Aaron Staton, John Slattery, Jared Harris and Caro Buono in Mad Men.
This is it: the whole season's been building up to this.
With the loss of the Lucky Strikes account, SCDP is imploding in slow motion. Don's gone rogue, publicly rejecting any further tobacco business in the hope of catching the anti-smoking train -- but without talking to the partners. The agency's living on borrowed money and throwing bodies over the side. Competitors aren't even trying to hide their schadenfreude. And Bert Cooper has bailed.
Midge Daniels, one of Don's lovers from the first season, has reappeared. Under the pretext of trying to sell him a painting, she reveals that she and her husband are smackheads.
The strange and complex relationship between Don and Pete Campbell's taken another turn: with the tobacco stunt, Don's undercut a lot of Pete's work building business and prompted Pete to round on him publicly, calling him childish and impatient. But when Pete has to come up with $50,000 of his own money to help keep the agency afloat, it's Don who bails him out. Good thing too, because Trudy's laying down the law about Pete giving any more of himself to the agency.
Faye Miller's boss severs ties with the agency because of Don's tobacco stunt, but Faye's spin on it is that she and Don can now be open about their relationship.
Sally's psychiatrist is bumping her down to one visit a week, but it looks like Betty might be a candidate for all that free time. They find something else to fight about, though: after catching Sally with Glen, Betty suggests to Henry that it's time for them to move.
A lot of threads, a lot of drama, a lot of suspense. What's it all going to come down to? Join Join Globe TV critic Andrew Ryan and Globe Style writer Amy Verner here for the big enchilada, Sunday Oct. 17 at 10 p.m. ET.