As the end of the season rapidly approaches, Mad Men is upping its game in the dramatic stakes. Despite being a fairly quiet, talky episode this week it felt like really not a minute of it was wasted – whereas most episodes have numerous minor plots going on in the background, this one was really only focused on three storylines, all of which provided some pretty dramatic revelations about the featured characters – even the weekly assignment for Sterling-Cooper served as a way to gain a fair amount of insight into Roger Sterling’s background. He might be a philanderer and a racist, among other things, but I’ve always found Roger to be oddly likeable so I’m pleased that this week’s episode gave some information into what makes him tick and I thought he acquitted himself quite decently. Sterling-Cooper’s work on Caldecott Farms dog food saw the return of his first love, horsemeat heiress Annabelle Mathis who, as Roger patiently explained to her as she got inebriated over dinner on the restaurant’s ‘lovely wines’ (the ordering of which gave Roger another opportunity to show his playfully cheeky, and rather smart-arsed side), broke his heart which lead to him going out to fight in the Pacific. It’s nice in a way to note that Roger has a heart to break, and even more so that despite the recently widowed Annabelle throwing herself at him, he actually cared enough about Jane to say no. Hearing about Roger’s younger days and his ambition to be like a character out of a Hemingway novel, as Annabelle dismissively put it ‘with the boxing’, was also very entertaining.

Speaking of oddly likeable characters, Betty and Don both became rather more sympathetic this week. Following Betty’s discovery of Don’s secret drawer last week, she indirectly tried to confront Don about this by asking him if he had any spare cash – she knew that he did after finding a huge wad of it in there, but he still denied it.  Then, she did the surprisingly rational thing of discussing her options with her family’s lawyer, a discussion that also made her seem more sympathetic as it showed just how unfair the options given to her were. Her mothering skills might be rather lacklustre, but the fact that Don would automatically get custody of the kids if she sought a divorce, which she probably wouldn’t even get unless she could prove that he had been unfaithful (we all know that he has been but as the lawyer mentioned it would still be difficult to prove this in court), seemed incredibly unjust. The legal subplot also made Betty seem even more sympathetic as it saw the reintroduction of her brother William who in his sheer awfulness shows just how well Betty turned out – this week he had plenty to say on the subject of their late father’s will and how unfair it was as, with him being worse off than Betty he wouldn’t be able to buy her half of the house so they could sell it.

As her legal options were pretty much exhausted, even though Don committed a major act of fraud which has thrown her sense of identity, and that of her children into doubt, Betty finally took the direct method and confronted Don about his years of lies. Which is where he also gained a fair amount of sympathy – he knew what he did was wrong, but as he pointed out it was just the easiest option to take at the time, and how would he ever be able to tell his family the truth about who he was as there would never be a right time to do so. Despite his continued infidelities, his soft-spoken confession to Betty that ‘I was surprised that you ever loved me’ was rather touching, as was his display of grief over his need to protect his identity leading to the death of his brother. Sadly, the episode still featured a lot of his latest conquest, insufferable know-it-all Miss Farrell, who was trying her best to get more of a commitment from Don. Although he seemed fairly happy to offer this to her – before he was confronted by Betty, who he presumed was still at her father’s house, Don was getting things ready to take a short trip away with Miss Farrell – and despite her later phoning his office and offering a sympathetic ear, I doubt that she’ll ever be more than another casual fling to him and that he’ll get bored of her like he did with Rachel Menken, Bobbie Barrett and, to an extent, Betty.

But really the highlight this episode was the return of Joan, whose storyline was an absolute delight. Starting with a phone call to Roger, which he noted was a pleasant coincidence as he was just thinking about her (something tells me that it wasn’t that coincidental as he thinks about her much of the time), Joan was reintroduced into the lives of the staff of Sterling-Cooper as she was busy looking for more employment to make up for the shortfall in income thanks to her useless husband Greg needing to go back into training to become a psychiatrist. Although there wasn’t a happy outcome (yet) from the phone call – as she mentioned to Roger’s offer of work she’d earn more working in a department store than she would as a secretary at Sterling-Cooper – it gave the two a chance to catch up, and have a heart-to-heart chat which they hadn’t had the opportunity to have for a long time, probably not since before Roger and Jane’s wedding. Even more importantly, the episode also gave Joan the chance to dish out a small bit of comeuppance to Greg, who after whining about his lot in life, and probably intentionally screwing up his interview for psychiatric training, got a vase smashed against the back of his head by a clearly furious Joan. His subsequent apology to Joan was also rather welcome, even if the news that he had decided to sort his life out by joining the army without even consulting her wasn’t so much. As we all know, his optimism about the Vietnam war was misguided, but it would probably be the best possible outcome for Joan if he gets shipped out there.     

With the next episode being the penultimate one in this series, it’s a fair bet that it will continue at this level of quality and that more revelations and dramatic developments will occur. By the way if anybody would like to see another programme covered in the same way after the end of this series feel free to suggest it in the comments section below.