"Blowing Smoke" is the twelfth episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series ''
Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its fict ...
'', and the 51st overall episode of the series. It aired on the
AMC
AMC may refer to:
Film and television
* AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain
* AMC Networks, an American entertainment company
** AMC (TV channel)
** AMC+, streaming service
** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company
*** AM ...
channel in the United States on October 10, 2010. At the
63rd Primetime Emmy Awards
The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, honoring the best in prime time television programming from June 1, 2010 until May 31, 2011, were held on Sunday, September 18, 2011, at the Nokia Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Fox televised the ce ...
,
Robert Morse
Robert Alan Morse (May 18, 1931 – April 20, 2022) was an American actor, who starred in ''How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'', both the 1961 original Broadway production, for which he won a Tony Award, and its 1967 film adaptati ...
was nominated for the
for his performance in this episode;
Andre and
Maria Jaccquemetton were nominated for the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series is an award presented annually by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS). It was first awarded at the 7th Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony, held in 1955 and it is given in ...
for their teleplay.
Plot
Don Draper
Donald Francis Draper, born Richard “Dick” Whitman, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the AMC television series ''Mad Men'' (2007–2015), portrayed by Jon Hamm. Up to the Season 3 finale, Draper was creative director of ficti ...
meets with a representative from
Heinz
The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures thousands of food products in plants on six conti ...
to discuss moving the
beans
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...
, vinegars, and sauces line of business to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce but is dismayed when the potential client says he will hear ideas from SCDP in six to eight months, as he has doubts about the agency's immediate future. Don, pushing to clinch the business sooner, offers to reduce the commission, but the client declines. He advises Don to leave selling to the accounts professionals.
At the office, the partners talk with an advisor,
Geoffrey Atherton (
Faye Miller's business partner), who recommends they replace
Lucky Strike
Lucky Strike is an American brand of cigarettes owned by the British American Tobacco group. Individual cigarettes of the brand are often referred to colloquially as "Luckies." Throughout their 150 year history, Lucky Strike has had fluctuating ...
with new business immediately to avoid being seen as stagnant or decaying, preferably another tobacco account. Atherton arranges for SCDP a meeting with
Philip Morris and SCDP; however, Philip Morris cancels on the day of the appointment, having only scheduled a meeting with SCDP to exert pricing leverage with their existing agency
Leo Burnett Worldwide
Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc., also known as Leo Burnett Company, Inc., is an American advertising company, founded on August 5, 1935, in Chicago by Leo Burnett.
In September 2002, the company was acquired by Publicis Groupe, the world's third l ...
.
Lane extends the agency's bank loan to bridge the loss of Lucky Strike revenues. He asks the partners to collateralize the line of credit, with an investment of $100,000 from each senior partner, and $50,000 from each junior partner.
Pete tells Lane he can't afford the investment and applies for a loan of his own. When Trudy learns of the ad agency's financial troubles, she forbids Pete to borrow the sum from the bank or her father.
Don runs into his ex-girlfriend,
Midge Daniels (
Rosemarie DeWitt
Rosemarie Braddock DeWitt (born October 26, 1971) is an American actress. DeWitt played Emily Lehman in the Fox television series '' Standoff'' (2006–07), co-starring with her future husband Ron Livingston, as well as Charmaine Craine on ''Unit ...
) in the
Time-Life Building
1271 Avenue of the Americas is a 48-story skyscraper on Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), between 50th and 51st Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by architect Wallace Harrison of Harrison, Abram ...
lobby; she says she was there for a business meeting and acts surprised to see Don. Midge invites Don home for dinner and introduces him to her husband, Harry, who inadvertently reveals that Midge had tracked Don down. Midge confesses that she and her husband are heroin addicts, and that Harry will use Don's money for drugs. Don gives Midge a check for $300, and $120 in cash. Don spurns her advances and, once home, Don starts to throw the painting out. However, he instead ends up staring at it all night.
Without consulting the other partners, Don writes a letter, which he places as a full-page ad in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', to publicly say that he is relieved to no longer be advertising a fatal and addictive product like tobacco. The other partners are livid, and an angry Cooper abruptly resigns. After Lane assesses the firm's financial status, the partners agree to dismiss most of the staff, as the firm's dwindling funds are insufficient to make another payroll unless they downsize.
Don meets with Peggy, and tells her to approve a list of the people in the Creative Department who need to be dismissed. In the midst of the firings, SCDP receives a call from the
American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. Established in 1913, the society is organized into six geographical regions of both medical and lay volunteers operating in more than ...
, inquiring about launching an anti-cigarette campaign. Pete is unimpressed, as the work is pro bono, but the other partners point out the client is prestigious, and that many of the society's board members are bigwigs and potential new clients.
Faye informs Don that she and Atherton must resign SCDP's business, because Atherton wants to continue working with tobacco clients. However, she and Don can now date openly, which she considers a fair trade.
