98
Don and Betty: Don comes home to pick up some clothes for a quick getaway with mistress Missy to find that Betty has returned home early from her jaunt to Philly to deal with the remnants of her father's estate. She is wearing a pair of stellar plaid pants, a high-necked blouse and a scowl that would make Don's face melt like he just opened the Arc of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Arc. Passive, avoiding Betty is passive no more.
"Come here, I want to show you something," she says, but she really wants Don to show her the truth. Don is reluctant to open the drawer and starts accusing Betty. He is really behaving like one of the drug abusers on Intervention, attacking those who called him out, coming up with any excuse not to deal with the issue at hand, and pleading through desperation and sweat for it all to stop. But Betty stares him down and demands to know the truth. After consulting her father's lawyer, she learns that she probably doesn't have enough money or gumption to actually leave Don, so she has to make this thing work.
When Don is trying to weasel his way out of opening the drawer that contains his secret, Betty asks Don about the pictures in the box and why they say "Dick"—spitting out the name like it's a bit of poison, and she would rather make him sick with it than ingest it herself. He tries to downplay that he changed his name, trying to only give her what he can get away with. "People change their names all the time. You did," he says. "I did. I took your name," she replies.
With that, Don knows that she is as much a part of him as the past he is so ashamed of, and he opens up—with the help of some booze and cigarettes of course. He asks her what she wants to know and she says, "Let's start with your name," because what you call something is the basest way of understanding what it is. He says his name is "Donald Draper," because he has so subsumed this identity that he doesn't know anything else.
But Don tells her everything: pretending to be the dead man, divorcing his old wife, his brother's suicide. And they sit on the bed together, and he gives everyone in the pictures their names, making them real for himself (which they haven't been in a long time) and for Betty, who has never known any of this before. Don is noticeably upset and displaying an enormous amount of emotion for such a stoic character, and all Betty can offer him is a tentative hand on his shoulder. Now that she has finally stood up to him and he has opened up to her, they are closer than they've ever been, but Betty still can't get past her chilly facade. But, considering how pissed she must be at her husband for keeping all this from her for all these years, even that cold hand is a huge gesture.
And we see their renewed commitment at the end of the episode, where the family all goes out trick or treating together. When at a neighbors, he tells the kids that he sees a gypsy and a hobo (costumes that never go out of style) and then looks at the parents, "And who are you supposed to be?" Well, Don isn't even sure anymore. He is Don Draper, and will continue to call himself that, even now that his secret has infiltrated his home. What will Betty do with the information? She's going to stay with Don of course, but there is trouble on the horizon—even more issues of trust and resentment between the two, and that can't be the best environment for either.
