* In the first shot of the episode, the new SC&P logo obscures Don’s face.

* Very autumnal color scheme. Welcome to the Fall.

* Stan has ambition! “That’s not the way I saw it.” “That’s not the way you saw me.” Poor guy finally takes the risk of peeking out from behind his beard (remember he was the one who advised Peggy not to hire Ginsberg precisely because his obvious ambition was worrisome) and this is how he gets repaid.

* Roger: “You learn more from disappointment than you do from success.” This should really be the motto of this show w/r/t its critics.

* Don: “I love Hershey’s.” Add that to the list, right underneath “puppies.”

* You know, Roger had a nice little hot streak here at the beginning of the episode. “It’s all fun and games till they shoot you in the face”; “Bob Benson’s here to see you.”/”Really?”…Roger truly is one of the funniest characters on television, and it makes him palatable to us just like it makes him palatable to the other characters.

* He does have his flashes of insight, though. Sussing out that Bob’s got ulterior motives is good old-fashioned accounts-man people-reading.

* So Sally got into that school and is already half a semester in. I guess that’s plenty of time to learn how to mercilessly subtweet your dad on the phone.

* I never really picked up on the idea that Don’s drinking this season is unusually heavy. That was evident back in season four, after the divorce and before Megan, but here, I dunno, it went over my head. But of course we’ve seen him drinking alone in a bar probably half a dozen times in 12 hours.

* This final drinking-alone-in-a-bar scene is tied to the original by Vietnam. Don’s content to dress down the preacher until the guy insults RFK and MLK and slain soldiers, one of whom (or so Don’s subconscious believes) he helped get married in Hawaii. Don’s conservatism is clearly the part of his post-Korea constructed persona he’s put the least energy into maintaining, and he’s repulsed by violence wrought against people who weren’t asking for it. So he insults Jesus a couple times, calling him a Nixon voter and/or a guy with a pretty sloppy handle on things, and then whiteknights for the fallen by assaulting a minister and winding up in the drunk tank. The social upheaval of 1968, poured into a tumbler and served straight into Don Draper.

* Those autumn colors really made it look like the walls were closing in around Peggy as Ted and his family parade through.

* Megan in white.

* Don’s lost control again…so he wants to move to California??? Given that I had every believe he’d actually do so, and that the big shock to which this season was building was that the final season of Mad Men would take place in Los Angeles, I was quite stunned by this. But I shouldn’t have been. Don’s always trying to recreate the magic of his West Coast sojourns. And that he’d just done so, so unsuccessfully, three or four episodes ago should have been all the indication I needed that he wasn’t gonna pull it off this time.

* Not only does he steal Stan’s idea, he plagiarizes his description of it. It’s “the cure for the common breakfast” all over again. (Maybe that’s why we got a glimpse of Danny again in the California episode.)

* That final shot of Don and Megan hugging each other, ready to make a fresh start — so soapy! Love it.

* Oh my god Manolo killed Pete’s mom.

* It’s only Tuesday, but already Vincent Kartheiser’s line reading for his response to Bob asking him how he’s doing is the stuff of internet legend. “Not great, Bob!” That’s a top-five elevator ride on this show, for sure.

* Peggy looking rrrrrrrrrrrrright. Wow. Love how she obliterated the brown palette of everyone’s outfits with that black and pink thing, too.

* “GM ’69” lol

* Bob standing there with the keys to the car; Pete realizing he’s been beaten before the game even really started. Poor Pete. He tried, he really did.

* The thing about Bob, though: provided you believe Manolo acted on his own, is Bob even dangerous unless someone comes directly at him? Pete was keeping him around as a secret weapon, but do we have any indication he’s up to no good? Left to his own devices, would he become the Don Draper of accounts, phony but legitimately talented and valuable? Or have his attempts to worm his way into Pete and Joan’s lives shown us that there’s something more profoundly troubling about him? (The thing at GM, whatever, Pete brought that on himself, like Don getting Roger stuffed and drunk and walking him up 23 flights of stairs before the Nixon meeting back in the day. I’m talking the potential that he could really hurt someone.)

