When Don asks Joan to get Joey in the office full time to work on Mountain Dew, she scrambles to come up with a reason not to hire him. She says he made an “extremely blue joke” and he’s not a gentleman with the ladies. Don brushes that off with “boys will be boys”. The flipside of women’s lib is that more casual behavior was permitted in the workplace as well, which is no doubt the reason most every office you enter today has a sexual harassment policy.
But, really, Joey goes beyond your garden variety jerk, and just spreads his obnoxiousness around. He calls Harry an “old fairy” (imagine if he’d met Sal! We miss you Sal!) and then tells Peggy his mother was a “Joan”. He says “she wore a pen around her neck so people would stare at her tits.” Charming.
I just rewatched this episode during its rerun on AMC Sunday mornings – the first time I saw it, I noted that it was the first time “Mad Men” ended with the credits rolling but no music playing over them. I wondered if there was something particular in the episode that made it special (like the silent clock in “24”). However, I wasn’t certain, so I’d be interested in hearing what you or other readers have to say about the matter.