The Quality of Mercy (S6x12)
Airdate: 16 June 2013
Written by: Andre Jacquemetton & Maria Jacquemetton Directed by: Phil Abraham
Running Time: 48 minutes
After the absolute devastation of Favors—which saw Sally Draper stumble upon her father in flagrante delicto with his mistress, a moment of profound humiliation for all involved—one might have expected the penultimate episode of Mad Men's sixth season to maintain that fever pitch. Instead, The Quality of Mercy opts for something altogether more restrained. It's almost defiantly quiet, a curious choice for a show heading into its finale, and one that initially risks feeling like narrative treading of water. Yet this apparent calm proves deceptive. Beneath the surface, the currents are shifting, alliances are fracturing, and the characters are positioning themselves for battles yet to come.
The episode opens with the domestic fallout from Sally's devastating discovery. She has kept Don's secret, yes, but the silence between them is suffocating. Her contempt is palpable, expressed through cold distance rather than confrontation, and it is wrecking him. Don has retreated into the bottle with alarming dedication, becoming something close to a non-functional alcoholic. Megan, increasingly alarmed by his deterioration, essentially grounds him, insisting he stay away from the office. It's a rare moment of domestic authority from a character who has often seemed adrift in her own marriage, and it leaves Don stranded at home, brooding and restless, his mind turning to the grievances that fester there.
Meanwhile, the professional world carries on without him, and nowhere is the cost of business more grotesquely literal than in Ken Cosgrove's storyline. Ken has always been the company man par excellence—loyal, capable, willing to sacrifice his personal passions for the firm's interests. Here, that sacrifice again becomes physical. General Motors executives invite him on a hunting trip, a bonding exercise that ends with birdshot embedded in his face. He returns to the office sporting an eyepatch and facial scarring, looking like he's stumbled out of a war film rather than a weekend in the country. The message is clear: he cannot continue as GM's direct liaison. Pete Campbell, ever the opportunist, immediately volunteers to take his place. The partners agree, but with a catch—Pete must bring Bob Benson along.
This arrangement chafes at Pete terribly. Ever since Bob's ill-judged homoerotic overture in the previous episode, Pete has been unable to look at him without revulsion. He attempts to wriggle out of the partnership, then resorts to desperate measures, engaging Duck Phillips to conduct a thorough background investigation. What Duck uncovers is extraordinary: Bob is a complete fraud, a former manservant from West Virginia who has fabricated his entire educational and professional history. Armed with this ammunition, Pete confronts him. Bob expects expulsion, perhaps prosecution. But Pete has evolved. Where the old Pete would have destroyed Bob out of spite—much as he failed to destroy Don when he discovered his secret—this Pete recognises the value of leverage. He keeps Bob on, but under conditions of total submission. It is blackmail dressed up as mercy, and it represents a genuine maturation in Pete's character. He has learned, finally, that power is more useful when held in reserve.
The episode's central conflict, however, belongs to Don and Ted Chaough, whose uneasy truce collapses spectacularly. Confined to his flat, Don receives a call from Harry Crane in California with tantalising news: despite SC&P's existing relationship with Ocean Spray, Harry has secured an enormous new account with their rival, Sunkist. At the partners' meeting, Roger and Don present the opportunity, and Cutler accepts immediately despite Ted's protests that abandoning Ocean Spray would be dishonourable. Ted is overruled by the bottom line, a defeat that stings all the more for his principled objection being dismissed so casually.
