‘Mad Men’ season 7, episode 4 review: John Slattery shines; Don Draper gets a pep talk

Sunday night’s “Mad Men” was all sorts of entertaining, and it did something that the show has really struggled with for quite a long time: Giving up a clearly picture of Roger Sterling. John Slattery gives such an intelligent performance as this man, it has been a shame to not see him used to his full potential.

But tonight’s episode started to really put things together for the Roger character, and showed us more of what makes him one of the series’ best characters: His ability to dive head first into any situation. This is why he was okay with diving into his daughter’s strange cult at a time when her mother stormed off in a fit. He integrated, and for a while, seemed to be okay. After all, this world wasn’t that different from the one that he lived in now. However, that changed the moment that his paternal instinct kicked in when he saw her running off with a man in the middle of the night.

Perhaps the real reason that Roger was so intent on trying to relate and then fix his daughter was because he saw himself in everything that she was doing, from abandoning a child to being entirely selfish. In the end, his ability to throw himself into this commune got him nowhere, since his paternal instinct kicked in. Unfortunately, it was decades too late. Congrats to Slattery for the performance, proving yet again that he is the rare example of a “Mad Men” actor somehow still being underrated.

As for the other important story of this episode, it was an opportunity to see Don Draper have a hissy fit for an entire hour as he refused to accent having to work under Peggy … at least at first. An impromptu pep talk helped to get him to see the light, and realize that in the end, the best thing he can do is to pull himself up and do the work. If he ever wants his own firm again or a better place at this one, he needs to actually prove that he could still do it.

Despite the limited focus here to mostly these two male characters, we still loved almost every second of this. Maybe you just have to blame the strength of the performers for this. This show may be slow and subtle, but it felt as though there was real progress made this time. Grade: A-.

We’ll have more on this episode tomorrow when we record our podcast, including the very little we saw tonight of Pete Campbell.

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Photo: AMC