* “This program contains brief nudity.” YES.

* Don has a toothache. Very “Test Dream.” Perhaps that’s the best way to understand “The Phantom,” from the seen-and-not-seen title on down: an experiment in investing a “real” episode of television with the nervous energy of a dream. Don’s repeated hallucination of Adam was the most obvious element, but there were also a series of gestures of finality that made it seem like various characters were waking up from the events of the season. Megan gets her “big break.” Pete gets the Manhattan apartment he wanted. Roger’s on top of the world again, smiling naked at the skyline, the trickster god triumphant. The agency is flush and ready to expand. Don has his rotten tooth removed, and in the end seems ready to get back up to his old tricks thanks to the most portentous cut to black since The Sopranos. Were Beth and her ECT-induced memory loss — her feelings and actions washed away, leaving her resplendent in recuperation and ready to face a new day — the key? Was it all a dream?

* Pete grabs Beth’s scarf as it trails behind her luggage on the train. Oh, Pete, you hopeless romantic, you. Everything that makes you happy slips through your fingers.

* Now that we know what Harry was asking Joan about in the elevator, I have to give the “Next week on Mad Men” from last week props for a terrific fakeout. Who can blame anyone for assuming Harry, that grinning dope, would be the one to ask Joan about how she got her partnership?

* Adam???

* “I’m so bored with this dynamic.” Right on, Sal. I wonder how much longer Don and Ginsberg will put up with each other.

* Pete’s absurd high-backed leather office chair.

* “Don, I give you my proxy—I’ve got things to do.” “We can do that?” Has there ever been a group of businessmen less interested in being businessmen?

* So Beth is a sick person. I get it now — the joyless simulacrum of pleasure in lieu of pleasure itself.

* I’m not the only one who thought Glen’s the heavy breather on Megan’s phone, right?

* Pete’s plan is to escape to L.A., like Don did. Something about tragedy and farce?

* A door in a dark place Beth wants to go through. Resonant image, man.

* Pete says suicide is “for weak people, people who can’t solve problems.” So that’s how he’s dealing with Lane’s death. I actually did more thinking about Pete’s reaction over the past week than I did about anyone else’s. Surely his feelings toward Lane were mixed, to say the least, after the humiliating beating the buttoned-down nebbish doled out to him a few months back, although it sure seemed that Pete’s horror and sadness over his death were real. How do you deal with the death of someone within your circle who you’ve come to dislike? It isn’t easy, though in my experience the dislike doesn’t change much, except as a marker of the waste inherent in death. That’s how I spent the little time I had dealing with this person? But if Pete feels that suicide is terminal weakness, and a terminally weak man beat him up, what does that say about Pete?

* “I thought you hated advertising.” If you were wondering how Don had really processed Megan’s departure from the agency for an acting career, look no further. “Well you certainly don’t think it’s art, and you’re an artist, aren’t you?” Nasty, man, and targeted not only at her insecurity about who she is and what he does, but implicitly at his own, too.

* Megan gets her own chance to broadcast her deepest problems with their relationship, after she gets hammered. “This is all I’m good for,” she tells Don as she tries to seduce him, and it’s not clear if she’s sarcastically referring to how she thinks he sees her, or how she sees herself. (Answer: C) Both A and B.) Then more shots at Don, alleging he wants her to fail so that she can be the proper homebody he supposedly wants her to be. I’d say that this isn’t true, that he always works to temper his initial unpleasant reactions to news of the demands of her career in a way he never did after fights with Betty, and that after he sees how fucked up she is over her failures he goes ahead and gets her the commercial gig after all. But is that because he truly values her happiness, or simply the peace and quiet that goes with it?

* At least now we can see why he has the problem he has with her acting career, particularly as it takes on a more commercial manifestation: He now cannot help but see her as a product to be sold. Watch his face curdle as he watches her test real, the smoke in the air solidifying the beam of light from the projector and literalizing the male gaze like it’s one of Cyclops’s force blasts. (The circle on the chest of Megan’s dress is the bullseye.) He goes from pride and enjoyment to…bleh, something’s wrong with this. Of course, what’s wrong is that he’s watching her in the conference room where he’s no doubt screened a million ads for a million products. “Megan Calvet” is just the latest thing he needs to figure out how to sell. This circles back to his reaction to her performance of “Zou Bisou” in front of their friends and coworkers — he didn’t want them to have access to her, and to his relationship with her, in that way. (Note how the sophisticated, sexy “European-ness” of “Zou Bisou” has now been transformed into a comical, over-the-top mirror image for the commercial.) It circles back to his reaction to her departure from advertising — he wants her to be in the elite, the people who are in on it, the salesmen, not for her to be the thing being sold. It circles back to his reaction to Joan’s indecent proposal, and to his worst-ever insult for Betty a season or two back, and to paying a prostitute to hit him in the face, and to Lane’s wife use of brothels as the coup de grace in her dressing down of Don when he visits her to drop off the check — because of his mother, he is horrified by the idea that a person can be bought and sold.

