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This season has seen Don Draper’s charms gradually erode. The season began with him reading Dante’s Divine Comedy at the beach while on vacation with Megan on Hawaii. The season ends with him out of a job, a marriage, but finally attaining a deeper self-awareness and connection with his children.
The episode begins with Stan asking Don about opening a satellite office in California, but Don resists and says that such a move would be a demotion. Ken announces that Hershey’s has sent out an RFP to the top 30 agencies, including Sterling Cooper & Partners. Ted wants Don to take the lead.
Roger meets with his daughter and son in law about the investment opportunity that he’d agreed to fund earlier in the season. After Roger’s daughter realizes that Roger is no longer going to pay, she tells him off and tells him to stay away during Thanksgiving. Roger calls Bob in for a performance review because Bob gave his son a toy, and tells him not to lead Joan on. Later, Joan invites Roger to Thanksgiving dinner, where Bob is carving the turkey. Joan tells Roger that she’s not inviting him into their lives, and it becomes clear that Joan has taken pity on Roger.
Megan says that Sally has to testify or she’ll be subpoenaed, and limits Don’s drinking. Don calls Sally and tells her that she has to give a statement about the robbery, and she reacts passive aggressively and hangs up on him.
At Sterling Cooper & Partners, Jim tells Ted that the representatives from Sheraton are in the lobby, but Don is nowhere to be found. It turns out that Don is drinking down at the bar, where he encounters an evangelical preachers who engages him. Don flashes back to his childhood, when a proselytizer was thrown out of the brothel he was living in. As he left, the preacher told Don that “the only unpardonable sin is to believe God can’t forgive you.” Don awakes to find himself drunk and in a jail cell, because apparently he punched out the preacher from the bar.
Pete prepares to leave his apartment to a subletter when he gest a telegram that his senile mother has fallen off a cruise ship and is lost at sea. Pete is sure that Manolo, who he thinks is Bob Benson’s boyfriend, married his mother and then killed her for the money. Later, at Chevy Bob goads Pete into driving the car in the Chevy showroom after he tries to cut him out of a trip to London. It turns out that Pete can’t drive stick shift, which is embarrassing for Pete and ultimately forces him out of the account. He and his brother later decide that they don’t want to spend excessive amounts of money on an investigation into their mother’s death.
Don admits to Megan that he’s gotten out of control, pouring all of his alcohol down the sink. He says that he wants them to move to Los Angeles, but doesn’t want her to give up her career. Stealing Stan’s line, Don tells her that it’s an “opportunity to build one desk into an agency”, and thinks that he could be happy again if they go there. Later, Don pitches this idea to the partners, and Ted is the only one upset. Stan says that he’d rather stay in New York than go to LA to work for Don, and that he doesn’t even realize that as he dictated the memo to Dawn, she’d lose her job as a consequence.
Peggy dresses provocatively to get Ted’s attention. Later at her apartment, Peggy finds Ted waiting for her, who tells her that he doesn’t want anyone else to have her, that he is going to leave his wife for her because he loves her. They end up making passionate love. Afterward, Ted says that he doesn’t want to sneak around and Peggy says that she wants to avoid a scandal and can wait. Ted later returns to his wife in bed, who tells him that he’s been working too hard.
Betty calls Don in the middle of the night to say that Sally had been suspended by Miss Porter for buying beer with a fake ID (using Betty’s name) and being drunk. She asks for Don’s help because she thinks that Sally needs more than she can give her and that she’s tried everything.
The next day, Ted arrives in Don’s office and says that he needs to be assigned to the California job because he has to get away from Peggy to save his marriage and family. But Don says that he needs it too, because Megan is being written off her show. At the meeting with Hershey’s, Don spins a false childhood story about Hershey products, which the Hershey executives eat up. But when he sees Ted lost in thought about his family, he breaks, admitting to his upbringing in a brothel. Everyone at the meeting is appalled. After the meeting, Don tells Ted that he can go to California. Ted tells Peggy that he’s going to keep his family together, and that he has to go because he loves Peggy so deeply that he can’t be around her. Peggy is furious and throws him out of her office. Meanwhile, Megan is angry to find out that Don is not going to California, because she quit her NY job. She walks out on Don.
Pete shows up at Trudy’s house, saying that he’s going to California. She won’t invite him to Thanksgiving dinner but he says goodbye to his sleeping daughter. Trudy points out that now he has what he always wanted: complete personal and 
professional freedom.
The episode ends with a climax that many of us should have seen coming. After Megan has walked out, Don is called in on Thanksgiving morning to meet with the partners. The partners force him to take some time off, but don’t give him a date to return. Don’s bad behavior this season–ranging from the unplanned merger, dropping Jaguar, missing the Sheraton meeting, fighting with Ted and Peggy, and finally his impractical truth telling at the Hershey meeting–has led the partners to finally lose their trust in him. We soon see Peggy sitting in Don’s office, now the NY head of the creative department.
Don takes his kids to a “bad neighborhood” to show them the brothel where he grew up. In one of the most emotionally significant moments of the season, Sally and Don share a meaningful look. With this, Don has finally abandoned most of his “Don Draper” image both to his colleagues and his family. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Dick Whitman as the last season of Mad Men unfolds next year.