Trama

Don has a wild lost weekend after winning a CLIO award, while Peggy is forced to work all weekend in a hotel room with an "uninspired" co-worker. Meanwhile, Peter is livid after he learns that the other partners hired Ken Cosgrove.

The firm is on a high as Don has been nominated for a Clio Award for the Glo-Coat ad. The one person who has some issue specifically with Don is Peggy, who feels that Don has not provided any recognition for her significant contribution to that ad and who is not among those from the company invited to the awards ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. On top of that, Don is giving her deadline ultimatums for the Vicks account, the hold-ups which she feels are not her fault, but that of the new art director, Stan Rizzo, who Don seems to respect more than her. To make their working relationship function, Peggy takes Stan up on what she considers a bluff, which has mixed reactions. During this time, an inebriated Don also pitches a bad and stolen idea to their Life cereal clients, who love the idea. Peggy, at that meeting, knows its original source. That action by Don may be the last Peggy will tolerate from him in this already bad weekend for her. Don gets out of this predicament in a way that surprises Peggy in not a good way. The end of the weekend also gets Don in hot water with an already angry Betty. Another person at the office who is not too happy is Pete, who learns from an outside source of someone who may be joining the firm. Pete tries to flex his muscles in this matter as one of the firm's partners. Lane counters that the extra body is required as the accounts grow and Roger's contribution to the company dwindle to being solely that of figurehead. Roger is more focused on dictating his memoirs, which makes him reminisce about when he first met Don and how Don, with no formal experience, came to work at Sterling Cooper. That situation mirrors to some extent something that Don is currently going through, with Don now in the Roger role.—Huggo

It's a busy Friday at SCDP. It's time for the ad industry's Clio awards and Don is nominated. He and Peggy Olson interview someone for the creative team but he doesn't make much of an impression and seems to have only one idea. The executives from Life cereal have been held up due to fog and the presentation will likely have to be rescheduled. The drinking starts early and throughout the afternoon but when Don gets word that the Life cereal execs have arrived by car, they all rush to the office to make the presentation. A drunken Don makes a mistake when brainstorming a slogan for them however. Peggy meanwhile is not getting along with the new Art Director who insists on seeing her copy before sketching out his own ideas. They end up working the entire weekend to come up with something for Don by Monday morning. She does manage to put him in his place however. Pete Campbell is more than just a little upset when he hears that Lane Pryce is trying to recruit Ken Cosgrove.—garykmcd

Waldorf Stories: Don and Peggy sat through an awkward interview with a 24-year-old dweebish wannabe ad man who made Peggy feel better about herself. Still, the guy was cousin of Jane, Roger's wife. Peggy mentioned Don's Clio nomination, but he was trying not to think about it even though a win would be good for the agency. Peggy was having trouble getting along with the new art director, Stan.

Roger sat in his office spewing notes to a scribe for his biography. Don walked in and talked about how badly the interview with Roger's wife's cousin went, but Roger urged Don to hire him anyway, lest it cost him a personal gift expenditure between $500 and $1,000.

Flashback to Don and Roger's first meeting, when Don was selling fur coats. Roger noticed a poster for the coat shop with a dumb slogan, and Don said he did it himself. It's an interest of mine, and they let me do it, he told Roger, who bought a mink and told Don he needed 20 of those posters. He also provided specific instructions for delivering the mink. Turned out, it was a gift for Joan. In a bedroom Joan tries on the mink and hints of what's to follow. In the box was a mock ad Don made for Play-doh, with his business card included. Roger thought it was out of line. Back in real time, Roger called Caroline back into the office because, "I think I finally have a work story."

A presentation for Life cereal was being delayed because the client's plane was late. Peggy seemed a bit annoyed that Joan was going to the Clios with Don, Roger and Pete. Don said there were only four tickets and there would be a lot of other people's clients at the event. Then Peggy got into an argument with the new art supervisor because she needed artwork for a Vicks cough drops campaign.

