Mad Men, series two, episode 10: The Inheritance

Spoiler warning: Don't read on if you haven't seen any of the first series of Mad Men, or the first nine episodes of series two. Watch The Inheritance on iPlayer.

This week in the bedevilled world of Sterling Cooper and its various dramatic branchlines, there was plenty of parental angst and Freudian misgivings as Pete and Betty skirted between being the adults and being the kids. Meanwhile, Paul "Mississippi Burning" Kinsey was headed south with Sheila to help register black voters.

"The hardest part is realising you're in charge"

The parenting provided neat bookends through various points of last night's plot, from Harry's baby shower, to Pete and Trudy's adoption saga, to Helen and Betty's single motherhood right through to Betty's father's illness.

Betty's father Gene has had a stroke, and not for the first time – something both we and Betty find out after her stepmother neglected to tell her. This gives Betty cause enough to let Don back into her world temporarily in order to keep face for a trip back to her parents' home.

Betty's been marginalised by her stepmother, made to feel guilty for living out of state by her brother, and her dad – John McCain-lookalike Ryan Cutrona – keeps forgetting who she is. It's a family all right, but there's no warmth there at all – she's left out of things here like she's left out of her own life by Don. Gene's post-stroke confusion manifested itself with him confusing his daughter and his dead wife, resulting in the evening's first inappropriate touch as he groped Betty.

Gene, despite his castigation of Don ("He has no people, you can't trust a person like that"), is obviously adored by his daughter. He's a strict type – he used to fine the kids for small talk! – and probably the kind of authoritarian man about the house that she wishes Don was. That's a world Betty understands, not the ambiguous world of the early 1960s. As she does with maid Viola, Betty crumbles back into being a little girl around Gene – for him to be so far gone is another spoke removed in Betty's fragile mental wheel.

Another character struggling with his parents is Pete Campbell, whose mother chastises him for wanting to adopt a baby (even though he doesn't) and for letting Bud deal with their father's estate. Like Betty, Pete balances on the precipice between adult and child – tonight, he appeared to have forgotten which side he's on, as he got drunk at the party and, in the way Bobby Draper might brag to his daddy, told Peggy: "I'm going away … on a plane."

Pete's gabbled conversation with Peggy involves telling her, off the cuff, that he hates his mother, as if this is normal talk in the repressed confines of Sterling Cooper. Why on earth would he say that, we think, before realising he's drunk. His childlike self-regard is made glaringly obvious by his snipe at Peggy – he sees nothing beyond her veneer – "Everything's so easy for you."

We then cut from manchild Pete to childman Glen Bishop. Glen's been camping out in Sally and Bobby's toy house in the garden after running away from mum Helen and her new boyfriend. He's come because he sees a kindred spirit in Betty.

This is the first time we've seen Glen since the oddities of his relationship with Betty in series one. Wise beyond his years, but still, essentially, just a 12-year-old kid, he's come to rescue Betty from her suburban prison. "I've got money," he assures her as they watch cartoons together. Glen sees something in Betty – she's pretty, kind and lonely – and (pretty aside) Betty sees the same in him. It was sad to see the inevitable and Betty facing his wrath for calling his mum. If only she had a husband as devoted to her as young Glen.

These scenes were, for me, all about the confusion between the psyche of the adult and child. Betty's a little girl when hugging maid Viola and telling her to look after her daddy; Glen is obviously confused about his own state of development – one minute he's holding Betty's hand, the next playing trains with Bobby and Sally; and Pete's being picked on by his mother one second and putting the kibosh on Trudy's attempts at motherhood the next. They're all half grown up, half grown down. The Inheritance of the title isn't the gaudy ceramic that Betty's sister-in-law took – it's being our parents' children. And don't all three know it.

Before we move on, a quick point on Betty and Helen's chat. She's the first person she's told about Don leaving (or so we know), having moved quickly from admonishing Helen's parenting skills to realising that she could soon be in the same boat. "Sometimes I think I'd float away if Don isn't holding me down," she whispers, revealing everything you need to know.

"Please Hollis, it's Paul"

It was nice to see the subplot of Kinsey and his girlfriend Sheila return last night. We discovered that Paul had made a promise to join her in travelling to Mississippi. We also learned that despite all his talk in the van travelling down there ("consumer has no colour"), he was much happier with the idea of going to an aerospace convention in California than actually going through with his civil duties.

I loved the scene where lift operator Hollis greeted him as "Mr Kinsey" (as he usually does, presumably), and Kinsey, in front of Sheila, made a point of telling him to call him Paul, despite probably having never acknowledged him before. Hollis, who works in a building full of bullshitters, knows one when he sees one, and saw straight through him.

Not that Kinsey is completely full of it. Far from it, I'm sure he's genuinely in love with Sheila and cares about the civil-rights movement. It's just that his heart clearly lies in advertising. That horrible little line – "you can go and work in any supermarket" – saying more than any admirable activism could. But maybe we should cut him some slack – he does go south after all, even if the brave choice was his second choice.

Notes:
Glen is played by Matthew Weiner's son Marten. Nepotism aside, who else would let their child play that role?

When smoking in pubs looks weird on TV, and smoking in the workplace positively antique. Don smoking on the plane at the end looked absolutely bizarre.

Pete had his big-day blue suit out for both visiting his mum and the plane ride. I also like how his reaction to Trudy's adoption plans is to literally bury his head under the covers. Again, like a kid.

Did Pete's mum remind anyone else a bit of Arrested Development's Lucille Bluth?

Roger and Jane are already at the shared gifts stage of their relationship. Tiffany's gifts, too.

Cooper: "I just wanted to say, happy birthday."

"Who knows what he does or why he does it? I know more about the kid who fixes my damn car." Gene Hofstadt's got Don's number.

Culture Watch:
Pete refers to Rope when he jokes with his brother about killing his mother.

The two comics of Glen's that Betty picks up are an Action Comics with Superman on the cover (later alluded to in the exchange between Betty and the boy) and Metal Men. Metal Men being shapeshifting robots with artificial intelligence created in 1962. Remind you of anyone?