When in Rome… well, when you’re in Rome, you can pretend that your life isn’t so bad, that you’re not so bored in upstate New York, and that you’re maybe getting picked up by some guys straight out of a Fellini movie. Or, who wish they were in a Fellini movie. So, let’s get out of the office for the long, hot weekend and go make some accommodations while talking about last night’s episode of Mad Men, “Souvenir.”

August Bravo: Pete Campbell, man of reason.

Marco Sparks: And a reader of Ebony magazine!

August: And always so smart, so capable.

Marco: And ambassador to the Republic of Dresses! That would totally be a great indie rock band name, by the way.

August: Can you blame it on the kid for the ruined dress? Maybe you can, but Pete doesn’t. He’s just the man to step up and fix things on his own. But why just for a stranger?

Marco: He’s a sucker for a foreign accent?

August: Is he even really that good of a guy or does he just want a piece of ass?

Marco: Piece of ass. Definitely. Also a little boy…

…pretending to be a man. But without a proper understanding of what a man is (if any of us so called “men” really know).

August: And then there’s Betty’s man from the Governor’s office, coming through in a clutch. Is that more than she can say about Don? I think she thinks so.

Marco: It would seem that, as the show’s progressed, Don humors Betty less and less. But he did let her name the baby Eugene.

August: The reservoir is the only thing she’s shown passion in recently… or did I speak too soon? Who is this guy really and why is Betty so interested?

Marco: Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that he’s interested in her? Everyone sees Betty as an object of some kind, and more and more in a less favorable way since that’s all they see her as, so perhaps she’s entertained by this guy who definitely only sees her as an object that he wants to get into. Much like one would get into a reservoir, I would imagine, if I were to end this paragraph with a bad gender-related analogy.

August: She’s always had such a strange and wandering curiosity. And then she’s all smiles after the kiss in her father’s car.

Marco: Of course he compliments the car. Is this guy just lucky or does he know exactly how to play Betty? And as she drives off, who is she looking at in that rearview mirror? The man who wants her, or… just herself, satisfied?

August: Such a twisted woman. I’m slowly thinking she’s becoming more like Don with the deviousness.

Marco: It’s possible that, unlike Don, Betty knows how to be good and disgusted with herself after a bad time.

August: And then there’s Joan. Kicking herself maybe for leaving Sterling-Cooper?

Marco: Maybe, but she’s gonna play it cool. She’s Joan, after all. The fact that she showed up right then was perfect though, because, well, no matter how much Joan is used, she’ll always be underused. She is the climate of this show. She knows how to handle all of the characters on this show perfectly, including Pete, but except for herself. I mean, psychology? She knows her husband is less than pathetic. But I think she probably handles her marital lack of bliss better than Betty.

But it was also perfect that she showed up then because just as my disgust-o-meter with Pete was getting higher and higher, Joan showed up, cooled the whole thing down, played him like a fiddle, and reminded me of the only man on the show I think is more detestable than Pete Campbell: Joan’s rapist husband. But Pete will straddle that line before the episode’s end again.

You know things are bad for these characters when the recurring mantra on this show, said here and several places before, is: “This never happened.” It’ll shock you how that’s only a slighter worse philosophy than “When you have no power, delay.”

But your buddy Cosgrove had one scene in the episode and two fabulous lines, including this one, and then: “New York in August? It’s like a great big melting wax museum. Nothing but those fat girls with the hairy armpits putting their feet in the fountain.”

August: And then there’s Italy.

Marco: Just a quick jaunt over the ocean. When you look down at the water from the window of the plan, is it clear enough for you to see the bottom or do you only see your own reflection?

August: Don the big tipper?

Marco: Such a manly thing. I don’t know how much money I’m handling you and you know what? Fuck it. Take it all. Whatever. Get lost. The same with when Carla wanted to talk to Betty about Sally. Don’s all like, “Oh, this is about the kids? Shit. I’m gonna… go get the luggage. Or something.”

August: And apparently Don is the cock blocker of his own wife? Ha ha.