At the Clios, Ken Chaough gave Don and Roger a hard time about having not been at the awards the previous year. Then, Pete ran into Cosgrove, who had a rep from BirdsEye with him. The BirdsEye guy let it slip that the team is getting back together, and Kenny said it wasn't a sure thing. Pete was stunned, wondering if the firm was going to merge with Cosgrove's. He wanted to ask Don about it, but Don said, "Don't talk to me right now."

Duck, drink in hand, made a scene and was escorted out of the crowd.

Back at the office, Peggy was venting about how she came up with the concept for the ad that was nominated and Don didn't even acknowledge it. Back at the awards, there was a tense moment as the nominations were read and Joan sat between Don and Roger -- each of them holding Joan's hand under the table. When they won, Don, very happy, planted a kiss on Joan and went up to accept the trophy. Megan arrives to report the Life reps had arrived back at the office and Don and Roger wantto go back and give their presentation. Pete seemed a bit unsure -- probably because Don and Roger had been drinking.

Back at the Life meeting, Roger did a victory lap in front of the Life guys. Don, half drunk, gave the presentation, burping now and then, and his presentation fell a bit flat. Don then started spewing slogans and finally came up with something the Life guys liked: "Life, the cure for the common breakfast." It was a plain rip-off of something Roger's wife's cousin had presented during his interview. Peggy was upset, and when she tried to talk to Don about it he yelled at her for not getting anything done with the cough syrup campaign.

Pete confronted Lane about the merger he was suspecting, but Lane clarified that there was no merger. Instead, Cosgrove was going to join the firm. Pete was upset.

Back At the after-party, Don spotted Faye and tried to get her to leave the party with him so they could go celebrate for real. She declined, telling him, "I think you're confusing a lot of things at once right now." She fixed his tie and said she was very happy for him.

Stuck in a hotel room with Rizzo, the new art guy -- on Don's orders -- Peggy was fed up with his posturing about being a nudist while he laid, fully clothed, on a bed looking at Playboy. She stripped and told him he was lazy, which was holding up their work. She said they should get liberated, and by that she meant naked, and they each took their clothes off and went to work. Literally, they began to work.

Roger and Joan were chatting at a bar when a woman came up and asked whether Don was attached. Joan said no. Roger told Joan that they don't give awards for what I do. When she asked what that was, he said, "Finding guys like him."

Flashback again to Don meeting Roger in the lobby of Sterling Cooper. Don told Roger he'd give anything to buy him a drink and hear anything he had to say.

"It's 10 a.m.", Roger said.

Cut to them drinking, quite a bit.

Back in the hotel room, Peggy won her little showdown with Rizzo. He put his clothes back on and went to the bathroom.

Don went to bed with the woman from the after-party, and she told him she wrote ad jingles. He woke up two mornings later to an angry Betty on the phone, who said he was supposed to have picked up the kids two hours earlier. In bed with him was a different woman, her pink waitress uniform on the dresser, and Don realized he'd pretty much gone a full day with no memory of what happened, and the woman called him Dick.

Peggy knocked on Don's door and said she'd been trying to reach him for days. She told Don he stole the Life slogan, then she told him to fix it.

Lane told Pete the next morning that Cosgrove was on his way in. Pete wanted to meet with Kenny in the conference room. Don asked Miss Blankenship to see if she could track down his Clio. He also had to meet with Rogers wife's cousin, Danny, and he offered him $100 for the slogan idea, but the kid wanted a job instead.

Meanwhile, Pete spoke with Kenny in the conference room and tried to big-time him a bit, telling him that he wanted to make sure Kenny could do as he was told and would "be in line with the work I'm doing here."

Don told Peggy that Danny would be starting next Monday. Don gave the news to Roger, who handed Don his Clio. Roger just asked Don to tell him he couldn't have done it without him.

Cut to the flashback of Don's first day of work, when he surprised Roger by showing up. Don had convinced Roger that he'd hired him the day before. So they went up the elevator together, with Roger looking a bit confused and Don smirking like he'd just gotten away with something.