Season 3: Episode 6: Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency
Punchline: "He doesn't walk out"
Season 3: Episode 6
“Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency”
Written by Robin Veith & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter
Setting: July 1963
It will be impossible to talk about this episode without first addressing… the lawnmower in the room.
Yes, this is the lawnmower episode.
I just shared the infamous clip to Twitter and one of the great joys of showing Mad Men to unfamiliar people is the response.
Fans commented “This is one of my favorite episodes!” and people who had not seen the show replied, “What… what is Mad Men actually about? I thought this was a show about cheating on your wife!”
“Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency” is the episode where a guy named Guy walks into Sterling Cooper and does not walk out after his foot is eaten by a secretary-piloted lawnmower.
There’s a secret to understanding the absurdity introduced in Season 3 and it’s all in the year.
Season 2 takes place in 1962 and even when Don crashes his car in a drunk driving accident, it feels like nothing is happening. No event can shatter the malaise and mundanity of his life in that year. World-ending nuclear missiles in Cuba pointed at the United States are met with a shrug from Don Draper. There’s a “nothing ever happens” cloud that hangs over and fogs his life.
1963 is a constant reminder that everything is about to change. Watching a guy get run over by a lawnmower is a precursor to the President’s violent death in Dallas. Blood and shock cut through everyday life and remind us that in an instant the world can become so unlike the past we know.
As Joan so bluntly puts it:
Season 3 in 1963 introduces both the shock of accepting change outside your control and the necessity of making change within your control.
The best-laid plans die because they were made in the past, a time that does not understand the world as it exists now.
Everything can feel like it is where it should been… and then a lawnmower runs you over.
Anything can happen, good and horrible. The comfort and set lifestyle of the 1950s is dying and pretending that the world is not changing will destroy any old lifestyle remnant that is left.
In addition to the knowledge that President Kennedy will die, the viewer knows the future for Sterling Cooper:
Selling out to the British will end in disaster. While it is unclear how or when this will happen, we have seen through almost half a season that Sterling Cooper and their new British bosses have never been on the same page. Even Brit transplant Lane Pryce has been ignored by the men across the pond who see him as a tool rather than a valued employee.
Betty will finally leave Don. The introduction of dependable suitor Henry Francis and the build-up of Betty’s clear hatred for her prison of life cannot last.
Everything that Roger, Cooper, and Don have built will only survive by valuing their talented employees.
This last one is big because it is the show’s primary belief and understanding of good business. A workplace that treats its employees like cattle for slaughter will run out of talent and then eat itself alive.
Lane Pryce was sent by the Brits to value pennies over people. Does the business now look better on paper than it did before? It may but once people are devalued, the place they stand in the business structure is now as thin as that paper.
Roger isn’t even in the new plans for the agency, not because they want him out but because they did not even think of him.
The new bosses of Sterling Cooper are the business leaders today who would talk about how exciting A.I. opportunities all while effectively destroying a pathway for innovation and creativity. Efforts like this remove the human connection and inevitably the business becomes unrecognizable.
Change seems good to these men in charge because they are the ones who have made it so and believe they know best. There’s a discomfort that Lane would ever question them when he reacts in shock that they want to send him to India to do the same work he has been doing here. At this moment, Lane realizes he is not their contemporary and his reward for a job well done is more work.
Valuing people and understanding their needs is how you build something that lasts. While prodigy ad man Guy is introduced as the British Don Draper, a true genius who can lead the future — he is then treated like a lame horse once his foot goes under that office party lawnmower.
Guy MacKendrick, the very man who devalued those below him, is now immediately devalued by those above him. It is a never-ending cycle of snakes biting an outreached hand.
The lesson is that while nothing short of a lawnmower immediately changes this hierarchy, you can immediately change your situation as a leader. How you treat others should be different from how bad management treats you. Do not become part of the problem, another snake waiting to climb up the ladder and bite down.
The supporting plots of the episode follow trouble at home as Joan’s husband Greg does not get promoted to doctor at his hospital and Betty scolds Sally for not accepting her new baby brother.
Both mirror the work realities at Sterling Cooper. Don expects to get a promotion too when the British visit Sterling Cooper. He handles reality gracefully and instead focuses on securing a new high-profile account with Hilton Hotels.
Don’s unnamed friend from the country club bar turned out to be one of Mad Men’s rare real-life figures Conrad Hilton. Impressed by Don’s realness, Connie is a stark contrast to the up-tight Brits terrorizing Sterling Cooper’s employees with drab boardroom meetings. This is a partnership founded on trust and Don establishes this trust by giving him feedback on an ad for free.
Desperation for his business would immediately put Conrad off on Don but he also wants a collaborator who knows what he is worth. You don’t need a foot to do that, just a foot in the door (thanks Roger).
Handsome, doctor Greg Harris knows his worth and that it is very little in his hospital. He does not get the promotion that Joan quit her job expecting him to get. She would forgive him had he only been honest and not taken it out on her. He understands his failings but still cannot accept them.
Don handles a failure to move up by chasing the next opportunity and Greg instead sinks into the earth and drags Joan with him.
Betty has named her new son Eugene after her recently deceased father which terrifies her daughter Sally. Very close to her grandfather, she sees baby Gene as an invader taking his place in their lives.
Again, Don shows how to value another person in a way that those around him do not. He does not bribe his daughter with Barbie dolls and comfortable lies but instead shows the human side of welcoming a new life.
We don’t know who baby Gene is yet and that is beautiful.
You can choose to be afraid of not knowing but life becomes more beautiful and possible when you accept that the unknown will become known with time.
When you try to plan and understand everything, the future will revolt against you. Joan says Guy probably woke up feeling great before that lawnmower ran him over.
Make the future possible by valuing those who make life beautiful.