* If it weren’t for Don’s Hershey’s meltdown, the entire multi-scene Ted/Peggy sequence would be the centerpiece of the episode, maybe the season. It’s not the heaviest thing that ever happened, but it’s one of the most carefully, unflinchingly observed things the show’s done; its sense of humor, drama, and sexiness is really finely tuned. It’s funny that Ted lurked outside her apartment and told her neighbors he’s a cop like that’ll make his presence easier to excuse. It’s funny that when he opens her dress she’s wearing a lacy black bra and when she takes off his jacket he’s wearing a gooberish blue turtleneck. It’s funny that her hot pink lipstick is all over him. (Kudos to the New Yorker‘s Emily Nussbaum for recognizing this as the “Mark Your Man” callback it is.) It’s sexy that he told her he doesn’t want anyone else to have her, and that she gets turned on when he tells her he loves her, and that she looks so good. It’s dramatic that it has this tone of conspiracy, and that he gets right in the shower after it’s over, and that he goes right from one bed to the next. Fine, fine writing and filmmaking, and a payoff for an entire season, and the storyline’s not even over yet.

* Bob killed Pete’s mom and stole his job, at least as far as Pete could tell.

* Part two of the Ted/Peggy storyline also feeds directly into Don’s climactic collapse, and goddamn is it deft. Imagine being someone who literally has to beg Don to save him — especially after this season, in which Don’s reckless, impulsive narcissism regarding business decisions has been smashed in everyone’s face like James Cagney’s grapefruit. “I know that there’s a good man in there,” Ted tells him, and at the moment he says it you just know that a large segment of the audience (certainly a large segment of the portion of the audience comprised of TV critics) thinks he’s just plain wrong. Don says he couldn’t help Ted even if he wanted to (which he already maybe does), then advises him “It will go away,” which I guess he should know, although he failed to mention that having one of your kids walk in on it will help move things along in that regard. Ted replies with the most telling and gutting half-sentence in the history of the show: “My father was–” half-second pause, doesn’t miss a beat “You can’t stop cold like that.” And suddenly Ted makes sense: the slightly manic optimism of his pitches, his oedipal relationship with Don, his abject horror about himself and Peggy. He’s an adult child of an alcoholic, and he knows what addiction can do to a family.

* Now we’re at the Hershey’s pitch. Don’s in control, but we know something’s wrong, because we know he’s bullshitting, and his best pitches don’t bullshit. The Carousel pitch is the classic example, but think back to all his man-who-wasn’t-there pitches from earlier in the season. He may not have known it, but he was telling the truth in them, about who he is, about what he wanted. Now? “My father tousled my hair. his love and the chocolate were tied together.” Fuck outta here. “Hershey’s is the currency of affection,” says the son of a whore, raised in a whorehouse, deflowered by a whore. “The childhood symbol of love,” says the boy who saw hobos symbolize his father with the mark of a dishonest man, who was beaten and hated. “Sweet tales of childhood” is the angle for the ad, and Don’s got the shakes.

* Then he gets real. Holy shit. What does Hershey’s really taste like? The life of orphans whose caretakers want them around, of families that are real, glimpsed in a magazine left on the toilet by prostitutes. It tastes like “being wanted.” It’s something purchased with money stolen from johns, then eaten “alone, in my room, with great ceremony, feeling like a normal kid.” It tastes like something worth destroying this client relationship for, because he wouldn’t want to sell it anyway, it’s too special, and people already know what it tastes like anyway. Ted certainly knows, and Don won’t take it away from him, at long last.

* So yeah. Wow.

* “To bring your mother’s killer to justice?” “Ballpark.” The brothers Campbell, ladies and gentlemen. “She loved the sea.” You assholes. Wow, this is a magnificent Pete episode, and it’s not even over.

