go.
Peggy, however, is provoked by Mark's surprise, and decides to cancel the dinner and stay to work with Don. Peggy's mother is not happy about this, and Mark, equally annoyed, breaks up with her over the phone. As Peggy returns to Don's office, they have an argument over Peggy's contribution to the successful Glo-Coat campaign, and Don's lack of appreciation for her work. She storms off to cry in the bathroom. Later in the evening, Don calls her into his office to listen to a tape he has found from Roger Sterling's (John Slattery) memoirs. The two laugh over the intimate revelations about their co-workers, and go out for a meal. Over dinner, and later drinks, the two share personal information. Peggy says that people make jokes about an alleged relationship between the two, and that her mother believes he was the father of her baby owing to Don's visit to her while she was in the mental hospital shortly after the child was born. This is the first discussion they have had regarding her baby. Don asks, "Do you know who it was?" Peggy replies, "Of course." Peggy does not tell Don that Pete Campbell was the father and also does not mention what happened to the baby.
Back at the office, Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) shows up, after earlier having tried to recruit Peggy for a new venture. He is drunk, and wants to defecate on Don's chair. Peggy runs in, finding Duck with his pants down and squatting over the chair, and tells Duck that he's actually in Roger's office. Peggy leads Duck out and Don is shocked to see him in the office. Duck tells a shocked Don that they were "in love." Duck ends up in a fight with Don, who is equally drunk. Duck, older than Don, learned fighting skills while fighting the Japanese in World War II, and overpowers Don. Peggy gets rid of Duck, and as Don asks for another drink, she asks him "how long [he is] intending to go on like this." An embarrassed Peggy admits to Don that she had an affair with Duck because it was a "confusing time for her." Don has to make a call to his friend Anna Draper (Melinda Page Hamilton), who is dying from cancer. Before he can make the call, however, he falls asleep in Peggy's lap. In his dream he sees a vision of Anna with a suitcase, and when he finds out she is dead the next morning, it is no surprise to him. After a phone call to confirm the bad news, Don breaks down sobbing in front of Peggy. She tries to comfort him when he tells her what happened. Don tells Peggy to go home and rest and to come in later. Peggy, worried about Don, instead goes into her office next to Don's, to stay "close to him." Later that morning, Don has developed an idea for the suitcase campaign based on the Ali vs. Liston knock-out photo. Peggy does not like Don's idea, and Don is annoyed. Peggy realizes that Don's friend has just died and they are both just coming off an extremely emotionally draining night, and she instead says, "it is good." Don takes her hand in his hand for a moment, and the two exchange caring looks before she leaves.
The Ali vs. Liston bout was a rematch of a February 1964 fight (at which point Muhammad Ali was still called Cassius Clay). The fight is noted for Ali's so-called "phantom punch", that knocked out Sonny Liston, as well as for a photo of Ali standing over a fallen Liston, one of the most famous photos in sports history. There were speculations at the time that Liston took a fall on orders from the Mafia.[2] Another sports reference in the episode is found in Peggy's original pitch for the Samsonite ad, featuring football player Joe Namath. Namath, a burgeoning player at the time, would later become a highly sought-after product endorser.[3]
The episode also gave the answer to a mystery from a previous episode: Roger Sterling's reference to a Dr. Lyle Evans. The name caused much speculation among reviewers, and a spike in Google searches for the name.[4] Rather than a real-life person, Dr. Evans turned out to be a doctor who once performed an unnecessary orchiectomy on Bert Cooper.[3] The episode ends with the song "Bleecker Street" from Simon & Garfunkel's 1964 album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M..[5]
Toril Moi, contributing to The Wall Street Journal's "Mad Men Conversation", called the episode "deeply compelling". She highlighted two central lines of dialog: Don's "People do things" as an argument against judgment, and Peggy's "That's not true" as a response to Don's claim that he had lost the only person who knew him.[6] Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly called the episode "a knock-out", and commented on the "remarkable intimacy" of the scenes between Don and Peggy.[7] The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, after some initial deliberation, concluded that it was "a great episode". He pointed out how it made him care about the fates of both Peggy and Don in a way he had not for a long time.[8]
Jennifer Smith at CNN found some of the scenes in the episode among "the most powerful of the entire series". She implied that the performances of both Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss were Emmy material.[9] William Bradley, reviewing the episode for The Huffington Post, also mentioned the Emmy Awards. He called Hamm's performance "fantastic", believing it was "time for him to win the Emmy as best actor". Moss he found "even more of a revelation...as a young woman coming of age".[2] Entertainment Weekly's Karen Valby called it her "favorite Mad Men episode of all time", highlighting the performances of the two main actors.[10]