Mad Men, series two, episode 13: Meditations in an Emergency

Spoiler warning: Don't read on if you haven't seen any of the first series of Mad Men, or the first 12 episodes of series two. Watch Meditations in an Emergency on iPlayer.

It's the end of the world as we know it and no one feels fine. Well, perhaps except Roger: he's richer than he's ever been and about to marry a 20-year-old. For everyone else it was business as usual – fear and self-loathing in lashings as the Cuban missile crisis added a backdrop of nuclear fear to proceedings.

"To not thinking about things"

Betty was just about the centre of last night's episode. We opened with her at the doctor's being given the news that she's been blessed with a child. She looked like she'd been told she was due to share a cell with Charles Bronson. With Don still estranged and her life in turmoil, it was, as she made clear to the doctor, the last thing she needed.

The impossibility of abortion (another huge meta-theme for the writers to tackle), still illegal in New York for another eight years, led to a shot of Betty riding – was she subconsciously trying to give herself a miscarriage?

Anyway, her utter dread at the notion of a new baby and the apocalyptic atmosphere set Betty off into the New York night with a Don-style mystery and swagger. Having dropped the kids off with Don in his hotel room, she lounged into a bar to be chatted up by a dark handsome stranger. Then it all went a bit Mills & Boon as, in her last stand before being once more enveloped by motherhood, she had no-strings anonymous sex with the chap in a private room in the back. In a lovely reversal of the norm, while Don was being Daddy and watching telly with the kids, she was nipping home in a post-coital fuzz to eat a chicken leg out of the fridge. Don would be, er, proud.

Was Betty's motivation a last stand of independence? Or was it more that, upon his return, Don had as good as confessed to his affair with Bobby (and tacitly his other affairs) giving Betty the excuse she needed to get her sexual vengeance?

Don seemed liberated by his sojourn out west. Maybe Anna gave him one of those wind chimes. As well as apologising to Betty – once in person, once in a genuinely sweet letter – he seemed resigned to contentment at work. He finally gave Pete a bone and praised his work in California; he seemed fairly happy, too, to pick up his half million from the merger, and even happier to shove Duck's criticism down his throat and walk out on Sterling Cooper ("I don't have a contract" – boom).

Why bother when he doesn't need to? The shot of him returning home to his (soon to be enlarged) family was as warm as any this series – and a lovely contrast to the last scene of season one, when Don returned defeated to an empty house. Maybe a new kid will do their battered marriage good?

Whether Don stays at SC or not remains to be seen. Duck certainly doesn't want him – but the PPL folks looked like they'd wondered what they'd done when Duck had his little rant in the boardroom. Will he start his own agency? Will Peggy step up to be head of creative?

"This could be the end of the world and you could go to hell"

Speaking of Peggy Olson, she – like Betty – was spurred on by the sense of doom to get the monkey (well, gorilla) off her back and reveal all to Pete about their illegitimate child. Here's a clue to the quality of the writing of this series (as if you need one): since Peggy had her baby, there's been one (one!) explicit mention of the fact – when Peggy's sister Anita confessed it to Father John. Everything else has been allusions, hints and visual nudges. And yet we're still hooked to know what happened.

Peggy finally admitted the truth to Pete after he, drunkenly, told Peggy that he loved her (true, I think) and Peggy rebuffed his advances with the line, "I could have shamed you into being with me." Campbell looked like he'd just been shot in the stomach as she told him the truth about their child. Still, at least he's not firing blanks. Peggy left him alone in his office with only his antique gun for company.

For all the brilliance of the other characters, it's Pete whom I find the most fascinating. While the others are trying to find themselves, Pete knows who he is and, like (the similarly privileged) Betty, he's trying to escape from himself and his loveless marriage and his overbearing mother. What he wants, he has realised, is a lack of expectation and Peggy Olson. Will he get them? Does he still want Peggy?

"He never could hold his liquor"

While all the emotional import was swirling between the Drapers and Peggy/Pete, the professional import is the impending takeover. As mentioned above, Duck was already showing signs that he might not have the temperament to run the company – or what's left of it, as he raged at Don's insouciance.

And what's not left of SC was what was worrying the four stooges – Sal, Kenneth, Harry and Paul – who used their charms to get the latest about the merger from the demoted Lois. After Harry – who's gone from bumbling to plain nasty – patronised Lois to within an inch of her life ("Are they purchasing Sterling Cooper or are they combining it with them?" Lois: "It's a merger") they begin to fear for their careers. We didn't learn much else about their futures – but you can imagine it's fairly safe to say their concerns over job security won't be too far away from those of millions of real Americans in 2009.

So that was it. Once more everything is hanging by a thread and hardly anyone in the world of Sterling Cooper seems happy or content – except, paradoxically, the enigma that is Don Draper. When will we see everyone again? The 1963 of Dallas? The 1964 of the Beatles? Either way, I can't wait. See you in 2010.

Notes:
Using this, I make Don's payday equivalent to $3.5m (£2.3m) in today's currency. Don had (I think) a 12% stake, which puts Sterling Cooper's value at about $42m (£28m).

Did the scene where Trudy was packing to stay at her parents' remind anyone of this one from Curb Your Enthusiasm?

Pete with the gun. He definitely wasn't going to shoot himself, was he?

JFK's speech in full.

I hate the voiceover letter. But, like all that Mad Men touches, they get away with it – possibly because it was such an un-Don-like manoeuvre and admission of guilt. "Without you, I'll be alone for ever. I love you, Don."

This was a great exchange between Harry and Paul:
Harry: "The loyalists are hung and you don't want to get caught in the fallout."
Paul: "What's wrong with you? Aren't you loyal to anyone?"