* “The world out there…I have to hang on to them or I’ll get lost in the chaos.” There but for the grace of Don goes Ted Chaough.

* “Aren’t you lucky. To have decisions.” Yet who winds up in Don’s chair, in Don’s office, striking Don’s pose? Hope springs eternal, Peggy Olson.

* “FUCK the agency. I quit my job!” Megan doesn’t have decisions either. Well, she has one, and she makes it. We’ll see if it sticks.

* Pete’s free. “It’s not the way I wanted it.” “Now you know that.” Decisions aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. And yeah, beautiful, beautiful Pete episode.

* Don getting fired (“fired”) is something I saw coming but never said I saw coming so it doesn’t count for you but man I feel smart about it. But yeah, that guy was just fucking up left and right. Missing Sunkist, tanking Hershey’s, screwing up the public offering no matter what else he did right at the time, all those blown pitches, MIA half the time, making life miserable on purpose for at least one partner and the chief of copy…He had to go. It spoke well of Joan and Roger, and even Jim and Bert, that they looked unhappy about it.

* Let’s add Duck Phillips to injury, sure, why not.

* Bob in an apron with a knife hahahahahaha

* I like Roger’s tweedy jackets, like a Rat Pack grandpa.

* “This is where I grew up.” The poverty that haunted the season in flashbacks and in riots is stared in the face. A little boy eats a popsicle, melting, as Mad Men has told us before, with every second. Sally looks at Don, and maybe sees him for what he is. The end.

* That was a quietly incredible episode, one that tied everything together in unexpected ways, making everything feel meticulous but not like the innards of a clock. I love this show.

* Jump cuts as Megan awakes without Don. You know, it’s just pleasant to see filmmaking, sometimes — the things that remind you of when you first became aware that the stuff on screen was the result of choices people made. And thanks to Scorsese I’ll always be a sucker for jump cuts within a single set of physical actions in a single physical space.

* Don curled up in…Bobby’s bed, or Sally’s? Either way.

* Lots of dark red in this episode so far. Uh-oh. Worse than the telltale orange, the eldritch salmon, of the last season?

* OH MY GOD KEN COSGROVE

* Seriously, I thought that was it. I thought they’d killed him. I’ve seen at least one critic scoff at that reaction, saying that’s not how the show works, but the show’s unpredictability is part of how the show works, of course. And dropping Kenny in the first few minutes is very Sopranos, too.

* Wow, that Nixon ad really directly presaged, or at least paralleled, the release of Night of the Living Dead that same month, didn’t it? Mayhem in black and white. Things fall apart.

* Don and Betty seem to be getting along great since their one-night stand. Maybe that cleaned the wound, I don’t know. Knowing these two I doubt it’ll last.

* Speaking of getting along great, Ted and Peggy are thick as thieves. I guess his blow-off didn’t take. Perhaps he redoubled his efforts after spotting Peggy’s rapport with Pete during their trip to Ocean Spray bog country.

* “You finally found a hooker who takes traveller’s checks?” “…why did I tell you that.” The open mocking of Harry to his face is endlessly entertaining, particularly since he’s actually good at his job — the partners just can’t help themselves anyway, such is their contempt for him.

* Rosemary’s Baby is back! (I really thought it was NotLD at first, but I’m not sure how many swanky midtown theaters that played in.)

* Don’s gonna fuck Ted because Ted’s fucking Peggy. (Or is he? I guess it’s not crystal clear. Actually it’s unlikely. But the principle is the same.)

* For the record, I share Don’s skepticism about using Rosemary’s Baby to sell children’s aspirin.

* Glad to see Ken escape death with just a faceful of buckshot. Glad to see someone, anyone draw a line around unacceptable conduct and refuse to cross it for love or money.

