Forget Don Draper’s road to becoming a better man. He is a good man. He just also happens to be Machiavelli when it comes to the cut-throat world of advertising.

As Gabe and Mike have pointed out, the final scene of the episode with Don getting the better of Lou and Jim was priceless — and vintage Draper. Does having sex with women other than his wife give him some kind of superpower? When the man is good, he is good.

However, as someone who is rooting for Don to find happiness, I was pleased to see the return of the real Draper family this week. The character of Stephanie is a nice reminder of the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, Don is a good man. He just hasn’t found true happiness yet. He sees in Stephanie a genuinely good person and wants to take care of her and her child, perhaps because he still thinks he owes something to the real Don Draper.

Caity Lotz plays a truly wonderful character. She’s an honest, well-meaning person who tries, despite asking Don for help, not to be a burden. Stephanie was at a difficult crossroad in her life and handled Megan’s assumptions about her relationship with Don incredibly well. She even held her own against Deathstroke’s army of super-humans … err … wrong show.

But the true show-stealer on this episode was undeniably Ben Feldman’s Michael Ginsberg. Since his first episode, I have been waiting for this wacky character to get some more screen time. He’s been killing it in every scene he’s been in since his first appearance, including a lot of scenes in which he obviously irritates Don, who never even had the patience for Peggy. Ginsberg’s nipple scene may go down in television history as one of the most unforgettable.

Ginsberg, however, is a strange animal. He feels like a television character. Ginsberg is the TV Trope living in a world of real people. So, why is he a part of the show?

Ginsberg, Stan, and the rest of the creative team are representative of the change in the times. When we first began following the men on Madison Avenue, we were treated to hard-drinking, ambitious, wine-and-dine, business-minded characters like Pete Campbell, Harry Crane, and Ken Cosgrove. Since the change to SCDP and, later, SC&P we’ve seen the times, and the cast, change into the next generation. Stan is rude, crude, and anti-authority. Ginsberg is psychotic, neurotic, and anti-authority. And management handles them very differently. When Pete got out of line, Don or Roger would shout at him until he was on the verge of tears. Now, as Don said to Lou, they have to have thicker skin.

The rest of the episode had its brilliant moments. Don riding the tricycle comes to mind. But Sally telling off Betty was perhaps Sally’s best scene in the show’s seven-year run. At least, next to the time she told her father she loved her. Sally has finally evolved from being the annoying kid who always thinks she’s right to actually being right most of the time. And she showed that she’s a good person, too, by letting Bobby stay with her.

Betty, however, continues to be terrible, even spouting some nonsense about Vietnam. Thankfully, Henry Francis set her straight. He continues to play the likable Nixon-era Republican, and though his berating of his wife should make him the villain, Betty is so terrible and so wrong that we end up rooting for the man.

This week’s episode will go down as one of the best, with allusions to the past and a lot of evidence of growth, combined with several shocking and important scenes. I, for one, look forward to the rest of the season.