Talking ‘Mad Men’: A Merger, and the Show Rights Itself

Every Monday morning, Logan Hill and Sloane Crosley have been offering their post-”Mad Men” analysis. Ms. Crosley is traveling, but read on for Mr. Hill’s take and then in the comments tell us what you think about Don’s rash decision, Joan’s outburst, Pete’s pratfall and Peggy’s predicament.

I’ve been a grump about “Mad Men” lately, but this week, the show was at its very best.

The latest episodes have been rolling out in the middle of the NBA playoffs, and, as a fan of both basketball and quality prestige television, I’ve had a hard time separating the two. This season, “Mad Men,” filmed in Los Angeles, has often felt like the Lakers: A storied franchise, stocked with great players (Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, Vincent Kartheiser, Christina Hendricks) and led by a world-class coach (Matthew Weiner), the team was floundering without direction and a wonky game plan that just wasn’t working. Resting on its laurels, the show seemed to overvalue historical footnotes and period-perfect art-direction instead of risky, actor-driven drama.

Last week, “Mad Men” bottomed out. The King assassination episode devolved into a “We Didn’t Start the Fire” grab bag of references to everything from Marx to the Second Avenue subway, the gentrification of the Upper West and Upper East Sides, Paul Newman, Tecumseh, Eugene McCarthy and “The Planet of the Apes.” That poorly directed, diffuse episode made mere montage of tragedy and boiled over into a “Lord of the Rings”-style series of portentous endings and loose ends. We got too much of everything but what the show does best: American business.

This week’s beautifully written episode plays to the show’s strengths â€" the actors â€" and the business of advertising. Suddenly, its lead performers seem to know why they’re on-screen.

Roger practically bounds off the bench, ready for action, and he has rarely been better: The aging, insecure accounts man beds a stewardess to mine her for information (even using his dead mother as a come-on) and it works. In the first-class lounge, he scores an audition with Chevy, rubs it in Pete’s outraged face, and turns the firm on its nose. “Good idea,” says the Chevy man. “I’m full of them,” says a water-sipping Roger. And he’s right. Much of this season has been moribund, but Roger shakes it awake.

Don, meanwhile, is a powerful jerk again and the show is better for it. When he hands Herb, the Jaguar man, a business card and tells him it’s “the name of the guy who’s going to be handling your account from now on,” it’s thrillingly brutal. It’s no wonder that Don seduces Megan when he goes home, because, as Pete says, it’s never been about the money for Don. It’s always been about power, about momentum. For six seasons, Don’s animating force has been mojo â€" that commingling sense of amassing power â€" and this is the first episode this season that shows him grappling with it. Even when Joan calls him out for his narcissism, Don pushes right back, focused on his push for power â€" right or wrong â€" because that’s what has motivated him for six seasons. This week, when he’s wrong it feels so right.

Pete sees his father-in-law at a Manhattan whorehouse with the “biggest, blackest prostitute you’ve ever seen” (Sketchy Bob from the agency offers to pay for Pete’s assignation. What is he, some corporate spy? Some government mole?). Pete also complains to Trudy, who won’t sleep with him, that he doesn’t understand why she maintains “every other aspect of this marriage except the one that matters.” He pratfalls down the stairs, loses his account, is degraded by his hypocritical father-in-law, and is otherwise unmasked as the sputtering impotent cretin we know and somehow love to hate. Forget Bizarro Pete taking offense at Harry’s racism for unclear familial reasons: The old nasty Pete is back.

Meanwhile, Peggy rushes into the future, moving into her new apartment on the horrific Upper West Side, negotiating with Abe, kissing her boss, and fantasizing about making out with her boss while kissing Abe. The primary dramatic struggle of Season 6 has been that Peggy was pushed offstage at the end of Season 5. When the show’s most sympathetic character left Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, it felt like the oxygen was sucked out of the building. So who cares that this newly merged company, made up of Peggy’s old and new agencies, is tackling an ugly car (the Chevy Nova)? Thanks to the merger, the show’s most vital character is suddenly thrust into the center of a work-love triangle.

The first batch of episodes has felt like a Cliff’s Notes for the era. This episode is still mirroring the times; it’s just not explaining its metaphors every two minutes in overt dialogue. And it gave fans plenty to love: Pete’s spill down the stairs, Joan’s outrageous dresses, Megan in Cleopatra regalia, actual pleasurable sex, Abe’s anachronistic musculature (Dude looks positively CrossFit), and the return of Trudy’s insane nightwear. Surely, this all could have been accomplished much sooner, but now this uneven season seems like it might be righted: Coach Weiner has thrown the rock to his bigs â€" Roger, Don, Pete, and Peggy â€" in an episode that reminds us that this series (which has never been terribly brilliant about civil rights or the Vietnam war) is often a thrilling, hilarious document of how American creative business got big, and at what cost.

“This business is rigged,” Don laments at the bar. Yes, it is. But how? That is the show’s sick thrill.

Logan Hill is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, New York, GQ, Rolling Stone, Wired and others.