Don Draper hits his lowest point, and Peggy Olson continues to surprise : Mad Men

Season 4 of "Mad Men" part 2 (episodes 6-9) brings Don Draper to his lowest point and from there can only build him up. The terrific episode 7, probably the best-scripted in the entire series, takes place in one harrowing 24-hour span, the day that Clay KO's Liston, a hot May night, Don and Peggy working late, Peggy standing up her boyfriend and standing up to her parents, some sexual tension between Don and Peggy, ends with Don drunk and puking, then clumsily wrestling with the loathsome drunk Duck, and dawn and last and a fresh start. From this point, Don realizes he has to cut back on the drinking - but how can he do so in this heavy-drinking culture? The one guy who quit, Fred, is considered a square and a pariah. As Don tries, a little, to clean up, his family life gets even worse and stranger, with at last a big blow-up with Betty over their daughter, increasingly disturbed - young girl shows up at Don's office, and she says she never wants to go back home, she hates it there. How can he deal with this? His bachelor cave is no place for daughter to stay, barely even to visit. Meanwhile, Peggy, whom everyone misunderstands and presupposes to be an uptight prude, again proves to be smarter, cannier, and actually more progressive-thinking than any of the louts around her - as she speaks out for women's rights and actually pushes back against a client that won't hire black workers in the South. We'll see if this strand of hers is just tolerated as an eccentricity or gets her in trouble, marginalized, or canned.