The Suitcase (Mad Men)
This episode is centered on the characters of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), and the relationship between the two.
A deadline is looming over a campaign for the suitcase manufacturer Samsonite, and Don rejects all of the creative department's ideas.
Most of the staff (that being Joey Baird (Matt Long), Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson) and Danny Siegel (Danny Strong)) all plan to watch the May 25, 1965,[3] Ali vs. Liston fight that night, except for Peggy who has plans for a romantic birthday dinner with her boyfriend Mark.
Duck Phillips calls her to gift her the creative director job at the ad agency he intends to start.
He puts off calling and decides to forgo the boxing match to continue working on the Samsonite campaign.
She also divulges that her mother believes he fathered her baby owing to Don's visiting Peggy in the hospital shortly after the child was born.
Don intends to finally call Stephanie back, but instead falls asleep in Peggy's lap.
He awakes in the middle of the night with Peggy asleep beside him, and sees a vision of Anna smiling with a suitcase.
She goes to Don's office to find that he has developed an idea for the suitcase campaign based on the Ali vs. Liston knock-out photo.
The episode ends with Simon and Garfunkel's "Bleecker Street" playing as the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce office begins its day.
"[4] Matthew Weiner credited the cinematographer Chris Manley and director Jennifer Getzinger for the "gradations of darkness, of afternoon into night into early morning, the way that they’re posed together, it just really made the whole thing work."
[3] Another sports reference in the episode is found in Peggy's original pitch for the Samsonite ad, featuring football player Joe Namath.
Club critic Emily St. James called it "one of the best episodes the show has ever done", writing that a scene toward the end between Peggy and a tearful Don was "enormously moving".
[9] Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly called the episode "a knock-out", and commented on the "remarkable intimacy" of the scenes between Don and Peggy.
[3] Entertainment Weekly's Karen Valby called it her "favorite Mad Men episode of all time", highlighting the performances of the two main actors.
[13] Actors Moss and Aaron Staton chose "The Suitcase" as their favorite episode of Mad Men so far.
[15] The Writers Guild Foundation listed the screenplay as one of the best in 2010s film and television, and the episode was described as "a great example of two unlikely characters opening up with each other and finding a weird, unexpected solace.
Where Don carelessly goes to bed with, dates or marries the next pretty girl, here with Peggy, he shares something slightly more special and transformative: his feelings.
