Also I it is another step in making Betty three dimensional. If Don who is much much worse than Betty gets to have depth, and even evil Pete has humanity, it is time Betty got to be three dimensional again. (Yeah, we have seen moments, live shooting the doves, and the vacation in Italy. But it says something about how she is written that we find Don more sympathetic - cause he really isn't. ) So I'm glad to see Betty as the the sympathetic mother who provides comfort for once.

Also there was that bit when she was being shallowly triumphant to Megan and Megan's reaction was "thank god Sally is OK". And Betty backed off seemed to realize what was important, and suddenly saw comforting her daughter as more than one upswomanship. She does not have to stop being Betty, but I do want to see more of the human side.

I pretty much freaked out, and I had a basic idea of what to expect. If I had just run off from my stepmom's house with the boy I loved who had just told me he had told his friends he was going to sleep with me but then affirmed that he didn't think of me romantically and it happened? I would totally have run home to mom, regardless of how I felt about her on a day to day basis. At that point it was all about comfort and familiarity in a scary, transitional time, when the transition was happening in my own body.

This, absolutely. It's fun to be a teenager who hates your mom, until something happens that is guaranteed to make you want to be a kid again.

OK, so maybe it's just me who never told my mother when I finally did start, after a couple of years of being sent off to summer camp with unnecessary pads.

I was impressed with how Betty handled it with Sally, and was happy to see her back off the one-upsmanship ("needed her mother" was definitely a dig on Betty's part). I did find it amusing that Sally said "my first period" while Betty, the ostensible adult talking to another adult woman use "became a woman".

I also thought January Jones did a great job in that scene, which yet again begs the question why she can do such a great job as Betty and seems so dreadful in everything else. I finally saw X-Men: First Class and sheesh. The character is "Emma Frost" not "Emma Blockoffrozenwood".

yeah, I have to say I did not connect with Sally's reaction at all. So thanks to those of you who shared your experience. It seemed WAY over the top to me. Not necessarily that she ran home (because I suppose I could understand that I guess), but that she left everyone in the lurch, including Glen, and it was likely Megan or Don would have flipped the fuck out.

There have been a few times this season where I felt they structured interactions to advance certain plots or character actions/development. Yes, all writing does that, but the Joan/partner situation is the most extreme example that stuff felt shoehorned in. I kind of felt that way about Sally.

Like, the people involved really wanted the ep to end with Glen driving Don's car (a circle of life thing) and a way to get there is to make sure he was properly abandoned and ended up at Don's apartment.

There have been a few times this season where I felt they structured interactions to advance certain plots or character actions/development. Yes, all writing does that, but the Joan/partner situation is the most extreme example that stuff felt shoehorned in. I kind of felt that way about Sally

I've seen similar comments about how Lane's storyline ended. I guess I don't see them as anymore contrived than some of the other things that have happened in the series over the years. The whole arc involving Don and Sal, for instance.

I don't know, maybe I am being suckered, but everything that has happened feels pretty natural to me.

One thing about Mad Men, which is somewhat obscured by the period attention to detail, the way it evokes the intricacies of the advertising world and the subtlety of the acting - is that they've always dipped into the tropes of melodrama.

I think that was a conscious choice to link the work to things like the movies of Douglas Sirk and Peyton Place.

But I remember my first reaction to Don's stolen identity was that it was a bit far fetched, a Hollywood movie plot from the 40s. Same with Peggy hiding her pregnancy.

And in melodrama plot drives the characters. It's always amping the emotional content, the breakdowns and the tragedies.

I feel like Lane's storyline was properly set up, so I do not feel any part of that was shoehorned. Even from the season premiere, they established his problems (ongoing) with money and that he considered, for a moment, stealing.

So nothing that he did for the season seemed shoehorned in. at all.

I am not sure I ultimately think that Joan's actions were something she would not have done, but they needed to put in a bit more work (like they did with Lane) to get her there.

Megan is a bit of a blank slate. Her actions and motivations seem to change every 2-3 episodes if it serves a particular storyline, so I expect zero consistency in her characterization.