But Don is not finished with him. Megan drags her husband to a cinema screening of Rosemary's Baby—a film whose paranoia about paternal betrayal and hidden evil resonates rather too closely with Don's current circumstances—where they accidentally encounter Ted and Peggy. Megan immediately suspects an affair, and though the pair claim they were merely seeking inspiration for a St. Joseph Aspirin advertisement, Megan's instincts are not entirely wrong. Don later discovers that Ted and Peggy have indeed conceived a campaign based on the film's chilling final scene. He initially appears supportive, then sabotages it by objecting to the budget. When St. Joseph's executive Byron (Paul Rae) is brought in for a meeting, Don masterfully implies that Ted's insistence on the expensive concept stems from personal rather than professional motivations. He then pivots, falsely claiming the idea was Frank Gleason's last creative thought, and that Ted merely wished to honour his deceased partner. Byron approves the larger budget, but Ted is humiliated, forced to accept victory at the cost of his dignity. Fearing that any continued closeness with Peggy will provide Don with further ammunition regarding their supposed romance, Ted cuts contact with her entirely. Peggy, recognising exactly what Don has done, confronts him with a fury that barely conceals her hurt. It is vintage Don Draper manipulation—brutal, elegant, and devastatingly effective.
Sally's parallel storyline takes her away from her father's shadow and into the rarefied world of Miss Porter's School, the Connecticut boarding institution that counts Jacqueline Kennedy among its alumnae. Desperate to escape both Don and the memory of what she witnessed, Sally embraces the prospect of boarding school with unsettling enthusiasm. Betty arranges an overnight interview, and Sally finds herself rooming with two girls, Mandy (Kathyrn Newton) and Millicent (Samantha Hanrathy), who initially treat her with the casual cruelty of established insiders. Rather than accept her position at the bottom of the hierarchy, Sally executes a calculated manoeuvre. She summons Glen Bishop and his friend Rolo, along with alcohol and drugs, transforming the evening into an impromptu party. When Rolo attempts to force himself on Sally, Glen intervenes, trading blows with his own friend to protect her. The gambit works: Sally is accepted, and in the episode's most striking final image, Betty offers her daughter a cigarette. When Betty asks whether Don has ever given her beer, Sally's reply—"My father didn't give me anything"—lands with the weight of an entire childhood's disappointment. Some viewers may wince at a fourteen-year-old smoking on screen, but the moment serves the narrative perfectly, underscoring how Sally is becoming her father's daughter in ways both obvious and subtle.
Written by Andre and Maria Jacquemetton—veterans of the show's earlier, more measured seasons—rather than series creator Matthew Weiner, The Quality of Mercy carries a steadier hand than some of the season's more frenetic instalments. Direct engagement with the turbulence of 1968 is largely avoided, reduced to background details: a Nixon campaign advertisement promising "law and order," casual mention of Jackie Kennedy's marriage to Aristotle Onassis, Glen Bishop's countercultural attire. The episode is more concerned with the weight of personal history, with past mistakes and lessons learned guiding present actions. Pete's handling of Bob Benson explicitly recalls his failed campaign against Don; he will not repeat that error. Don himself, beginning the episode as a near-nonfunctional alcoholic, gradually reassembles his composure, recognising in Ted's vulnerability the same opening he once exploited in countless others. The man who emerges is recognisably the Don Draper of earlier seasons—self-assured, authoritative, and terrifyingly adept at reading weakness in others.
Glen Bishop, a character who has often seemed an awkward presence—his casting famously nepotistic, Marten Holden Weiner being the son of series creator Matthew Weiner—finally justifies his place in the narrative. His loyalty to Sally, his willingness to defend her even against his own friend, renders him unexpectedly sympathetic. He is weird, certainly, but in a show populated by polished surfaces hiding rot, his awkward authenticity stands out.
The Quality of Mercy contains no shocking deaths, no dramatic departures, no single moment that redefines the show's trajectory. What it offers instead is something more valuable: the careful alignment of pieces before the final moves. Relationships are clarified, power dynamics established, debts incurred and called in. By the episode's end, we understand exactly where each character stands—Don resurgent, Ted diminished, Pete ascendant, Sally slipping beyond parental reach. It is patient, methodical television, trusting that the accumulated weight of character history provides drama enough without manufactured spectacle. As the season prepares for its conclusion, the stage is set with the quiet certainty of consequences coming home to roost.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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