‘Mad Men’ Episode 9 review: ‘New Business’ is more of the same

We open on a scene of domesticity—Don Draper (Jon Hamm) making milkshakes for his two sons in the kitchen. Only it’s not his kitchen; it’s his ex-wife Betty’s (January Jones), and Don is playing babysitter until she and her husband Henry (Christopher Stanley) return home from a night out.

“You look swanky,” Don says when she walks in. She looks like she did in their former life together, always dressed up with somewhere to go. “Doesn’t Mommy look pretty?” Don once asked his kids seasons ago. But now he’s out the door within 30 seconds, and he looks back wistfully as Henry takes his place at the blender. This is not his home anymore.

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His new home is nothing to hurry back to. The sprawling midtown apartment was decorated by his second wife Megan (Jessica Pare), but she’s coming to town to collect the rest of her furniture, and the carpet has attracted stains in her absence.

To combat this emptiness, both figuratively and literally (Megan’s mother ends up packing up the apartment’s entire contents), Don takes up with Diana (Elizabeth Reaser), a waitress. More important is that she’s a freshly divorced damaged soul—someone new for Don to save. She laments the many things she’s lost: a ranch house, a two-car garage, a marriage, a daughter. Maybe she came to New York to start over, but she doesn’t seem to be letting any of it go.

“You’re fooling yourself if you think this will make a difference,” she tells Don when he comes by her apartment with a New York guidebook. Don thinks he’s ready for the fresh start again, but Dianna voices what the viewers already know: This won’t change anything. Don only likes the beginning of things.

“It’s almost over.” Don repeats the line twice in the episode, first to Dianna and then to Roger (John Slattery). Don denies that Megan is anything like Roger’s second wife, Jane (Peyton List), but the older man perfectly predicts how Megan’s bitterness will manifest. She accuses him of stealing her youth and career (she hasn’t booked a part in months), and her insecurities show. She takes a lunch with Harry (Rich Sommer), whom she has hated for years, to try to get a new agent. What’s worse is that she shows up in a modified version of her “Zou Bisou” outfit from two years ago to get his attention. Once cutting edge, Megan is now desperate and out of touch, and her fresh start isn’t coming any easier than Don’s is.

The side plot of the episode revolves around Stan (Jay R. Ferguson), Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and a female photographer, Prima Ryan (Mimi Rogers), who dresses in suits and ties and tries to seduce them both. She’s more successful with Stan (obviously), who finds himself irritated that he doesn’t have more artistic material to show her. Neither she nor Peggy has ever been married, and on the subject, Prima offers, “The adventures I would have missed.” Perhaps that’s what Don and Roger and Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) all thought awaited them when they signed divorce papers—adventure—but now they find themselves struggling to get back to where they once were.

“You think you’re going to begin your life over and do it right,” Pete says when divorce comes up between he and Don. “But what if you never get past the beginning again?”

As we near the end, it becomes clearer with every episode that Don and the gang are retreading old paths. Do we need to see him make the mistake of dating a broken brunette again? Is revisiting Marie Calvet’s (Julia Ormond) unhappy marriage and affair with Roger really the best use of our last six hours with these characters? There wasn’t even a glimpse of Joan (Christina Hendricks) this week!

The episode was titled “New Business,” but of course, that’s creator Matthew Weiner being playful. Everything here has been said before.

Lauren Chval is a RedEye special contributor.