Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Lots of people are disappointed with this episode, but I enjoyed it. What’s wrong with an action-packed installment filled with hook-ups, rebuffs, and comic interruptions? Does every episode have to be slow and ponderous?

1. Betty is going back to school for a masters in psych. Anyone else surprised she and Henry are still together?

2. “This is what they do.” — Don on lawyers

3. The Manson brothers!

4. The episode was Diana centered, but Betty, Megan, and Lindsay Weir were all prominently featured. The nagging question is: What does Don see in Diana? Another lost soul keeping a secret pain who like Don is also from the Midwest. We learn that Diana has abandoned one of her children, an echo of Don’s real mother abandoning him when she died in childbirth. The most striking visual note was the shot of Don walking out of Diana’s flophouse apartment, a tableaux that references a thousand pulp fiction covers.

5. Last week I said that Colonel Sanders was Roger’s style icon, but maybe it’s actually Marlin Perkins, whom Roger references specifically.

6. Happy to see Mimi Rogers pop up playing a fashion photographer who is half Annie Liebovitz, half Susan Sontag.

7. Can Pete please say “Jiminy Christmas!” more?

8. Harry finally puts the moves on Megan, something he’s been dying to do for a long time. Actually, everyone seems to hook up in this episode: Don and Diana, Stan and Pima, and Roger and Marie.

9. In case you were curious, $1 million 1971 dollars would be $5.8 million in 2015. A friend wonders if there’s any connection between Don’s $1m alimony check and the $5,000 check he wrote for Midge, the artist strung out on heroin, from season 1. Hmmm, not much that I can see. After he handed the check to Midge she told him she couldn’t cash it, so Don gave her some cash he had on him. But recall that Don did give Adam Whitman, his brother, a $5,000 check to get out of his life permanently.