* About that check: I think Don really does think he’s done something kind for Lane’s family, and not in a self-congratulatory way, either, but because he wants to be kind to Lane’s family. He and Joan don’t even bring it up for a vote, not even after Joan says they ought to: He’s going to do what he can to make it up to Lane, and by proxy to his brother. (Ah, proxy: “We can do that?”) For her to throw it back in his face like that must have been genuinely upsetting to him.

* If Lane had been able to hang on for four months he’d have been fine.

* Jeez, Maman is a monster. It’d take an awful lot of work on being deliberately awful for me to get to a place where I’m comfortable dismissing my own daughter as having the artistic temperament without actually being an artist. What a devastating line. If this is secretly Maman’s self-assessment, as Megan alleges when she throws her “the world couldn’t support that many ballerinas” comment back in her face, that only makes it worse, the same way that Don’s self-doubt only fuels the worst elements of his reaction to Megan’s career.

* Just as devastating: Pete, telling Beth/himself that his life with his family is “just a temporary bandage on a permanent wound.” Pete is horrible in many ways, but at that moment could you feel anything less than total sorrow and sympathy for him? How do you get out from under an injury that deep? Say whatever else you want to say about Pete, but it takes strength and bravery to face yourself like that and declare that your whole life is a waste. It’s a courage you don’t really even want to have.

* At least there’s Roger around to brighten things up — the Loki of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce pantheon. Look how happy he is just to have successfully tricked Don and Megan with his Emile impersonation! Watch as he finds the single funniest, smuttiest thing to do or say in any given situation: “What is ‘Regina’?” Witness his triumphant gaze and mighty buttcheeks as acid sends him the message that he is indeed the master of all he surveys!

* Many lovely, haunting shots in this thing. Megan leaving the frame as she turns on the shower, her bright pink robe hanging on the wall like a gun waiting to go off, which it later does. Roger and Megan’s mom on that vast gold bedspread. Lane’s empty red chair looming in the background as Don passes his wife the check. The glory shot of the five partners silhouetted against the window of the new office space.

* “Give me an old fashioned.” Oh, Mad Men! Seriously though, that kind of directness is a lot of fun. If this were an action show they’d make points by shooting people, and if this were a straightforard comedy they’d make points with jokes, and here they make points with symbolism. Why not enjoy it?

* “Are you alone?” I guess it depends. Adam tells Don it’s not the tooth that’s rotten; at just around the same time, Don’s relationship with Megan appears poised to permanently sour. Was it the good part of Don that was removed? Did they take out his sweet tooth instead?

* We’ll get to it eventually, don’t worry.

* But first: A weirdly optimistic episode, in its “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play” way, no? As though the whole show had heard “You Really Got Me” as Peggy got on the elevator and reacted accordingly?

* For instance: Apparently SCDP has successfully completed its public-image turnaround. Both the rival ad exec, who has no reason to brownnose Don, and the 4A guy, who has no reason to hire Lane, say how impressed they are. Dunlop basically does the same thing by seeking the agency out rather than vice versa. The mood is reflected among every non-Lane partner.

* What’s more, Don’s got the fire in his belly again, to an alarming, almost monstrous degree. For the first time in ages he seems like the kind of man Connie Hilton would admire, a guy determined to shoot for the moon.

* And he didn’t need to sacrifice his skill with a pitch in this attempt to make big things happen again. Bulldozing Ed Baxter was brilliant lateral thinking, and moreover Don’s position of privilege allows him to pull that kind of thing off where Peggy failed in the Heinz baked beans meeting earlier in the season.

* Nor did he have to ditch his newfound kindness and empathy to make it happen. He may not have been able to pull Lane out of his nosedive, but he gave Lane nearly the exact same advice he gave Peggy in the hospital long long ago — proof he truly did care about the man and didn’t want to see him hurt any worse. He may have given Glen a lift back to school in order to have a nice long car ride to clear his head, but he saw that the kid was hurting and did his best to help. He may not have been able to bring himself to talk to Megan about Lane’s death just yet, but he was as warm and kind to her as he could be without getting into it.

* (And it’s worth noting he’s still legitimately pissed about what happened with Joan. No relief that he didn’t have to make decision himself — just anger at his partners for going against his wishes and putting his friend in such an awful position. And at her, too, it needs to be said.)

* I remain impressed and delighted with the Don/Megan relationship, by the way. He comes home and she blasts him for not calling, reading all sorts of disrespect into it — she drops it right away when he tells her what he’d been through, and from then on out it’s all sweet mutual gestures like holding hands and gently ribbing him for drinking his way through the problem. They’re the best, man!

