Well, the new season of Mad Men has officially started, so this blog's content related to show will be double until the autumn. I'll still be approaching Season 1 on its own merits and it'd be great if those of you following along keep the Catching Up comments section a spoiler-free zone. With that said, let's dive into "Shoot".

Most of the first season of Mad Men establishes the Sterling Cooper office as an almost impossibly slick, glamorous world, a place where the men are all wildly successful alphas and all the women are beautiful, fashionable and clever. "Shoot" does a lot to deconstruct this image and replace it with an adjusted concept that integrates the big picture, where Sterling Cooper is relative to the rest of Madison Avenue and society as a whole. It all begins during the intermission of a Broadway show where a representative of a much larger advertising firm approaches Don with a job offer. To put extra pressure on the deal, he also coaxes Betty into a modeling job for a new Coca Cola ad.

It's only here, by comparison to a global firm, that Sterling Cooper looks like what it is: A middle-of-the-road agency for mundane clients. While their competitors are slinging sexy European ads for Coke, Sterling Cooper is stuck with TV spots for laxatives and a cut-rate department store like Menkin's. Guys like Don Draper make Sterling Cooper look like the big leagues, but it's clearly not that special. This whole episode is concerned with the difference between appearances and truth. The slick executives are rendered as risk-averse squares and frat boys in suits. The happy people in Coke ads are actually deeply unhappy models. Even a simple housewife like Betty is a modern, gutsy independent underneath her domestic veneer.

But the most striking transformation in "Shoot" belongs to Peggy. Since the beginning of the series, Peggy's coworkers have been disparaging her naivete, her plain manner of dress and her awe with her new surroundings. We at home have seen Peggy's rich inner life but the Sterling Cooper staff are only just learning about her real self. In yet another condescending rap session with Joan, Peggy finally comes out of her shell and walks away the better person. Honestly, there's an ingenious coldness to the line, "I just realized you think you're being helpful".

Because this is TV and we've spent too much time with the supporting cast to abandon them, Don stays with Sterling Cooper (with a generous raise). But it's not just a matter of money for him. After being reminded of Betty's truly glamorous life as a model, the life he fell in love with, Don realizes that he doesn't want to go so deep into advertising that it's all he is. Staying with Sterling Cooper may make him a big fish in a small pond, but it also makes leaving the ad game altogether much easier.

Best Moment: It's a toss up between Peggy's conversation with Joan and Betty closing the episode by attacking her jerk neighbor's pigeons with a lever-action rifle. Hooray for kick-ass women on TV!

Notes: That Spanish campaign ad was an awesome find. Also, accurate. Jackie-O connecting with Hispanic voters was instrumental in putting Kennedy in office.

Episode Rating: 4.5/5- Aside from being a bigger bummer than most episodes, there were a few moments of lazy editing and odd pacing in "Shoot". They didn't take away from the heavy lifting in the narrative, though. This was a big plot episode and it pushed things forward with grace.