It was written by series creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner and writer Jason Grote, and directed by Michael Uppendahl.

In it, several main characters at the advertising agency are given a powerful stimulant meant to give them energy while working on the Chevrolet campaign through a weekend.

It is widely considered to be the show's most experimental episode and was initially met with largely unfavorable reviews from television critics.

At the agency, Don pauses while watching Peggy comfort a bereaved Ted before the stimulant suddenly takes effect.

He tells Ken he is confident he can create a winning Chevy ad campaign but needs to see the executives in person to present the work.

Don then visits the creative team and gives them an impromptu motivational speech, with Peggy calling his words inspiring but asking for an actual idea.

Don arrives at Sylvia's apartment, leans against the door and hears only a song playing, with lyrics including: "I must think of a way into your heart."

When he tells her that his cousin Robbie was killed in action, Peggy advises Stan that "you have to let yourself feel [grief]" and that it cannot be dampened with other things.

Sally hears noises in the apartment and finds a black woman has entered the living room, claiming to have raised her father and to be named "Ida".

Kevin Rahm, who plays Ted Chaough, notes that Gleason's death has a strong impact on his character, as the former was "the guy that he could bitch to, and that he could yell at and with, and he was his rock".

Weiner, the show's creator, said that such serums as the agency was injected with were well known in the 1960s and that the substances heightens one's sense of time's passage.

While praising the episode's humor, Seitz criticized the subplot with the African-American burglar in Don's house, viewing it as part of a pattern in the show of minorities being disappointingly uninteresting characters.

He also considered the flashbacks to Don's past to be poorly edited and written, and felt that their intended message had already been established by that point in the show's run.

[2] Maureen Ryan of The Huffington Post argued that the episode "was amped up and yet often came off as filler", also disparaging the flashbacks as "embarrassingly thin, predictable slices of melodrama in a show that, at its best, embraces complex, thoughtful ambiguity.

"[3] Alan Sepinwall was mixed, writing that much of the episode "was memorable, and a lot of it was funny – even before Ken started tapping and rapping, we got Don shouting about the timbre of his voice and being uncertain about whether he would be “forceful or submissive” (clearly still having last week's games with Sylvia on his mind) – but a lot of it played like parody: This is “Mad Men.” Now this is “Mad Men” on drugs.

Jenny Lower of Los Angeles magazine argued, "Where Roger’s acid trip became a plot device for him and Jane to reveal unspoken truths, it’s unclear exactly what this episode accomplished.

"[4] Sarene Leeds of Rolling Stone similarly wrote, "If there was anything I learned from "The Crash" – other than Aaron Staton does a mean soft shoe – it was that I'd much rather watch Roger get high.

Club, however, Emily St. James assigned the website's highest grade (A) to "The Crash" and interpreted it as "an episode of Mad Men that’s about writing Mad Men, about locking yourself in a room and driving yourself crazy to come up with that one perfect idea, about wasting a weekend on that process, about trying to top yourself and feeling like you’re losing your mind."

"[7] Slate magazine's Seth Stevenson identified vulnerability as its overriding theme, and questioned whether "the amphetamine clockwork of the episode—skies flickering dark then light, days whirring together—[was] meant to evoke the frightening velocity of the era".

[8] Paul MacInnes of The Guardian called it "a grand episode" and praised the writers' ability to make "the viewer [feel] as if they're on drugs too.

"[10] Kyle Russell of Business Insider[11] and Verne Gay of Newsday also listed the episode as a series highlight, with the latter lauding it as "a glory of comedy, writing, direction and sheer nuttiness.

"[13] It was also ranked the show's ninth best episode in a poll of Entertainment Weekly staff, with Keith Staskiewicz comparing it to the works of David Lynch.