Recap / Mad Men S 7 E 11 Time And Life

They waited so long, I thought we were safe.

What at first appears to be a failure to pay the lease on time leads to SC&P's discovering that McCann's plan is to close down their office and move everyone into the parent company's headquarters. Don devises a plan to move to California as "Sterling Cooper West" and manage the lucrative contracts that conflict with McCann's portfolio. However, Ken enjoys toying with his former co-workers before telling them he won't sign on. Eventually, Jim Hobart (McCann's CEO) lets Don, Roger, Joan, Pete and Ted know the absorption into McCann is going to happen and they should appreciate their "victory": they are about to get five of the best jobs in advertising.

Elsewhere, Peggy's emotions surge when a group of children are at the office for a focus group for Play-Doh. When she and Stan are tasked with taking care of a girl who was left behind by her Stage Mom, the girl accidentally staples her thumb, and her mother tells Peggy off for being a bad guardian. Later, Peggy confesses to Stan that she gave up her own baby ten years prior, and still thinks about him all the time, even though it was the only way she could have achieved her successful career.

Pete and Trudy reunite after a crisis arises involving Tammy's preschool application to a school where Pete's family is a legacy. After a scuffle upon which Pete socks a pedantic headmaster, he and Trudy find some friendly common ground while pondering their past and future. She reveals regret about forcing him to leave the city for suburbia. Now as a single mother, she's bothered by being hit on by the men she encounters but notes, ironically, as she ages no one will notice her. Pete tells her she's ageless.

Don tries to find Diana again, but a gay couple have moved into her apartment. Joan has praise from her co-workers and a new love interest, but a very uncertain professional future. As rumors fly, Meredith pressures Don to make an announcement. The partners call the rest of the staff into the lounge and announce the coming move. Though Roger and Don try to spin the news positively, they quickly lose the crowd's attention as employees wander away in disappointment.

This episode contains examples of:

• All for Nothing: The main characters' rally to convince their overseers on the worth of keeping SC&P as is is rendered moot when Hobart stops their pitch just as it's getting going.
• Alone Among the Couples: Don in this episode, as told by Tom & Lorenzo on their "Mad Style" column.

  There’s a certain sense of the characters snapping back to form in their romantic lives as the series winds down and they’re winding up with the people (or the kinds of people) they always should have been with. Joan is once again with a wealthy older man who worships her. Pete and Trudy are flirting with reconciliation. Roger (who spent his youth partying in Paris before the War) stopped chasing after women half his age and is making a go of it with Marie Calvet. Peggy and Stan, who’ve been dancing around each other for years, are closer than they’ve ever been. Ted reunited with his college love. There’s a feeling of inevitability about it all. Only one of the main characters isn’t in love or on track for love: ''cuts to a picture of Don''

  • This pushes Don to attempt to avert this by seeking out Diana, but he discovers that she's moved out of her apartment.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: Peggy tells Stan he shouldn't be so harsh on his mother as he doesn't know what it was like for her. This soon morphs into a confession that she had a child but gave it up.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Meredith. She straight out demands that Don disclose what is happening to the agency after being snarked at for her naivete.

  Don't "Sweetheart" me!

