SEASON 7, EPISODE 6.

(Mild spoilers.) There plenty in this episode but the main thing is Don, Peggy, and Pete, and Burger Chef. Even though it was probably mandated by licensing considerations, I think the choice of a defunct rather than an active burger chain is significant. It ties in with the frequent mentions of Buick -- which brand persists, but in nothing like its former glory -- and Peggy's (widely-noted) observation of the happy-family image her team has been playing with: "Does this family even exist anymore?" In a historical fiction, talking about people and things that the audience knows are doomed is an easy layup -- years ago a friend of mine adopted as a comical catchphrase, "This Hitler will be the death of Germany, mark my words" -- but I like to think the Mad Men staff was going further with the conceit than many of us have noticed.

All Mad Men fans are Don-and-Peggy fans, and it was pure catnip to have them lay down their arms and get cozy in this episode. Note, though, what came before: Some very good scenes about Peggy being pushed, humiliatingly, into having Don "bring home" the pitch. Elisabeth Moss is a marvel in these scenes. I especially like her weird, absent way of saying "what" when people (Don) or circumstances (Ted fucking Cheough popping up on speakerphone!) are discomfiting her; it's as if she's in a dream state. Even better is her response when Don, stunned that he has been proposed as the pitchman, asks Peggy whose idea it was. I love the way she swallows the word "mine." She's funnier than she's been in a while, but no less sad.

Don has less work to do to get to their big scene. We are already well-briefed on his love of Peggy: "I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you," The Suitcase and so forth. Here, he's only got to be pleased to be asked to the big dance, and walk into his working-and-drinking session with Peggy in a relaxed mood. (It shows a little growth on Don's part that he's able to do that, but not much. Don is coming along but slowly. He may need another lifetime to get where he has to go.) Peggy, on the other hand, has to work harder than anyone else, as usual. She has go through heavy emotional changes, and accept that all Don can do in response is give her a hanky and say "You're doing great."

And the way Peggy's engineered her life, the expense of soul she's been willing to pay for it, it's inevitable that she not only accepts the thin sustenance Don has to offer, she also gets inspiration from it -- inspiration to create... another crappy ad. It may be that I'm suffering from late Sopranos syndrome, where I feel the creator's disgust with his characters seeping in whether it's really there or not, but I want to believe that we've reached the point in the series where we're supposed to see that this "creativity" that Don and Peggy are all about, their search to always go further -- "there's always a better idea" -- is not leading anywhere, even to personal fulfillment; it's just an excuse not to have real relationships with other human beings. And that the things they're lavishing this talent on -- Burger Chef, Buick, the nuclear family -- are doomed anyway.

Peggy's new idea, born of pain, about a place where everyone is family, may be a better ad concept than the previous, but it's still crap to sell burgers, and if it's presented as an adland version of [great artist here] expressing his pain through [great artwork here], then it has to be a joke -- because really, how can we take it seriously? Maybe back when Don was pitching the Kodak Carousel as the wheel of life, his life, we could be stirred by the reflection of his own pain in the pitch, because that was dramatic irony, the spectacle of a guy doing one thing he has to do while feeling something else. In this episode, Don and Peggy are drinking, the lights are low, and they're talking to each other through stupid ad concepts, and finally dancing together -- and how realistic is it that they would, no matter how gamely the actors tackled it? -- to "My Way," a song that embodies the grossest, cheesiest kind of solipsism. To me that's just sad: Really, this emotionally stunted man who can only love her for being a reflection of himself, he's Peggy's family? Along with, in the final scene, Pete, the emotionally retarded, unacknowledged father of her unacknowledged child? Maybe that long dolly out from the Burger Chef -- which, despite the past few episodes worth of references, is the most Kubrickesque thing in the series -- that leaves these three framed in neon and formica, and cosseted in treacly 50s music, is the big honking tell -- that this brief, cheery moment is only an interlude, a little fort made out of slogans and denial, and that the back-biting and disintegration that have been advancing through the season are really what they're in for.

I will only add that it was very clever to mirror Bill Hartley's arrest and Benson bailing him out -- in these current, heady times for gay rights, a bracing reminder of pre-Stonewall realities -- with Roger's innuendos concerning Jim Hobart from McCann ("I think you're making eyes at me"). The world is still turning outside these people's lives.