When an episode has me laughing from the moment its title is announced – just in case you don’t get it, it’s a wicked play on Dick Wolf, the creator of Law and Order, which the episode satirizes – that’s a pretty good sign that I’ll be down for all of it. Add Troy and Abed playing dress-up, and you’ve got me another step along the way. Throw in the return of Magnitude and we might as well slap an “A” on this thing and call it a day so I can get to bed before midnight.
First, we’ll imagine a hypothetical viewer who, in some drunken Netflix rampage, goes directly from the debut episode of Mad Men to this latest one. He or she will probably think that Peggy Olson, our earnest, innocent, and awkward proxy in The Land of The Panty Girdle, has been possessed by the ghost of Don Draper.
In the opening scene of this excellent episode, Pete Campbell is squeezed incongruously into a high school classroom chair, chuckling at a gruesome driver education film and trading glances with a pretty girl. This fades into Pete in bed at home late at night, wide awake due to a dripping faucet (on the loud side of plausibility).
There are two resident control freaks in the Greendale study group, Annie Edison and Abed Nadir, but we’ve never had a full episode that focuses on the dynamic between the two until tonight. Annie’s enthusiasm and Abed detachment make matching up the two alone an interesting challenge for both actors: Alison Brie can’t overplay Annie’s peppiness without seeming strident, and Danny Pudi can’t overplay Abed’s remoteness without becoming robotic.
This episode’s theme is nailed to the church door in its opening scene. Don Draper and his wife Megan enter the elevator to the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce offices; Don is coughing, and Megan moves to the opposite side of the elevator to avoid his germs. “Fine, if you think you’ll be safe over there by yourself,”Don croaks. Megan smirks, and is punished instantly by the appearance of Andrea, one of Don’s old flings.
Serial drama (even when we call it comedy) works in arcs. Some arcs are meant to form the entire structure of a series as a whole, some give shape to the current season of that series, and then there are mini-arcs which run for a few episodes. Last week’s epic pillow war episode drew an abrupt close to the mini-arc of Abed and Troy’s crumbling friendship, a storyline that had been working in subtle ways throughout the season but became more focused in the episodes since the return from hiatus.
I was a PBS nerd as a kid, and remain one to this day. I remember rushing home with my mother to watch each part of Ken Burns’s groundbreaking documentary The Civil War every night it was on, and being captivated by its delicacy and grandeur. So just by attempting a tribute to the Burns-style documentaries of the past twenty years this episode had me on its side.
I wish Betty really had cancer.
Not because I hate Betty; I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, if Betty were real, there would be no way I would hang out with her (not that she would want to, anyway), but as a character I find her quite fascinating and I’m glad she’s still part of the show and part of Don’s life. But the “Betty gets fat” storyline, inspired no doubt by January Jones’ real-life pregnancy is kinda weak, and her creepy fat-face makeup is off-putting.