I’m still turning over the image of Lee Garner Jr. humiliating and emasculating Roger Sterling, buzz-killed, Santa Claus-ed, and cornered.

A

I think that Sterling’s moment of humiliation will become a recurring motif in the story threads for many characters — Don humiliating his secretary; Lane humiliating Joan; Joan humiliating her husband; Joan and Lane humiliating his secretary.   Maybe this has been one of the show’s traits throughout, it seems to be rising in relief with each episode.  I have a sense that this is about 1) generating drama: creating conflict among the characters and 2) explaining something about a cultural style and moment waning: the changes up-coming will be humiliating for people ensconced in bourbon, scotch, cigarettes at the office, primal masculinity, wilting femininity, and the late 1950s status quo.

B

Nostalgia come from the Greek nostos: return home.  Don/Dick’s return to California, his return home, forces a realization: home is never the home you left.  When he understands that Anne’s cancer is terminal, he’s also understanding that another crucial narrative about Dick/Don is ending.  He’s in a serious state of longing, but for what exactly, which home, which past.

C

The episode ended at the beginning of 1965.  El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) is assassinated.  VietNam gets real real; Cities from New York (Harlem) to Los Angeles (Watts) will burn every summer to close out the decade; Freedom Summer (which ended with Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman murdered) will morph into the anti-VietNam movement, the Chicano movement, 2nd wave feminism, student sit-ins and campus takeovers.  No wonder the characters look so gloomy as the credits role 

The characters will continue to suffer various humiliations and grow more nostalgic for the fading status quo as American life continues to swirl more chaotically.

— Walton