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Season 6, Episode 9: “The Better Half”
The episode opens with a meeting with Pete Campbell, Don Draper, Harry Crane, and Ted Chaough debating the merits of margarine (price vs. cost) to decide on their pitch strategy for Fleischmann’s. Don puts Peggy Olson in the middle by pressing her to decide between Don’s and Ted’s strategies, but she refuses to give a direct answer. Later, Don criticizes Peggy for being too diplomatic and she yells at him for putting her in an awkward position.
After the Fleischmann’s strategy meeting, Harry tells Pete that he has talked with a headhunter and so now knows that he is desirable professionally. Pete meets with the same headhunter, who tells him to fix up his personal life before he tries to trade up professionally. Pete asks Joan Harris whether his attention to business hasn’t been up to par recently and admits his personal problems; she doesn’t give him any answers and turns down his offer to get dinner but he still thanks her.
Megan Draper is shooting a scene on her soap opera where she’s playing the sister of her original character, and struggles to distinguish the two.
Betty Francis flirts with a stranger at a fundraiser while her husband, Henry is on the phone. She has lost a lot of weight and is made up well. On the way home, Henry confronts her about how much the man was flirting with her and how aware all the other people were of him hitting on her; when he finds out what the other guy said to try to seduce Betty, he starts making out with her in the limo.
Peggy returns home to find her live-in boyfriend Abe talking with a policeman because he was stabbed in the hand while getting off the subway; Abe resists telling the officer any details. Peggy and Abe get in a fight: she yells at him for protecting criminals, he is frustrated that she’s siding with the cops, he says he’s writing a story about the racist attitudes he’s experiencing and that the people will have to fight back against a police state, she refuses to help him type and goes to bed. Later, she discovers Abe trying to board up a window that someone threw a rock through and he finally agrees to move. Peggy gets up that night when she hears a fight outside, carrying an improvised weapon (a knife taped to a stick like a bayonet); Abe comes up behind her and she accidentally stabs him. On the ambulance ride to the hospital, Abe breaks up with her because she’s too bourgeois with her advertising job.
Don runs into Betty going to Bobby’s camp for a weekend visit; Bobby is clearly thrilled to have his parents both there with him. In the evening, Betty and Don drink and smoke together out on the porch of her cabin and talk about their past and their kids. Henry hasn’t arrived yet and Betty and Don end up hooking up. Afterward, Don tells Betty that he missed her and she says that she doesn’t feel guilty about what they did but is happy in her life and doesn’t think about them being together any more. He admits that sex doesn’t mean that much to him and that it’s not necessary for him to feel close to someone else, but they make love again. Don awakens to find Betty and Henry having coffee together in the mess hall and so he has to sit at a table by himself. When he gets back to NYC, Don and Megan have an honest conversation about their relationship and they reconnect.
At the office, Ted criticizes Peggy for throwing him off during the presentation by accidentally touching his hand and smiling at him; they both admit their feelings for each other but Ted says they can’t talk about it anymore. Later, Peggy tells Ted about her relationship ending and he doesn’t act on it, and instead just gives her a generic pep talk and then announces that Fleischmann’s wants to move ahead with their ad campaign.
While Don is gone for the weekend, Megan has Arlene from her work over. Megan thinks the veteran soap actress will help her work on her lines but she kisses her instead. Megan rejects her and they get into a fight but Arlene leaves on a good note.
Roger brought his grandson to work one day but his daughter calls him the next morning to yell at him because he took his grandson to see “Planet of the Apes” and he had nightmares all night; his daughter says she won’t let Roger watch him by himself anymore. Roger drops by Joan’s apartment unexpectedly and finds her and Bob Benson packing for a trip to the beach. He doesn’t recognize Bob and leaves after a stilted conversation with Joan. At the office on Monday, Roger gives Joan a bag of Lincoln logs for Kevin (their son, though she won’t admit it publicly). Roger asks to be involved in Kevin’s life but Joan refuses, saying she can’t count on it. Bob goes into Pete’s office and says something delicate has come to his attention, but instead of revealing anything about Joan and Roger, he offers a nurse recommendation for Pete’s senile mother.