* Like Don alleges Lane felt when the truth came out, Sally and Glen are relieved to mutually discover they don’t like each other in that way. How much better to admit it than to force yourselves to go through the motions in hopes of making it true. (I also got a nice LOL when Sally asked Glen what he wanted to do now that they had the apartment and the morning to themselves, and his was response was basically “duh–the Museum of Natural History!” I had some empty-house free-morning moments with lady friends myself when I was Glen’s age, and I had no interest going to no motherfucking museum, that’s for sure.)

* Even Betty got a nice warm moment of validation, when Sally ran home to her (despite spending an entire episode basically wishing she didn’t exist) for comfort after her Sansa Stark moment. Of course, being Betty, she converts this into an opportunity to gloat over Megan (something Megan either doesn’t notice or doesn’t give a shit about, to her credit either way), and it’s unclear from her face whether she’s capable of processing momentary closeness with her estranged daughter through any lens other than her own narcissism. But we can hope!

* On a slightly darker but no less delightful note: Ken Cosgrove, thou art avenged! Ken effortlessly kneecaps Pete Campbell after all this time, at last getting his revenge for the way Pete made him eat shit when he first (re)joined the new agency. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that a guy who writes science fiction short stories under a series of pseudonyms has no problem waiting a long time for his moment in the sun — and when he saw it, he took it, with the same smiling self-confidence and security with which he does everything else. He’s actually succeeded in being what all the other people at SCDP torture themselves into trying to be.

* Great Sally moment #1: Oh, fun, fighting with Mom about food! Am I right, ladies??

* Great Sally moment #2: “I wanted to know if you would have any problem with me strangling Sally.” “Should we be having this conversation on the phone?” I laughed really hard at that one.

* Great Sally moment #3: filling that coffee cup with sugar. Sweets to the sweet.

* “Why do we do this? I don’t like what we’re doing. I’m tired of this piddly shit.” Ha, I thought Don was going existential on us — turns out he just wants bigger accounts. Well, that’s something. As Roger tells us (Great Roger moment #1), enlightenment wears off.

* Great Roger moment #2: “She’d never had room service before. It’s too easy.”

* Great Roger moment #3: Detonating Don’s months-long Ed Baxter-based impasse with a tossed-off insult: “You let that wax figurine discourage you?”

* Great Roger moment #4: “I don’t want it to sound rehearsed.” “No danger of that.”

* Great Roger moment #5: No one does “watching in slightly slackjawed, mildly dazed amazement as someone else walks away after doing something surprising” like John Slattery does.

* Nothing convinced me more of the finality and seriousness of Lane’s suicide attempt than when he broke his glasses in half. As a glasses-wearing person I can’t even think of doing that. That’s just destroying your ability to interface with the entire world.

* Don’s confrontation with Lane was excruciating on any number of levels. He’s firing a man for forging a signature he himself has been forging for decades. He’s firing a man for breach of trust in a company whose trust he breaches every day just by showing up. He’s offering to keep Lane’s secret but threatening to expose it should Lane force him despite having a huge secret of his own. And as we see a few minutes later, he’s reprimanding Lane for not coming forward with the problem despite having kept secret Ed Baxter’s revelation that the Lucky Strike letter sunk the agency with the big boys. The way Jon Hamm plays it, it’s clear Don’s acutely, painfully aware of all of this, but has to do it anyway. I kept waiting to see if this had weaponized Lane in some way, made him capable of destroying Don in return. I’m glad it didn’t. I wish it did.

* The car won’t start. Rimshot! In all seriousness the buildup and follow-through of Lane’s death by Jaguar was the show at its most Sopranos, which is to say the show at its best.

* I want to point out how exquisitely staged the discovery of Lane’s body was. Listen to the already mounting panic in Joan’s words as she goes next door to tell the guys, despite her best efforts to be calm: “I think something’s terribly wrong in Mr. Pryce’s office.” Watch as all the sight gags involving characters peering over glass to spy on other characters get transformed into a way to glimpse something horrible. Look at the empty office in broad daylight. Endure the intensely awful intimacy of Pete, Roger, and Don taking him down off the door. Watch Don’s face as he realizes a second man has now hanged himself because of something Don did, or failed to do — crushing childlike sadness.

* “I suppose you’d rather I imagine you bouncing on the sand in some obscene bikini.” Lane can’t help but befoul even the nicest thing in his worklife on his way out the door. Bon voyage indeed.

* A coldly beautiful snow falls, a figurine of the Statue of Liberty buried the frame. Sure, why not.

* Orange alert: The lining of Glen’s coat. Joan’s collar. The couch on which Pete, Harry, and Ken climb to see inside Lane’s office. Lane’s Mets pennant.

* So here are your Zoroastrian competing philosophies: “The next thing will be better, because it always is” versus “What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness!” Or to flip it, “Why does everything turn out crappy?” versus getting to drive a grown-up’s fancy car all the way home. Note which one the show ends with (eliciting crazy-person peals of laughter from me, by the way — laughter of relief). The nonsense Don’s been selling for years about a car or a Kodak being the key to a fulfilling life turns out to be true, in this very limited scenario at least. At last, something beautiful you can truly own.