"everything you think is going to make you happy just turns to crap." Don asks what Glen would do if he could do anything; later in Don's car, Glen drives and smiles as Don helps him steer. Production Jared Harris was told after the tenth episode read-through by series creator Matthew Weiner that Lane Pryce's time was at an end. About Lane's forced retirement, Harris stated: "In the beginning, he doesn't know that's the reason he's being called into the office. Once it comes up, he thinks he can bluff his way out of it. And then he goes through all of these emotions, from anger to denial to depression to acceptance. It was all written in there. The [script] was very specific about the different turns he would take." Harris continued about his character's subsequent suicide: "When Matt told me [the Jaguar] idea, I laughed my ass off. When he said the car doesn't start, I just laughed for about five minutes. Nothing goes right for [Lane]...The sadness that I feel is that it's been such an amazing experience." Pete's (Vincent Kartheiser), Don's (Jon Hamm), and Roger's (John Slattery) "shocked and chaotic" reactions to Lane's corpse were the actors' genuine reactions, according to Harris. Weiner called the decision to write off Lane Pryce "a terrible thing to have to deal with." He added, "You want to make sure that it's worth it, that they're going out with a bang and you're not sacrificing someone who's a great actor and a great musician in the orchestra. But also I feel like there have to be stakes. This year was filled with foreboding of violence and death, and the connection of that early summer between the riots, which resulted in death, police killing innocent people, and the Richard Speck murders and the guy on the Texas tower [Charles Whitman]. The randomness and the nihilism that was born from that was something that permeated the story. Lane's story I thought was about someone who has undervalued themselves and that was his only way out, he thought." Reception Critical reception The episode received critical acclaim. Alan Sepinwall of HitFix wrote about the "palpable, painful sense of dread throughout this episode", stating: "Though Lane's tax trouble seemed to come out of nowhere a few weeks ago...all of his behavior, and Don's, felt very true to form, and not like characters acting in a way