Yucky flashbacks to Dick Whitman's childhood in a whorehouse -- culminating in watching his mother forced to take on her sister's husband while very pregnant with his little brother -- bookend some rather bizarre mental connections for Don that, in the end, make him a stranger in his own home. Seems Megan had a miscarriage when they returned from Hawaii, with which information she unknowingly creeps his girlfriend Linda right out. Don eventually gets the remorseful -- and surprise-I'm-religious Catholic -- Linda back onboard with his usual abusive panache, but the strangeness of the situation carries over into everything else when old clients stir everybody up in new ways.
The Jaguar guy that forced Joan to sleep with him for her partnership -- the full details of which Don still doesn't know, but make him coldly sympathetic when she tenses up about it -- comes back in, demanding the firm do an end-run around his British corporate bosses so he can drum up some radio business. What follows is a thing of hideous elegance, as Don manages to torpedo the guy and Pete and SCDP's standing with Jaguar, but so subtly that even Roger -- whose eyes sparkle as Don enthusiastically makes them all look like assholes -- can't even really resent him for it.
Little does Don know that -- just this one time -- his irritation with Pete is completely valid and he deserves this sock in the nose: After a swinger-foreshadowing dinner party with two other couples Pete jumps at the chance to put his bachelor pad (and manly sideburns) into play. He gets laid, in exactly the uncomfortable and dorky/rapey way you'd imagine, but when the woman's husband beats the shit out of her and she comes to the Campbells for immediate aid, Trudy has to lay down the law: If you can't cheat on your wife with at least a Don Draper amount of class, then you are out on your ass. He ends up in his bachelor pad full time, his only friend the oddly obsequious (yet mesmerizing) Bob From Upstairs.
Peggy's tumultuous relationship with her underlings gets more tense, not less, after she misfollows some excellent advice from her fabulous secretary. After finding a huge jar of "feminine powder" with accompanying horrible copy on her desk, she bounces back with the usual Peggy aplomb -- but it's another supportive late night convo with the lovely Stan Rizzo that lulls her into complacency and, eventually, turns it into a Ted Cheeoooggguuughgh loyalty test.
Ken gets embarrassed when Heinz Beans (the Don campaign about how beans are eternal and whatever) brings in Heinz Ketchup (the always punchable Kip Pardue) for an intro meeting that he quickly explains is a ruse because he is very jealous of Ketchup and feels underadmired for his Beans. This is delightful on every level, especially the Ken part, so Stan relays the information to Peggy in a way that makes her laugh beautifully... And tell Ted immediately, because her love life is too complicated and she doesn't want her work boyfriend knowing about her Skype boyfriend. The day, just as she realizes telling Ted about it crossed some lines, he threatens her job if she doesn't get on Ketchup's jock immediately.
Lots of plot, which is nice, and a formal parallelism between the stories that the show doesn't always follow so doggedly, but is usually a literary comfort when they do it, which is pretty seldom. In the end, Don is once again paralyzed by a net of personal associations and connections between like every woman in his life, stupid fucking Pete is looking ripe for some Bob manipulations, Trudy is a superhero, poor Megan is getting understandably weirder by the second, Roger's still talking about his mommy, Joan's never seemed so lonely, and Peggy's right where she needs to be: Caught between her new life and the few connections she's maintained with the old.
Week: Just kidding! Nobody knows. It's a big secret like always.