Marco: A scene that perfectly reverses what I said earlier about Don humoring Betty less and less. I found that scene both perfect and wonderful and also chilling. Roleplay adds so much excitement, but then again, it’s kind of sad when a couple needs that excitement. Betty wants to be someone desirable, and hopefully that someone is her, or the alternate universe her that never got married to Don and had kids? And Don? Don wants to roleplay as a guy who’s going to get laid.

August: Where the fuck did Betty learn Italian? Wait, she was a model there, wasn’t she? No idea she knew the language. Apparently this just attracts Eurotrash douchebags with bad hair  to hit on her.

Marco: The Eurotrash have been hitting on pretty girls with big, ridiculous 1960s hair and telling yankees to go home for a long, long time. Nevermind Franz Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust, I think that’s what the two world wars were actually about.

I love that Connie is fascinated by Don, and by Don’s wife. And he wants Don to see what it’s all really like in a Hilton hotel. It’s like he wants to tame and break Don. Or maybe at the end of the season he’s going to claim that Don is his lost son and give him his fortune?

August: Best moment of the episode: Sally asserting her dominance? I think so. All she wanted to do was play being married and kiss Ernie? Tsk tsk. She’s growing up so fast.

Marco: Sally’s going through a little kid version of what Betty’s going through, but she doesn’t understand it. Not that Betty does either. Not that Betty would explain it to her daughter even if she did. I was amazed to see Betty being calmly motherly about the first kisses, of which there’ll be lots of, so true, but not addressing a recurring problem that’s been coming up more and more: Sally’s latent anger.

Little Sally Draper’s still in my top 5 of favorite characters on this show just because of the scene where she watches her mother put the make up on in the mirror over her shoulder. Again, Betty sees herself, sees what she wants others to see, something desirable, something more, and ignores her daughter, and then leaves. And leaves her daughter only to ponder things that she’s too young to understand.

August: I guess that dress line/move does work! Man, is that what I should be doing?

Marco: No.

August: Shouldn’t I be walking around, trying to fix young German girls’ dresses? I guess that could get you into trouble…

Marco: Not only is it sleazy to the nth degree, it’s scary to see that Pete them forces himself on that girl. This is the little boy who yanks his shirt and tie off over his head once he gets home and his wife is gone, but then wants his “kindness” rewarded and his manliness affirmed. If not for the editing of the show, I think we would’ve been questioning if Pete Campbell was a rapist as well, making that au pair go through kleenex box after kleenex box afterward…

August: I was surprised at Pete’s feelings of guilt afterward, his silence as a confession to his wife.

Marco: The guy’s never been called out on his shit good and properly before. I’d like to say that maybe this will be a turning point for him, and it probably will be, but not necessarily for the better.

That’s one of the things I really liked about Peggy letting Pete know about the baby in last season’s finale: It’s not that we didn’t get a chance to see his emotional breakdown/reaction to the news, it’s that her telling him that left no space for it. She was making it clear what happened and that she didn’t care what he thought of it.

August: And now Pete wants Trudy around more? WTF? It’s the 60s. Who wants to be around their wife more?

Marco: As someone far smarter than the two of us put it: emosogyny. Also, Trudy can do better. But her reaction to his admittal/non-admittal fascinates me. It’s like there’s one thing on the mind of or on the tip of the tongue of every 1960s married couple: fidelity. And it’s fragile.

August: Betty keeps changing and changing. This woman is full of it. And yet, so empty…

Marco: The same ways as Pete. In fact, I feel like Betty and Pete are the same, with a few differences. Both want respect, both want to be desired and admired. Both are afraid of being in their house by themselves, or with kids (who aren’t really people yet, let’s face it). Both need their spouse to make this a home. But right now that may not be good enough for Betty…

But I’m going with that for now. The same as Peggy is a junior version of Don Draper, Pete is a junior version of Betty. Both couples, whether they know it or not, are destined to be stuck with each other.

August: Home is where the heart is. But where is the heart?

Marco: It’s in Italy.