A Great Halloween Treat From Mad Men

Best episode ever.
On “Mad Men” Sunday, it’s Halloween but the masks are off. Strong women on the show learned show learned so much about the guys they thought they knew and loved it was hard to take in. But it was great to sit back and reflect about.
Betty Draper learned the truth about Dick Whitman, aka Don Draper. Former Sterling Cooper client Annabelle Mathis got served like dog food by former flame Roger Sterling, and the disappointments of being hitched to the wrong guy escalated for Joan Holloway, er, Joan Harris.
Let’s look at Roger first.
It seems the final movie for Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe has created a problem for Mathis’ Caldecott Farms dog food by giving the horsemeat it’s made from a bad name. She turns to Madison Ave., including Sterling Cooper for help, which brings her back into contact with Roger.
When they were young, Roger and Annabelle had a “Casablanca” moment, traveling in France together before she dumped him. When Annabelle brings up the film, Roger bristles at the comparison. Bogart got dumped for a guy who was going to end World War II, he points out, which he lost out to a guy who was going to run his father’s dog food business.
After a wine-soaked client dinner at a French restaurant, Roger surprisingly turns down Annabelle’s advances. “You were always good drunk,” she recalls. Now she’s hurt.
Roger has found fidelity with his new young bride. “It’s different with this girl. I’m sorry,” he says.
She’s doubly hurt when Don says the only solution is to change her product’s name to break its association with butchered horses.
After the meeting, Roger admits she once broke his heart. She says she’d made a mistake: for her, Roger was “the one.” But Roger replies: “You weren’t the one.” Annabelle concedes. “You’re lucky you found her.”
But Roger still seems to have strong feeling for Joan, whose post-Roger marriage has become a nightmare.
Greg washed out as a surgeon and now Joan is helping him cram for an interview to become a psychiatrist. He opens up and tells her about his dad’s nervous break down. She praises his openness, and explains: “The most important thing about an interview is to express enthusiasm in a believable way.”
Despite Joan’s knowing prep, he blows the interview, then shouts at Joan about her not understanding what its like to not get something he wanted his whole life—and she busts a vase over his head.
But she hasn’t beaten any sense into his head. He later announces his found what he thinks is the answer to their problems: He’s enlisted. He’s going to be an officer and a surgeon to Joan will never have to work.
But Joan has called Roger to see if he can help her find a better job than working in Bonwit Teller. Brilliant as ever, she’s called when she knew his secretary was out having her hair done.
Roger asks if she’d like to come back to Sterling Cooper. Alas, Joan knows she’s her old jobs been filled (and the secretarial pool has by reorganized alphabetically by cup size.)
“Do you miss it here?” he asks. “Are you asking if I miss you?” she shoots back.
He calls a colleague he knows wants to whip his office into shape and reminds him of the memorable redhead who used to work for him. She’ll have to be well paid, but Roger says he wants to help her. “She means something to me,” he says, admitting Joan might have been “The One “for him.
But the biggest fireworks come from the Draper home. These the scenes are as riveting as any I’ve seen anywhere on TV recently.
First Betty, who is shocked into action by she found in Don’s secret drawer, first marches over her brother, who seethes that she’s got control of her late father’s house. In a conversation with her family’s attorney, she wants to know what her options are because of “compromising facts” she’s learned about her husband
Under New York law back then, without proof of infidelity, she could lose everything, including the kids in a divorce.
The lawyer’s advice: “You have three small children together. At least go home and give it a try.” Ah, the good old days.
Indeed Betty goes home, earlier than planned. She and the kids surprise Don, who was about to start a getaway with new love Suzanne Farrell.
Betty shoos the children upstairs and confronts Don, demanding he open his locked drawer. He objects. She shows him he has the key and notes that by then, he know that she knows about the past he’s had hidden in there. Cleary she has the upper hand.
Increasingly sheepish, he says he can explain. “I know you can,” she retorts. “You’re a very gifted storyteller.”
Dick tells the story of how he became Don. He needs a drink to steady his hands so shaky he can barely hold a cigarette. He tells of changing identities to get out of Korea and divorcing the dead man’s wife when he met Betty. (Betty corrects the timing of his Valentine’s Day decree.) She also figured out that he’d seen the other Mrs. Draper while he was on last season’s strange trip to California, which he owns up to.
He goes through the pictures in the box, talking about his daddy Archie, his mom the prostitute, the woman who raised him and her man, Uncle Mack.
“They’re all dead,” he explains, including half brother Adam. Don confesses that Adam committed suicide after coming to Don for help and being rebuffed. “He just wanted to be part of my life and I couldn’t risk all of this,” he sniffs.
The best part is that during all of this, Suzanne is still in Don’s car. Eventually she grabs her suitcases and takes the walk of shame home. The next day, Don calls her. She asks if he got caught, and he says it’s more complicated than that. She asked if he’s OK. “Only you would ask about me right now,” he replies. But he acknowledges he won’t be able to see her for a while.
The end of the episode is a classic. The kids are ready to go trick or treating and Don agrees to go with them. Sally’s dressed as a gypsy and Bobby as a hobo, appropriate offspring for the Whitman family.
The ring a bell and a neighbor identifies the kids costume and looks at Don and Betty and asks the $64,000 question. “And who are you supposed to be?”
The episode ends with “Where is Love,” the plaintive song sung by the orphan Oliver in the Broadway musical.
The scenes between the suddenly steely January Jones as Betty and the emotionally unraveling Jon Hamm are exceptional. But with Don’s secrets out, where does their relationship go? And where else can “Mad Men” take us with just two episodes before the season concludes and just weeks before all of America suffers the loss of both a young energetic president and its own early-60s innocence?  I can’t wait to find out.