Don Draper Cries (and the world does not end)

At last Betsy Draper confronts Don about his secret past in a great scene, one of the longest and by far the most intense in the entire "Mad Men" series. The scene is amazingly well set up, as Don swings by the house with new girlfriends (Suzanne) waiting in the car - he thinks Betsy and the kids are away - and when he steps in Betsy unloads on him in her steely way. Through the whole confrontation, we can't (Don can't either) stop thinking about the girl outside in the car, like a ticking time bomb. But the real time bomb is inside. Don is truly shaken, trembling, needs a drink, very well acted by the usually too stolid John Hamm. Alomst the entire scene as Don confesses to Betsy all (or many) of the secrets of his past shot in dimly lit close up - the intensity of the two of them is almost unbearable, terrific. Don shows emotion we had never seen in him before. In a way, so does Betsy, moving from fury to a moment, just a moment of sympathy and pity, as she puts a hand on his shoulder. Maybe Don is ready to move on to a new level, to become a (again?) a new man - and yet, and yet - what happens the next morning but he slams shut his office door and calls Suzanne to apologize. He won't, can't, give her up. He's saved by one thing - that she's worried about losing her teaching job - so it's unlikely that she'll pull a Fatal Attraction and burst into his life (I'd earlier thought she would do that). Don is still a deeply troubled man, and one evening of curt and clipped confessions to the ice queen will not change him. Meanwhile, Joanie's marriage seems doomed - can we imagine her as an army doctor's wife? Not hardly.