Mad Men - The Grown Ups, S03E12

It was bound to happen, and we were all waiting for it. After all, a show that's both depressing and takes place in the 60s could not avoid the inevitable episode of the assassination of President Kennedy.

I don't really recall how the episode began. Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) was told that Ken (Aaron Staton) was being promoted over him, and Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) was meeting Duck (Mark Moses) in a hotel room, their physical relationship having continued since we last saw them together, but otherwise I don't remember. Because once Kennedy was shot, that's all that really mattered...or at least, the trivial things either became far more or far less important.

That sense of terror felt by everyone is not unfamiliar to me. The generation of my parents have two such moments in their lives, two moments were they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news and how they heard it, but we young people still have one. Over 8 years ago now, 9/11 filled me with such an awful sense that the entire world was being plunged into a disaster so profound we would never see the world the same way again. And perhaps we haven't, but life has continued, and the only noticeable difference in Canada is the increase in policies that are supposed to make us feel safer. They don't actually make us any safer, but the important thing is that we feel that way.

Yet amid the horror of the death of the young president, Roger (John Slatery)'s daughter got married, and there was still hope. Hope for that happy pair, and, as Joan (Christina Hendricks) reminded Roger later that night as he called beside an unconscious Jane, babies were still being born.

But some people had less hope. Trudy (Alison Brie) decided that Pete was right to hate his company, and that he should prepare to move from Sterling Cooper and to take his clients with him, while things between Don (Jon Hamm) and Betty (January Jones) ended up even worse. Don, having been revealed to Betty as being Dick Whitman, behaved far more like Dick than like Don towards his wife. Which meant, in fact, that he stopped being such a dick, and his genuine feelings of love for her returned. Betty, on the other hand, cannot get past the lies and ended the episode by telling Don she no longer loved him.

One more episode left this season - how can they possibly top the emotions in this one.