The End of The World As We Know It: Mad Men, Season 3, Episode 11, The Gypsy and the Hobo

It happened. The thing Don Draper has been been fearing since the day he took that name, since the day he got married, since the day he got his job, since the day his first child was born, that thing happened. Betty, the person from which he has been hiding so much, found out who he really was. She threw his real identity out in the open, exposed it to the light and...comforted him. She saw that her husband, both the man he was and the man she thought he was had been destroyed, and that someone new was being reborn in front of her. She saw that by exposing Dick Whitman she was effectively killing Don Draper. So she put her arm around him and watched him go.

This was a packed episode, but the long scenes between Don and Betty where he confesses everything (or almost everything...there was an accident? they made a mistake? hmm. so close.) to her were the heart of the show this week. Both Jon Hamm and January Jones gave amazing performances in these scenes, with Jones capturing Betty as a cool, calm, angry interrogator, and Hamm showing us Don Draper deteriorating before our eyes. When Betty says "You know I know what's in that drawer!" Hamm's face told us everything. He didn't know, and he is flat out terrified about what this means for his life. But instead of reaching for a story or running to the door, he sits, and he tells her. That his life is a lie, "a lie so big" that he cannot even light his own cigarette as he prepares to explain it. This is the thing he feared. This is was supposed to be the worst day of his life, but strangely, he sleeps soundly after the confrontation. Could unburdening himself to Betty bring down the walls between them? Could she learn to love this new man, who's life and past has now been revealed to her? Shockingly to Don, Betty learning the truth about him does not end their marriage, or his life. At least not yet. Maybe she is figuring out what to do next, maybe she is waiting to see what he'll do next, or maybe she is going to try and find out what it is like to be married to someone new, someone who is not a total mystery to her anymore.

Throughout these intense scenes, there is another layer of suspense because we the viewers know that Suzanne Farrell is waiting in the car for Don to return so they can go on a trip! I think Don forgets about her the moment he realizes Betty knows, but we never do! When poor Suzanne finally slinks away in the night, I feel I may have misjudged her. Maybe she's not a woman on the verge, maybe she is just a different kind of woman. Someone kind and sweet and peace-loving and unconventional stuck in a time when none of that was what someone looked for in a woman. Or a person. She might just be a woman ahead of her time, who really wants to know if Don's okay, and who really believes that she can enter into an affair with a married man and not form an attachment. We'll see if she proves me wrong and goes totally cuckoo, but I kind of wonder if Matthew Weiner created this character to challenge not just the expectations of the characters, but the expectations of the viewers.

I loved the scenes of the family trick or treating at the end. Even if Carlton's question was a little too on the nose "And what are you supposed to be?" it highlighted for the viewers the shift in paradigm they are about to see. Now that our protagonist has lost his Don Draper identity at home, who is he going to be now? He can't be the same man he was before with Betty, so can he be a new man there and the old Don Draper at work? Or will there be a new identity in both places? The question is asked, because Don doesn't know the answer yet. Can he become the kind of loving husband and father he wants to be now that he is freed of his past? Can he share the power of the household with his wife? And if he can't, what is to become of him now that she knows? I absolutely cannot wait to see the last two episodes of the season to find out.

There were two other amazing plots this week that I would be remiss if I didn't talk about. They featured two of my fave characters on the show Roger and Joan. I loved learning more about Roger's past, and seeing him act like a wise and mature man. There was a moment where I kind of wanted him to cheat on his 20 year old wife with the more age appropriate Annabell, but in the end I am glad that he did the right thing. I am not so sure though, that when he told Annabell she wasn't the one, that he was thinking of his young wife Jane. Staying late and making phone calls on Joan's behalf is really not something I see Roger doing for just any old fling. And when he tells his buddy, "she's important to me" you can tell that he really really means it.

(ROGER AND JOAN FOREVA!!)

It was incredibly satisfying to see Joan hit her rapist husband over the head with that vase, even if his line was again, a little too 'on the nose' for me. Christina Hendricks' face after he told her she didn't know what it was like to work for something for her whole life and not get it sold it for me. So what will become of Dr. Greg now? Will he die in Vietnam? Will he come back a broken man that Joan has to take care of for the rest of her life? Nothing about this story makes me think there will be any kind of happy ending for Joan, and it is so awful to see such a smart, beautiful, capable woman tied to a Neanderthal and trapped in this situation. Maybe my lame little girl fantasies of her and Roger finding thier way back to one another will come true, but that isn't really how this show works, so she'll probably be trapped in this hell forever.

Two episodes left people! I can't wait.