Dr. Edna tells
Betty
Betty or Bettie is a name, a common diminutive for the names Bethany and Elizabeth. In Latin America, it is also a common diminutive for the given name Beatriz, the Spanish and Portuguese form of the Latin name Beatrix and the English name Beatric ...
that
Sally
Sally may refer to:
People
*Sally (name), a list of notable people with the name
Military
*Sortie (siege warfare), Sally (military), an attack by the defenders of a town or fortress under siege against a besieging force; see sally port
*Sally, ...
has made excellent progress and will now see her only once a week. This dismays Betty, who claims Sally's life remains chaotic. Dr. Edna refers Betty to a fellow psychiatrist, but is persuaded to reserve time "to continue discussing Sally's progress", instead. Later, Betty is angered to learn that Sally and
Glen
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long and bounded by gently sloped concave sides, unlike a ravine, which is deep and bounded by steep slopes. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower ...
have been talking in private. At the dinner table, Betty suggests to
Henry
Henry may refer to:
People
*Henry (given name)
*Henry (surname)
* Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry
Royalty
* Portuguese royalty
** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal
** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...
that they move to another town, and Henry agrees. Sally runs up to her room, heartbroken.
Cultural references
* The title refers, at once, three concepts:
**The act of smoking, which corresponds to the firm's chasing tobacco clients as well as the numerous characters' continuing to light up
**The haze of romance through which the episode viewed the agency's work situation
**Saying things that are untrue in order to make oneself or something one's involved in seem better than it is. ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine's TV critic,
James Poniewozik
James "Jim" Poniewozik (; born July 12, 1968) is an American journalist and television critic. He is the chief TV critic for ''The New York Times''. Earlier in his career, he wrote ''Time'' magazine's ''Tuned In'' column for 16 years.
Early life
...
, devoted his review to the many examples of this behavior throughout the episode.
* Sally Draper describes to Glen Bishop the
infinite-loop motif
Recursion (adjective: ''recursive'') occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematic ...
, or
Droste effect
The Droste effect (), known in art as an example of ''mise en abyme'', is the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This produces a loop which in ...
, on the
Land O'Lakes butter packaging, which features an Indigenous woman holding the butter box.
*The morning Don's anti-tobacco letter appears in ''The New York Times'',
Megan Calvet
This is a list of fictional characters in the television series ''Mad Men'', all of whom have appeared in multiple episodes.
Overview
;Cast notes:
* Maxwell Huckabee and Aaron Hart have split the role of Bobby Draper in the first season, whil ...
informs him he has received a phone call from
Emerson Foote.
Alan Sepinwall
Alan Sepinwall (born October 19, 1973) is an American television reviewer and writer. He spent 14 years as a columnist with ''The Star-Ledger'' in Newark until leaving the newspaper in 2010 to work for the entertainment news website HitFix. He th ...
observes: "one of Don's other phone messages was from Emerson Foote, an advertising giant who in 1965 quit his job as chairman of
McCann-Erickson
McCann, formerly McCann Erickson, is an American global advertising agency network, with offices in 120 countries. McCann is part of McCann Worldgroup, along with several other agencies, including direct digital marketing agency MRM//McCann, expe ...
because he didn't want to represent tobacco anymore",
and who, as Keith Phipps observes: "devoted himself to anti-smoking advocacy. (He later came back.) Foote was of the generation before Don's and, unlike Don, he hated the cigarette industry in earnest."
*Don invites Faye to dinner at La Caravelle, an "august" French restaurant that - along with
Le Pavillon, and
La Côte Basque
La Côte Basque was a New York City restaurant. It opened in the late 1950s and operated until it closed on March 7, 2004. In business for 45 years, upon its closing ''The New York Times'' called it a "former high-society temple of French cuisine ...
, was an offshoot "of the seminal restaurant in the French pavilion of the
1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchas ...
, where
harles
Gottlieb Christoph Harless (originally Harles) (21 June 1738 – 2 November 1815) was a German classical scholar and bibliographer.
Biography
He was born at Culmbach in Bavaria. He studied at the universities of Halle, Erlangen and Jena. In ...
Masson père began as a waiter under the eye of the legendary
Henri Soulé Henri Soulé (1903, Bayonne, France –1966 New York City) was the proprietor of Le Pavillon and La Côte Basque restaurants in New York City. Soulé also operated The Hedges in Southampton, New York.
He is credited with having “trained an ent ...
".
Reception
Viewership for "Blowing Smoke" rose from the previous episode as 2.23 million viewers tuned in on the night of the original airing, while 0.7 million viewers in the adults 18-49 age demographic watched the episode.
References
External links
"Blowing Smoke"at
AMC
AMC may refer to:
Film and television
* AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain
* AMC Networks, an American entertainment company
** AMC (TV channel)
** AMC+, streaming service
** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company
*** AM ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blowing Smoke
Mad Men (season 4) episodes
2010 American television episodes