Lot’s of stuff coming up in this episode. Will Don return and prevent Sterling Cooper from being sold. Will there be any conclusion to the Betty/Don, Joan/Dr Rape, Pete/Trudy, or Sterling/Jane subplots? Or what’s become of Peggy’s little bastard? Last episode a character mentioned something about Kennedy’s upcoming speach; are we finally going to have the Cuban Missle Crisis? Are Pete and Peggy going to have sex again?
We’ve had high winds here all day – woke up to a power outage and have had my fingers crossed all day that there wouldn’t be another one. To hell with the food in the freezer – all I cared about was having electricity by 9 p.m.
I’m most looking forward to Peggy and Pete’s conversation. Everything else can go hang.
I was a little surprised at how quickly Betty’s doctor brought up abortion (without even mentioning the word)? How hard would it be for Betty (a married woman of means) to get a “theraputic abortion” in NY in 1962? It’s nice to see [del]Cutthroat Bitch[/del] Francine again.
Peggy just told Pete she had had his baby. He was shocked at the news.
BUT WAIT!
I distinctly recall that last season, shortly after it was revealed to Peggy that she had had a baby (she did not know she was pregnant), there was a scene of Pete coming home utterly shell shocked. His wife tried to get his attention but he just stumbled from the front door to the bedroom or bathroom with this look of crestfallen dispair on his face and closed the door behind him. It seemed obvious to me that Peggy had told him the news back then.
Am I misremembering? Did I get it wrong? What gives?
I think that had to do with his plan to blackmail Draper blowing up in his face.
There’s no way he could’ve known last season. Peggy herself didn’t know until the last scenes. Tonight’s scene was incredible. 
There was no sound other than her voice. Peggy hasn’t expressed any kind of emotion over giving her kid away before (even in the hospital she was numb). Pete’s marriage is over. He doesn’t love Trudy and proved this in her mind by not going with her.
Pete never knew about the baby. Nobody did except Draper.
Interesting up and down arc for Pete. Everything finally going his way and then two bombshells, one that he isn’t even aware of yet.
Can you imagine if AMC hadn’t picked the series up for next year? Most fans would be heaving chairs through their televisions.
I didn’t recall a scene like that, so I looked at the TWOP recap. Pete was upset and pouty in the S1 finale, but it was because Peggy had been put on the Clearasil account with him, and because Pete’s father-in-law was pressuring him to make a baby.
What’s the one that he isn’t aware of? That Duck isn’t gonna be president of the new SC?
Nice couple of cliffhangers for S3, as if we needed reasons to tune in.
For a finale, this was almost too neat. Last week’s episode had more meat.
He might still be made Head of Accounts, but because Duck won’t be around if there’s no merger. He only told Don Duck told him about the merger, not the promotion. Can someone explain to me what the talk about the “non-compete clause” and the implications of Sterling and Cooper not bothering to have Don sign a contract be making him partner?
The scene with shell shocked Pete came immediately after Peggy was told.
As for the theory of it being a reaction to the failure of his plan to blackmail Don, I’d say his shell shocked behavior was far too extreme for a setback as small as that. He looked like he had been punched in the metaphorical gut.
IANAL but I believe “non-compete” means that for a specified period of time, you can’t work in that field – you can’t compete with your former company. So a clause like that in a contract (if Don had signed one) would mean that Don wouldn’t be able to work in advertising for several years.
I suppose if we were to nitpick, we could question why SC honored the other aspects of Don being a partner – like paying him his share of the merger profits.
Looks like the merger will happen but without Duck as president. Pete will probably get his promotion – he mended a lot of bridges with Don tonight. Don was absolutely mellow with Pete.
stuyguy, Pete didn’t know about Peggy’s pregnancy. Nobody knew. Pete was an angry jerk for most of S1, for little or no reason. Nothing was going his way.
SC always honored their agreements, whether on paper or not.
It was Duck who got sandbagged by Draper’s not having a contract. SC didn’t care.
Doesn’t that make you wonder if Roger and Bertram knew all along what would happen? That Don wouldn’t work under Duck and that Duck would somehow blow it? 
stuyguy, I went back and checked the full recap at TWOP. The only scene after Peggy had her baby was Don going back to his house and finding his family gone to Betty’s dad’s place for Thanksgiving, without him.
I loved it when Trudy said to Pete, “I love my family and I want to be with them. If you loved me, you’d want to be with me.” Pete’s response, “That’s true. I’ll help you pack the car.” Where does that leave them?
The Pete/Peggy scene was just excruciating. It seems as if she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. Also, now we know for sure that she gave her baby up for adoption. I actually felt bad for Pete, who must feel like he was hit by a Mack truck.
Guess Betty needed to get a little strange before she could let Don come back. That last scene, seemed like she was deciding whether she should tell him she fucked someone else or that she was pregnant. That she told him about the baby indicates that she’s taking him back. That letter didn’t hurt either, but Don always was good at writing moving copy.
And Duck blew it. No surprises there.
We’ll have to wait for next season to see how Joan’s engagement winds up and how the merger goes down exactly.
IAAL and there’s a little bit odd about the resolution here. Can’t speak for 1960s practice, but it would be very strange for there not to be a partnership agreement that Draper would have had to sign (and he would have wanted to to make clear that he was a partner, shared in profits, had at 12.5% share (or whatever they said last week) in the company & the voting shares). It may not have had a non-compete (which is as described above, a clause that says he can’t work in a competitive field with current employer if he leaves, which are less enforceable now then back in the '60s).
The oddest point is that before doing the merger, the purchaser would have done a certain degree of due diligence, including reviewing any contracts or partnership agreements with the partners or key employees. If Draper was considered a key employee (as head of creative, one would have assumed that he was considered key to the purchasers), they would have asked to see any agreement S-C had with Draper. If there was none, they certainly would have known that and would have had to have been OK with it. And if Duck didn’t know that, and had brokered a deal to be president without knowning, he screwed up big time.
So the scene in the boardroom is a bit unrealistic, in real life.
Dag, that’s Amber!?! I didn’t even notice.
But who did he call as Dick Whitman?!?!?!?!?!?
And what was the priest trying to get out of Peggy? I didn’t get that scene at all.
And did anyone notice at the end that Pete was sitting in his office in the dark holding his .22 ?
That priest is really getting on my nerves and in a big way. BIG way.
Duck was an employee of SC – not of PPL. Even if the latter had known that Don didn’t have a contract with SC, Duck would not have been privy to that information.
So, were Sterling, Cooper, Mr. Scheffield, etc. all rethinking Duck as their choice because Don threatened to walk (and he was too valuable to lose), or because Duck’s plan was really really stupid?