The Crash (Mad Men)

"The Crash" follows events in three different settings: Don and the rest of the agency at the office over the weekend, a younger Don during the Depression era, and the Draper children (mostly at Don's apartment).

Ken Cosgrove gets into a car crash with drunken Chevrolet executives. When the agency is informed of yet another unsuccessful Chevrolet pitch, Don says the team will have to work over the weekend. Sylvia then calls Don, briefly pretending to be her husband in order to scare Don and make him think Arnold has learned about their affair. She chastises Don for loitering outside her apartment and leaving cigarette butts, rousing Arnold's suspicions. She begs Don to stop pursuing her and expresses fear of his obsessive behavior. Don tries to reassure her but fails. She hangs up. He throws the phone in anger. Don then comes down with a strong cough, after which a flashback begins. A young Don, living in a brothel, is coughing at the dinner table with a fever. His stepmother Abigail tells him to sleep in the cellar.

Back at the agency, the death of Frank Gleason is mourned. The agency is informed of an energy serum available upstairs that is purported to result in one to three days of "uninterrupted creative focus, energy, and confidence" for those taking it. Don walks in for a dose and exits to find members of the creative team acting highly informally. As Don begins to cough walking downstairs, a flashback begins of young Don going to the cellar but being invited into another room by Aimée, one of the prostitutes living in the house.

At the agency, Don pauses while watching Peggy comfort a bereaved Ted before the stimulant suddenly takes effect. That evening, Don rummages through a magazine pile and asks for Ken. He tells Ken he is confident he can create a winning Chevy ad campaign but needs to see the executives in person to present the work. Ken begins tap dancing during their manic conversation. Don then visits the creative team and gives them an impromptu motivational speech, with Peggy calling his words inspiring but asking for an actual idea.

When walking back to his office, Don is reminded of his past once more. In bed, a young Don is served soup by Aimée. This instantly gives Don an ad idea. Upon visiting the creative team again on Saturday, he is introduced to Wendy, the daughter of the deceased Frank. Don tells Peggy to look in the 1950s archives for a Sterling Cooper account about soup. Don goes back to his office and finds Wendy, who says she is there "to make [him] feel better". He tells her he is busy. She nonetheless walks up to him, gently puts a stethoscope to his heart, and says it's broken. Don at first thinks she means his heart, but she tells him it's the stethoscope itself. He tells her to leave.

Don calls Megan to inform her he will have to work longer. She is angered, having to leave. Sally is told to babysit the children. Meanwhile, Stan is injured in a target-throwing game played by the creative team, and Peggy carries him off. Don arrives at Sylvia's apartment, leans against the door and hears only a song playing, with lyrics including: "I must think of a way into your heart." Back at the office, Stan kisses Peggy but is turned down. When he tells her that his cousin Robbie was killed in action, Peggy advises Stan that "you have to let yourself feel [grief]" and that it cannot be dampened with other things. She suggests he go home, but thanks him politely when he makes a sexually suggestive compliment.

Sally hears noises in the apartment and finds a black woman has entered the living room, claiming to have raised her father and to be named "Ida". Sally remains somewhat skeptical, but the woman pressures her into sitting down to eat some eggs, and begins acquainting herself with Sally. Don meanwhile manages to find the soup commercial in the archives. It depicts a boy being served soup by a woman, with the caption, "Because you know what he needs." In a continuation of the flashback, young Don has recovered from his cough. Aimée admits her real name is "Amy," then seduces him with the assurance: "I'll do everything." Don, uncomfortable and looking frightened, acquiesces.

Back at the apartment, Ida and Sally are in conversation, with the latter continuing to ask questions. Ida introduces herself to Bobbie and asks about a gold watch of Don's that she says she wants to fix. Sally calls the police once Ida leaves the room to look, believing still that the latter is a con woman. Ida enters the room, grabs the phone from Sally, and convinces the police that Sally is simply performing a prank call. She then warns the children to go to sleep.

At the agency, when Peggy and Michael arrive at Don's office, Don says he has an idea. Peggy is frustrated by his inability to articulate it and realizes that Don is focused on something other than Chevy. Don leaves. Peggy finds Jim surreptitiously watching Wendy and Stan in flagrante in another room. Annoyed, Peggy goes home. Don goes to his own apartment, talking manically to himself and trying to plan a way to talk to Sylvia and win her over. He finds Megan, Betty, Henry, and the children in the living room with the police. Betty scolds Don, who then remembers having left the back door open, for what has occurred. Don then faints. In a final flashback to his past, Amy is kicked out of the house, and Don is viciously beaten by Abigail when she learns that Amy had "taken [his] cherry."

Don later wakes up in his apartment, and Megan apologizes for the earlier events. Don and Sylvia later run into each other on the elevator; both say practically nothing. Don calls Sally at work to tell her he's okay, and assures her that he's "sure she's fooled plenty of adults too." Sally says that she's embarrassed and that she realizes that she knows nothing about him. He asks her to forget about the earlier events, admits that he had left the apartment door unlocked, and takes the blame himself. Don visits Ted and Jim. Ted is greatly disappointed in the results of the past 72 hours, noting that Chevy was even spelled wrong in the resulting work. Don refuses to create further work for Chevy, saying he will only evaluate the other creatives' work. When Ted protests, he replies, "Every time we get a car, this place turns into a whorehouse." Ted and Jim watch Don silently and blankly as he goes back to his office and shuts the door.

Kevin Rahm, who plays Ted Chaough, notes that Gleason's death has a strong impact on his character, as the former was "the guy that he could bitch to, and that he could yell at and with, and he was his rock". Weiner, the show's creator, said that such serums as the agency was injected with were well known in the 1960s and that the substances heightens one's sense of time's passage. He also discusses the theme in the episode of sex as escape from trauma.[1]

• "The Crash" at AMC
• "The Crash" at IMDb