* I’d probably have been a much worse sport about the Sunkist/Ocean Spray switcheroo than Ted was, three times the business be damned. Did he know even then what was up? Is it just me, or is the irony here that Don would never have thought of screwing with Ted on purpose if Ted hadn’t already accused him of doing so when in fact he was only doing it accidentally?

* “I once had a client cup my wife’s breast.” The formalism of Jim Cutler. “Lee Garner Jr. made me hold his balls.” The ribaldry of Roger Sterling.

* So the Ted situation causes the Bob/Pete/Chevy situation, insofar as Sterling and Cooper join forces with Cutler to force a Cutler protégé on the account as a make-good.

* “You should watch what you say to people.” Uh-oh. Dark Bob. Pete, I fear you’re being out-operated.

* “I wanna be a grown-up, but I know how important my education is.” The education of Sally Draper continues.

* Sad lol at Duck Phillips still kinda implying he wants to work at SC&P. Nod of approval at Pete trying to get Bob headhunted out of his hair.

* Dark Bob en español! What exactly was he encouraging Manuel to do?

* I guess for the record I need to note Don’s baby impression and Joan’s yenta impression. They were funny. But mostly I was still wrapping my head around using Rosemary’s Baby to sell children’s aspirin.

* Seriously — surely the fact that that movie is really really scary, and that it invokes Satanism, was enough to make it kind of toxic for this kind of thing? Or do our perceptions of the film now stem from what we know about Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate and Charles Manson in real life?

* “This is as much for you to find out about us as it is for us to find out about you.” Sally’s a quick study, you’ll see, lady.

* “That Spanish fly!”

* I was not happy with the idea of Sally getting hazed. Fortunately it turns out she’s just hangin’.

* And now Don’s murking Ted left and right. Ugly.

* GLEN BISHOP’S BACK! HE’S BALLIN’! HE LOOKS GREAT!

* Loved Duck’s tall glass of milk.

* “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” “…I have.” The show doesn’t traffic in chill-inducers as a rule, but man, what a mighty, mythic exchange that was. Bob Benson, goldbricker.

* Great deep focus shots with Megan and Don. Again, I love filmmaking. Thanks, Orson Welles.

* Aw, Sally gets jilted. And then Rolo gets his.

* “You have to feel the conspiracy,” Peggy tells the client, never suspecting Don’s just sitting there being a conspiracy of one.

* “It’s a little bit personal. In fact it’s very personal.” No shit, Don.

* “This was Frank Gleason’s last idea.” He taints a beloved project even while saving it, dragging Ted’s friend into it, stealing the credit from Peggy. Absolutely brutal. A Draper pitch from hell.

* “C’mon. We’ve all been there. I mean, not with Peggy, but…” So mean! Unnecessarily! Don, Don, Don.

* “You’re not thinking with your head.” Sometimes Don’s lack of self-awareness can be stunning.

* Pete’s confrontation with “Bob Benson” was magnificent. “Well, for one thing, I wanted you to stop smiling.” Pete hasn’t gotten a hero moment like that in…ever? And Bob can’t help but be unctuous even when cornered: “You don’t respond well to gratitude.”

* Here’s the thing about Bob, though: If we believe both his romantic overture to Pete, and his story about how Pete was responsible for “hiring” him, that makes him not just a con man, but…kind of mentally unstable, right? As if the empty office and self-help tapes weren’t indication enough?

* “I’m off limits.” Now Pete has a secret weapon. To wield against whom? Does it matter? He kept the rifle around without ever actually firing it, after all.

* “My father never gave me anything.” Your ability to maneuver came from someplace, Sally.

* “You’re a monster.” I’ve seen a lot of people celebrate this line, this characterization. And obviously it’s true — Don deliberately dismantled people’s happiness in this episode, in a way that reminded me of, say, Tony Soprano deliberately goading his sister Janice into ruining her anger management. But I still feel a great deal of both sympathy and empathy for him, as I do for all the protagonist figures on shows like this, no matter how loathsome they become. They force you to walk a mile in their shoes.