Don receives a photo from Anna of the two of them with a note: "Stephanie doesn’t think we look old." Cute. Allison sees this and asks if this is the letter from California. She's getting attached, and what little she does know about Don's personal life is too much. You can tell by how short he is with her. I can’t help but wonder if Don was Allison's first, because she appears to be in love with him.

After discovering his exclusion from the Lucky Strike call, Peter receives an invite from Harry Crane to go to lunch with him and Ken Cosgrove. Once there, Cosgrove lays into Peter about the shitty things he says behind his back. Peter chalks it up to Harry’s big mouth but I think Peter talks shit and Ken can see through it. Ken is about to marry a friend of Trudy's, and when Trudy talks, she’s often repeating what Peter tells her.

Peter apologizes, and Ken reveals that his stint at McCann was awful, and insinuates interest in SCDP. It's doubtful that Peter will ever let Ken near the place, since he despised him so at Sterling Cooper, but we'll see. If it’s somehow advantageous to him, we may seeing more of Ken Cosgrove this season.

Back at the office, Peter is informed that he’ll have to resign his father-in-law Tom's Clearasil account due to a conflict. Peter is upset since he promised Tom he'd take good care of the account, and in exchange for those sweet, sweet billings, make a baby with Trudy. This, as you may recall, hasn’t been an easy task. So this whole resignation thing is upsetting. He makes a dinner reservation with Tom to explain the whole thing in person, and this is where things get interesting.

Peter starts to explain to Tom that he’s tried to keep his father-in-law happy, which isn't easy because of their personal entanglements. Tom, who is oddly joyful, cuts him off to hug him. "Peter, my boy, I already know. And I'm so happy for you and Trudy.” He reveals that Trudy is pregnant, and then discovers that Trudy hasn't yet told Peter -- the ultimate OH SHIT moment in any family. Tom immediately apologizes, but Peter is surprisingly okay and we learn how truly conniving he is. In Tom’s haste to make things right, Peter realizes he’s at an advantage, and holds back his bad news.

Peter rushes home to Trudy, who's already heard what happened from Tom. Peter holds her and says he doesn’t care how he found out. Trudy reveals she’d been waiting for their upcoming anniversary to tell him the good news. He says, “This feels better than I thought it would,” and Trudy laughs and says, “How would you know how this feels?” Heh. It's then that we’re all like, “Oh shit, what about Peggy and that baby?” And it turns out that that’s how Peggy feels too. Especially because she finds out when she’s handed the obligatory “congrats from all your co-workers” card to sign. Sad but true. Pete Campbell really is a slimy bastard.

Peter then tells Trudy that he met with Tom to discuss the conflict but didn't get a chance to talk about it. Trudy unwittingly helps him jockey for position by suggesting dinner with her parents the following night, where she'll help him discuss it gently with her father.

At dinner, Peter goes for the jugular. Tom feels terrible about spoiling the surprise, and Peter spills about the conflict, saying that, since he's about to be a father, he’ll need to replace that loss with more business. He walks into SCDP the next morning with $6M in additional billings, courtesy of Tom.

While all this dirty dealing is going down, Peggy, Freddy, Don and Dr. Miller are conducting a focus group for Pond’s with the office secretaries. Dr. Miller is just as conniving as Peter in this practice: she dresses down, requests Peggy to "forget" her name tag so she looks like she “doesn’t matter,” and eats a Danish and jokes about how she “sometimes” watches her weight. The ladies love her instantly and open up about their messy love lives. Naturally, the focus group breaks down into a sniveling, "why doesn't he love me?" cry fest. Allison gets teary hearing about another girl's heartache, and with Don watching, she breaks down completely and leaves the room. Peggy, feeling somewhat responsible, goes after her.

"Don’t worry," she soothes. “Someone always cries at a focus group.” She leaves out that it’s usually out of sheer boredom. But that’s because Peggy's a class act -- up to a point. Allison confesses that she can’t stand the way Don turns on the charm one minute, then yanks it away the next. "But I'm sure you’ve already been through all of this," she says, and Peggy realizes that everyone thinks she's slept with Don. And it's at this moment that Elisabeth Moss shows her skills, because she looks like she is ready to barf. I don't even know how one would fake that.

Allison goes on: “He’s a drunk and he gets away with murder because they forget everything, you know.” It dawns on Peggy that these dudes, slugging Canadian Club all day, are not in actuality delightfully madcap but rather raging alcoholics. And then Peggy gets angry: “No. My problem is not your problem. You need to get over it.”

Allison starts sobbing all over again and Peggy walks away. I think Joan and Peggy are the only women on earth who are not only NOT attracted to Don and who can't figure out why other women are.

The focus group is over by the time Peggy gets back. Dr. Miller has already forgotten her whole "I’m just like you" schtick, and as another secretary pops in to ask, “Is she okay?” Dr. Miller’s all, “Who?”

Don heads back to his office, where Allison is still trying to compose herself. He tries to start in with that old intro line our husbands or male bosses use when they are scared shitless of our emotional display or our PMS: "If you don’t feel like working…” Allison stands and quietly tells him that they made a mistake, that she feels awkward and thinks a new job would be good for her. She calmly asks Don for a letter of recommendation, to which he callously replies, “Yes, of course. Just type up whatever you want it to say and I’ll sign it.” Enraged that Don couldn’t even be arsed to write a few nice words down himself, Allison hurls a paperweight at his head and storms off. Joan peeks in and asks if he's alright.

Don: "Yes, but I'll need a new secretary.”

Joan: “Are you open to Allison coming back after a few days?”

Don: "If that's what she wants."

Joan: "Really?"

Don: "No."

Meanwhile, Peggy meets the most interesting gal on the elevator. Joyce works for Time magazine, and invites Peggy to one of those parties that we read about in history books: where people get the crap kicked out of them during a raid, everyone’s smoking pot and watching films that make no fucking sense. Here, Joyce hits on Peggy, who informs her that she has a boyfriend. Joyce counters that he “doesn’t own your vagina,” and Peggy, always handy with a good line, parries, “No, but he is renting it.”

Joyce is where the "brief nudity" comes in: a friend of hers submitted nude pics to the magazine that were rejected. Talk about a strip tease.

Peggy then meets Abe and they make out a little while hiding out from cops. That whole phrase “It was the 60s” is beginning to make sense, particularly because this scene doesn't make any.

While Peggy s trying her best to become the textbook version of the Liberated 1960s Woman, drunkenly stumbles home, where he attempts to write a letter TO Allison, not FOR her, but gives up and passes out instead.

The next morning, Don arrives to a new secretary, Miss Blankenship, who looks to be about 60 years young. Nice pick, Joan. You don't even know what's happened to keep it from happening again.

Dr. Miller visits to deliver the results of the focus group: that women really just want to get married, and will do whatever it takes to do so. Freddy is grinning like the Cheshire Cat at an AA meeting. But Don doesn’t want to go that route. "You can't tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved." Like when Allison slept with you, then threw a paperweight at your head? Those unreliable, emotional dames are something else, huh, Don?

Out in the lobby, Peter and Tom and all the other suits are waiting for Don. They're off to a celebratory lunch, and Peggy bypasses her former flame for Joyce and her liberal crew. As their paths separate, a Meaningful Glance® is exchanged. I still want to know what happened to that baby, but I guess we'll never know.

Or maybe we will, next week. Stay tuned.

Miz J blogs at Ask MizJ.