• Black Secretaries Get the Boot First: Dawn and Shirley discuss their job security after word gets out about SC&P being absorbed by McCann-Erickson, stating that even if their jobs weren't going to be made redundant anyway, they have less of a chance of staying since McCann likely already has their own Token Minority staffers.
• Call-Back: Several shots echo previous iconic ones from the series:
  • There's one of the partners looking at the camera◊, deflated, after being told specifically how they will be dissolved by McCann. It appears to allude to this◊ one from the Season 5 finale ("The Phantom"), where the partners were looking out of a window (and away from the camera) after purchasing a new floor. The older image conveyed SCDP's expansion as a business, whereas the most recent one confirms its coming end. Hitting this home further, the previous episode took place the episode after Lane's suicide, whereas this one was directed by his actor, Jared Harris.
  • When Pete tells Peggy about the firm's absorption, he brings her into his office and sits with her◊ on his couch. The last◊ time they were on a couch was in the Season 2 finale ("Meditations in an Emergency"), when it was Peggy dropping a bombshell of information by telling Pete about their baby that she gave up. Also Pete decides to tip her off about the absorption after seeing her being hugged by a child (she's doing a commercial for children), no doubt thinking about the child they had together.
  • Also the episode is a callback to the Season 3 finale "Shut the Door, Have a Seat". The agency tries to keep their independence gathering their Californian accounts like they brought to SCDP their major clients in Season 3, but this time they are unsuccessful.
  • In the bar, Roger tells Don "You are OK", which is what Roger hallucinated Don saying to him during his LSD trip in "Far Away Places".
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: After Hobart shoots down Don's pitch, he lists off Accounts that the partners will now get to work with to everyone except Joan. Joan quickly realizes that with the absorption, she's now become expendable.
• Even the Guys Want Him: When Don calls at Diana's apartment, he finds that she's left and a gay couple has moved in. One of them wants to invite Don in for a drink.
• Feuding Families: The real reason why the private school headmaster — Mr. MacDonald — rejects Tammy Campbell's application is the never-ending feud between the MacDonald and the Campbell families that goes back to the Glencoe Massacre, which took place 278 years before the events of this episode.
  Pete: The king ordered it!
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Roger, Pete, Don, Joan and Ted all go to a bar after their meeting with Jim Hobart. Roger and Don, the two heaviest drinkers, stay the longest.
• It's All About Me: After learning of their impending absorption, Don attempts to rally the Partners to come up with a game-plan to maintain their independence. Four episodes previously, Don convinced the Partners to sell out in the first place in order to maintain his job. The hypocrisy doesn't get past Joan.
  Joan: Are we really playing this game?
• Mama Bear: Make that two against each other. Peggy (who abandoned her baby at birth) and the Stage Mom (who abandoned her child at an audition) face off against one another after the little girl gets injured by a stapler, the Stage Mom threatening to sue and Peggy asking what kind of Mother leaves her child in the company of strangers.
• New Era Speech: Roger and Don take turns at this, but their efforts are torpedoed by the staff's chaotic reaction to the news itself.
• No Indoor Voice: Harry, his lack of indoor voice and swearing lead Stan and Peggy, to take a little girl to their area rather than leave her to be supervised by Shirley.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Pete convinces Secor Laxatives to move with SC&P.
• Ojou Ringlets: Classy and Nouveau Riche Trudy wears these when she and Pete meet with the headmaster of the school Tammy was rejected from, this can make her an American version of the trope.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Stan and Peggy have a mild argument about a mother who was rude to Peggy; however, it also leads to Peggy confessing that she had a child. Unlike most examples of this trope, Stan quickly catches up.
  Stan: She shouldn't have kids.
  Peggy: That's not for you to say.
  Stan: Ah, Jesus, I can't even agree with you.
  Peggy: I don't hate kids.
  Stan: Look, you got to a certain point in your life and it didn't happen. I understand you're angry about it, but you've got a lot of other things.
  ...
  Stan: You're right. I didn't mean to judge her.
  Peggy: But you did and you don't understand it at all.
  Stan: I had a mother. And she wasn't great. And I don't know that she wanted me, so I understand something.
  Peggy: But you don't understand your mother.
  Stan: Well, maybe I don't want to.
  Peggy: Maybe she was very young. And followed her heart and got in trouble. And no one should have to make a mistake just like a man does and not be able to move on. She should be able to live the rest of her life just like a man does.
  Stan: You're right.
  Peggy: I know.....maybe you'd do what you thought was the best thing...
  Stan: What did you do?
• Parents as People: Discussed by Peggy, no one knows why parents make the choices they do, just don't judge.
• Papa Wolf: If you mess with Tammy Campbell's chances of getting into a day school on account of her stick man drawing and heritage, sooner or later, you'll meet Pete's fist.
• Precision F-Strike: Peggy, after the confrontation with the Stage Mom.
• Pun: Roger and Don debate about who should make the obligatory one of these after Pete announces that he's secured Secor Laxatives.
• Stage Mom: Don is in an elevator full of them and their children; later Peggy and Stan have a confrontation with one.

  Cheryl (Stage Mom): This is her favorite thing. She loves it.

  Peggy: And I bet you love cashing her checks.

• Took a Level in Kindness: Pete of all people scores a 'good guy' hat trick in this episode:
  • He defends his ex-wife's honor to a Jerkass schoolmaster. With his fist.
  • He gives Peggy a heads up about McCann so she can get a head-start on looking for a new opportunity.
  • He gives Joan a pep-talk and tells her how significant she is.