In fact, have we known him to come up with his own ideas anytime in the past few seasons?

Well, he argued with Peggy about who deserved credit on the dogfood commercial that won the Clio.

Did you read the two sentences before the one you quoted, David??? He told Peggy that she had pitched a ton of ideas, good and bad, but he could recognize which was the best one.

He told Peggy that she had pitched a ton of ideas, good and bad, but he could recognize which was the best one.

You're right, that was the gist of his argument. That pitching ideas wasn't the same thing as shaping one into a commercial.

But one talent he had that he seems to have lost was SELLING THE CLIENT. Not just picking the right ideas to pitch, but then persuading them to say yes - often turning them around when they have doubts. These days Peggy noted that if a client does not like an idea he just eats and goes back to the drawing board. He almost lost Heinz, and while Peggy's angry outburst was part of it, it was not all if it. It took Megan to salvage Heinz and close the deal. He almost lost cool whip (or did he lose cool whip) because Megan was not there. Don's not the closer any more. And that is something that as the boss he can't count on being able to delegate to other people. If Don can't close then,in a business sense, he is just a younger Rodger.

Betty just descended to new levels of loathsomeness. Using Sally like that was just horrific, though I love that she got it thrown back in her face that Megan knows stuff in this short amount of time that Don never shared with her voluntarily.

I could not believe how nasty Sally was to Megan, and that she accepted it.

I'm glad that Megan talked Don out of calling Betty and that Sally overheard the argument and realized what Betty had done. It's sad that she's getting as manipulative as her mother, though. Betty being thankful that no one has anything better was telling

Yeah, that was exactly how that needed to go down. And Sally has the potential to be even more manipulative than her mother, learning from the best. Sally is smart, and she's kinda emotionally falling through the cracks here, even though both sets of parents are apparently trying.

It was the sort of thing that would totally have thrown Old!Don and nearly threw New!Don. But Betty's disappointment when the gambit failed was so severe.

I agree with all of that. In other news, I wonder whether the writers have a contest to see who can give Bobby Draper the dumbest things to say.

I wonder whether the writers have a contest to see who can give Bobby Draper the dumbest things to say.

He's Ralph Wiggum.

Betty's little ploy was so minor compared to shit I know about going down in a divorce or afterwards. A bitchy little stab to put a wedge between Sally and Megan (and Don), while she's feeling helpless and deprived. Loved her Thanksgiving speech: "I have everything I want. And nobody has any better."

In that way she's just like Pete. She can never be filled up, no matter how much she gets. At least Don and even Roger are breaking from some of their patterns. Roger's arc this season has been fascinating and strange. From pure farce to a genuinely soulful reappraisal.

Back to Joan and Lane and apparently Harry Crane next episode.

I didn't even get to the end, because my hate for Betty is so severe it feels like misogyny.(I know that even women internalize shit like that, but I can't help thinking that if they wanted to humanize her by making her fat, it's not working at all.) Like I know I was supposed to feel something in that little thing where Betty sees Megan all lithe and flexible, but it just looked like a bad actress in latex and probably the world's ugliest coat, making that constipated face Ms. Jones makes when she has feels.