Well, let's get to the big reveals right off the bat, shall we? First up, Sally. My request for more of her last week was answered in abundance tonight, as Sally and her friend stay at Don's, and the teenager who's already seen and been through more than she should have is finally the woman to catch Don in the act.
Sylvia re-enters the picture in this episode, with her 18 year old son Mitchell, who's been drafted and about to be called up. In response to Arnold's request for help, Don embarrasses himself by bringing up the subject in front of the GM clients, so Ted volunteers to pull some strings with an International Guard buddy of his, on the condition that Don stop his internal war against him and come on board with his attempt to bring joint clients into the firm. Don is of course, doing this to get back into Sylvia's good graces, and it ends up working perfectly. Except for the part about Sally sneaking into the Rosen's apartment while Sylvia and Don are going at it to retrieve the love note for Mitchell her friend had slipped under the door. This leads to Don running after her to no avail, getting wasted in a bar, and coming home to kiss Megan and accept Arnold's gratitude right in front of her, which is too much for Sally to take, as she lashes out at him and flees to her room. Don weakly and pathetically attempts to tell Sally through her door that she didn't see what she thought she saw and that it's complicated. Sally is at first angry, but soon slips into grief and acceptance all in a few moments as she leans against her door and resignedly accepts her father's explanation. It's a knockout scene from Jon Hamm and little Kiernan Shipka, who's shown over and over again how good she is with difficult emotional material. But questions of course remain: How will Sally take this going forward? Is she going to stay quiet about it? Is she going to continue to meekly accept her father's rather terrible excuses and lies (first the robbery of their apartment weeks ago, and now this). We don't know yet, but here's my plea for the remainder of the season- can the Don/Sylvia affair be dead now, please, for good? Despite Linda Cardellini being very effective in this part, she's been my least favorite Don floozy ever, and i'd be more than happy to see her go.
In other news, the mystery of Bob Benson has finally been revealed! Or has it? We learn tonight in no uncertain terms, that Bob is in love with Pete, as he makes a pretty clear pass at him in his office. Pete is of course, unsettled by this, and we don't know where it's headed from here, but I have just one question. Really, Bob? Pete? Ok, so he's gay, that was one of my early guesses that i now wish i hadn't abandoned, but Pete? Of all people, i really can't see what the attraction could be, especially to explain the intense level of Bob's devotion, as he spells it out for him. But we'll see where this goes, as there could very well be more to the Bob Benson mystery in the next couple of episodes.
Finally, Peggy is relegated to being the comic relief tonight, as she battles a rat in her apartment, and is subjected to a terribly awkward conversation with Pete's mother about her attraction to the Spanish nurse Pete hired on Bob's recommendation. This does however, lead to a scene between Pete and Peggy for the first time in many years (i'm pretty sure it's been since season 2), where they actually seemed like friends. Pete claims a closeness between them and observes that Ted is in love with her, much to Peggy's delight.
So even though all my predictions have been wrong so far, I just can't help myself and I'm going to close with one more: as soon as Sally came back to the apartment I knew she was going to see something but I immediately assumed Don was too obvious and that it was going to be Megan having a surprise affair. It didn't happen, but since I still think something momentous will happen in Don and Megan's relationship, I'm now throwing that out there as a possibility. She claimed to be calling her agent in a random scene in this episode, but something about her demeanor was suspicious. What do you think? Could that be the twist?
