In Sunday's episode of Mad Men, titled “Lost Horizon,” women’s issues — including sexism in the workplace — were front and center as Joan and Peggy made the move from SC&P to McCann.

Peggy, one of SC&P’s most prodigious talents, is assumed to be a secretary during the transition — and because of that, McCann doesn’t have an office ready for her, forcing Peggy to conduct whatever business she can from the gutted SC&P offices haunted by ghosts of business past (and Roger playing an organ because, well, why not?).

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A scene from Episode 12 of "Mad Men."

Not that Peggy is missing out on much.

Joan arrives at McCann and female copywriters bounce into her office to introduce themselves — at face value, it seems McCann is not only open to female employees, but embraces them. The accounts are progressive in women’s issues, and the ladies leading the copywriting efforts are passionate. Joan glows as her assumptions about McCann being a hostile environment for women are — temporarily — soothed.

But that Zen lasts for all of a few hours, as Joan has to interact with disrespectful male colleagues, and engage with Ferg, who treats Joan’s accounts as a fun form of dress-up (and who subtly comes on to Joan with ideas of an out-of-town “business” trip). “We can’t lose those accounts!” Ferg says to Joan, assuring her that her run-ins with goon-guy employees will be smoothed over. If they did lose them, “what would you do around here?” Ferg says with a smile that does little to mask his insane (and wholly unacknowledged) misogyny.

A scene from Episode 12 of "Mad Men."

Meanwhile, Betty has made good on her promises to study psychology, and is reading Freud’s Dora case study when Don stops by. Dora was believed to suffer from “hysteria” following a sexual incident as a teenager. Dora’s most prominent symptom of her hysteria was loss of voice; what’s more, the case study was criticized heavily by feminists in later years. (Betty, for what it’s worth, seemed bored to tears by the text itself.)

As Betty reads about a female lacking a voice, Joan meets with McCann exec Hobart in the hopes of giving women one. Joan states that she does not want to work with Ferg, and within moments, her conversation with Hobart has spiraled into him growling that he doesn’t care about her SC&P partner status, and doesn’t care about her at the firm in general. Joan does not hesitate to play hardball, threatening to bring the ACLU into the McCann lobby and give a platform to any woman in the McCann office who feels discriminated against. Joan refuses to negotiate with Hobart through and through.

Unfortunately, Hobart gets in Roger’s ear, and Roger eventually encourages Joan to take Hobart’s offering of half her partnership money to jump ship from McCann. This, per Roger, is a safer bet than staying at McCann and getting nothing. Joan is upset and reluctantly takes the deal and agrees to leave McCann.

But she takes her Rolodex — and her savvy business connections — with her, too.

Here Comes the Lost Horizon

A scene from Episode 12 of "Mad Men." Image: AMC

During the first half of Mad Men’s final season, Don watches 1937’s “Lost Horizon” while visiting Megan in Los Angeles. The film follows a man who is aboard a plane that crashes in the mountains and reveals Shangri-la — a utopia of sorts, where near immortality is possible.

Don finds himself distracted during a McCann pitch meeting with Miller Beer. As the sterile presentation drones on, a McCann employee asks the room, “How do you get [a man] to open his mind” to a different brand? Don stares out the window, enraptured by a distant plane flying across the New York skyline. “Better have something more ... Or in this case, less.” With that, Don leaves the meeting without saying a word.

What follows is a Draper journey of misleads, craving and wandering. Don embarks on a spontaneous road trip at night — and at first, it looks as if he’s going to Pennsylvania, his home state, his impoverished roots. But during Don’s night drive, Bert Cooper appears in the passenger seat, a figment of Don’s exhausted imagination. As it turns out, Don isn’t heading back to his original home — he’s instead making the drive to Racine, Wisconsin to visit Diana. “You shouldn’t do that,” Bert says, a projection of Don’s subconscious. “You like to play the stranger.”

Don arrives at Diana’s home only to realize this is not Diana’s home anymore — its residents are Diana’s ex-husband, Diana’s daughter, and her ex’s new wife. The ex-husband is none too pleased to see Don, who poses first as McCann employee Bill Phillips and then as a collection agent. All the ex-husband does is hiss that Diana is in New York City. “You think you’re the first one that came looking for her?” the ex says to Don in private before he leaves, calling Don out on his charade. “She’s a tornado, just leaving a trail of broken bodies behind her.” Diana is, truly, a female version of Don Draper.

His journey to find Diana a bust, Don drives the open road back home ... Until he offers a ride to a grimy, young hitchhiker. The hitchhiker is headed toward St. Paul, Minnesota, and Don agrees to give him a ride. Don says the destination is not out of his way and hits the road — even though St. Paul is in the exact opposite direction of New York City and his entire personal and professional world.

Notes:

Don presses against his new office’s window panes at McCann, testing their strength — cool, skyscraper air is leaking in. No doubt this will stir theories that Don may jump to his death by series end, but it also could simply point to Don’s professional life not being as airtight from the real world as he’d like it to be.

As he welcomes Don into the McCann offices, Hobart refers to Don lovingly as his “white whale,” a “Moby-Dick” reference, following a decade-long attempt to poach Don from SC&P — however, seeking the white whale is understood to be a quest of revenge. The white whale is mysterious, to be sought after, but also to be killed. By the end of “Lost Horizon,” Hobart is convinced he’s received a “rotten apple” with the SC&P employees, and wonders if Don is off on a “bender.”

Peggy spills coffee in the gutted SC&P offices and ends up simply walking away from the mess, not bothering to clean it up. The moment, thought, bears shades to one of Don’s flings spilling red wine on his plush white carpet, and Don covering up the mess instead of dealing with it.

Roger gives Peggy a gift of sorts that hails from Bert Cooper’s office possessions — a painting of an “octopus pleasuring a lady,” per Roger’s description. Peggy at first refuses to take the bizarre, crass painting with her, citing concerns over men not taking her seriously. But, when Peggy finally does arrive at the McCann offices, it is the cool-Peggy moment we’ve all been waiting for: vaguely drunk, sunglasses on, cigarette hanging from mouth, male McCann employees turning heads, Peggy walks into her new company like she owns the place ... octopus pleasure painting in hand.

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