SEASON 7, EPISODE 7.

(Mild spoilers) (And yes, I'm later than usual on this episode, but I am writing for the ages, not for a prestige online journal mining the glass-teat afterglow.) This one went by in a rush, and no wonder: It was about the silliest Mad Men episode yet. I mean, forget the ending (for now, we'll get to it) -- this is an episode in which Peggy, transformed into an unbitch by reconciling with father figure Don, not only wins the Big Account but gets a phone number from a nice handsome day-laborer, whom I'm sure bitch-Peggy would have found beneath her. She's even nice to Julio.

Also, upon review Cutler's "You're just a bully and a drunk -- a football player in a suit" is the sort of thing that would have cracked me up on SCTV's The Days of The Week.

On the other hand, two phone calls from Don to the non-Peggy women in his life are bracing and sensible. The lesser of these is the kiss-off with Megan, because that was always a ridiculous relationship, but it was an appropriately low-key way to end it. Better still is his call to Sally, because he's doing what he always does, trying to play sky-God Daddy -- "Don't be so cynical. You want your little brothers to talk that way?" -- and Sally is so clearly over it. She dropped that receiver with authority.

Now to Cooper's exit. I never liked that character or his zen bullshit. I know one of the reasons Weiner wanted Robert Morse for this show was his pedigree as the original J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, but before this episode I don't believe they ever really lined that equity up with the actual show. What was Bert Cooper? He was supposed to be old Madison Avenue, but he seemed mostly a dispenser of cracker-barrel wisdom dressed in a fine manner and complex sentences. Maybe he was supposed to be a mix of Leo Burnett's "sodbusting corniness" and the mandarin sleekness of old ad grandees. But he never registered with me as anything but someone everyone had to respect because he'd been around.

This episode attempted to change that, and entirely after Cooper's death. First of all, the climactic partners meeting is really like something out of How to Succeed, or The Solid Gold Cadillac or a dozen other old Broadway business farces. Once we are hustled past the fact that there's no actual contract to vote on, the whole scene's a riot -- with Joan and Pete perched in a corner, dollar signs in their eyes, Don Draper talking Ted Chaough off the ledge, and Cutler's curtain-closing button -- "It's a lot of money" -- worthy of Moss Hart. We're a long way from the existential dread of Don Draper.

So it was easier then to accept Bert appearing in a fantasy sequence, crooning "The Best Things in Life are Free." I'm sure Weiner was thinking of "Brotherhood of Man," the finale of How to Succeed, but that would have been too much of a muchness. As it was the Tin Pan Alley tune was much more to the point. Earlier, when Roger called Don about Cooper's death, he lamented that "the last thing I said to him was the lines to some old song." That was "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," a similarly breezy Depression-era number. I took the symmetry to mean that Cooper was meant to be the embodiment of the blithe bullshit on which advertising is based -- the smile and shoeshine that rings cash registers. Advertising is real and rough business, but the giants of it usually had some sense of its fun and absurdity, too, which informs the popular perception of the craft. Don, on the other hand, is deadly serious about it; recall his speech about love and nylons and no tomorrow. Both Cooper and Don are acquainted with hard times, but Cooper has always chosen to float above where Don has wallowed. That's why Cooper's dancing in the afterlife.

For the show's purposes, the important thing -- at least it may be important; we have another delayed-half-season season to go -- is that Don sees him.