Mad Men Season 3 Episode 7: Seven Twenty Three

The episode starts with 3 completely out of context shots. Peggy passed out in a hotel bed. Don on the floor of a much dingier hotel room and finally Betty lazily lounging on a huge chaise lounge chair.
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Don does what he does best; seduce men to trust everything he says implicitly without any proper reason. Connie Hilton acknowledges this is what is going on by using a metaphor where Don is a dalliance he is having while cheating on his main advertising firm. At some point, the whole thing looks like it will take a turn for the Brokeback, but then stops short. Connie seems more into boxing in Don than anything else - strange.

Don’s heart is not in his current work. So much so that he lazily comes on to Hot4Teacher and then acts dumb when he is denied. Get it together Don, at the very least lose the sunglasses; it will help highlight your deep penetrating gaze.

The victory with Hilton is short lived as the Bryce, Roger and Bert demand he sign an exclusive contract. Don, feeling the caged bird just won’t sing, wants no part of this.

Peggy, meanwhile, is still being wooed by Duck in more ways than one. She plays up to her boss a bit to see what that will get her. Don has no use for tests and tells her to grow up. In a huff, she meets Duck and orders a whiskey which leads Duck to make some comments about Don that are disturbing in retrospect. Soon, Duck quite verbally explains what he wants to do to her. Later in bed, as he woods up in reaction to the whiskey on her breadth, I realize that he is seducing her to get back at Don somehow and really he would rather be f*cking Don, but not in a pleasant way. Peggy at least, sees freedom in this relationship. No longer daddy’s little girl, she can forge her own path at Grey and bang the boss – finally maybe taking Joan’s advice. The bird sees an opening in her cage and is debating tasting freedom...

Betty redecorates the house, hoping Don will notice her. When that doesn’t work, she joins the Junior League hoping everyone will be jealous of her perfect life which she hates. They sort of do. She later tries to further make these old biddies sit on it by seducing the guy from the country club into helping her with some stupid Westchester cause. He is about as insistent as one can be about giving a married woman the high hard one in 1963 but Betty is not ready for full on action. She just wants the whiff of danger, because she’s twelve. He mentions she should buy that huge chaise lounge. In her mind this is the same as cheating so she has it delivered to her house and then feels herself up on it in the summer heat. A bird, realizing she is in a cage and trying to make the most of it?

Don boxed in at work and later (after a phone call from Roger to Betty) at home, does what he does best - he makes a run for it. He picks up some hippies, takes a Quaalude and gets rolled in a hotel room. This is just getting sad! But not before he has a vision where his dad goof on his grifter ways and his shiftless profession. This is the scene where Don runs. Right?

Wrong, Bert shines up his devil horns and reminds Don a few things. First, he reminds Don that he and Roger made him. Second, Bert points out that he knows enough to unmake him (or the Draper façade anyway). Draper relents and sizes himself up for his cage. He won’t accept Roger as a playmate any longer though. Finally, we see Bertram’s teeth. I like it, you might has well have blacked out the white of his eyes. Neat ending.