While Don was rushing to the cozy familiarity of his family room in the suburbs, not everybody was so eager to abscond from Sterling Cooper. "Just tell the truth," Peggy had earnestly advised Pete in the beginning of the episode, when he fretted about coming clean to Duck that his father-in-law had grounded him from the Clearasil account. "Don't worry about the outcome. People respect that." If only her priest — who pleaded ad nauseam, from the pulpit and face to face, for Peggy to confess her sins — had spoken to her in a similarly nonjudgmental tone. Fear of the unknown was his cruel and cheap argument. "Don't you understand that this could be the end of the world and you could go to Hell!" the priest said with creepy passion. Peggy looked so sad, but so certain, when she replied that "I can't believe that's the way God is."
In the end, Peggy needed to unburden herself to the father, not the Father. Pete, after having refused to flee with Trudy to her family's beach house, lingered late at the office, smiling at Peggy with drunken googly eyes. He invited her to have a drink on his office sofa (where they tangled like pretzels that fateful time) and started unloading. "You never let me talk about what I want to talk about," he play pouted. (And ladies, if a fella ever tries to seduce you with a self-absorbed line like that, run for the hills!) With the world on the brink of destruction, he finally told her that she was perfect, and that he loved her and wished he'd chosen her all those years ago over Trudy.
And then Elisabeth Moss made the final case that it was the women who ruled this season and should be commended appropriately come Emmy season. With sublime restraint, and such honest, desperate sorrow, she told Pete that she'd had his baby and that she'd given it away. As he stuttered out bleats of disbelief, she explained herself ("I wanted other things") and gave powerful voice to her private grief. "One day you're there and then all of the sudden there's less of you. And you wonder where that part went — if it's living somewhere outside of you — and you keep thinking maybe you'll get it back and then you realize it's just gone." My mouth was hanging open by the end of the scene, and I felt as dumbstruck as Pete. I hope that when the director called cut, Moss and Vincent Kartheiser shook the scene off of them like wet dogs and then slapped each other five, breathlessly insisting that "You're the best actor ever!" "No you're the best!" "You are!" "Oh my God, when that one tear fell down your cheek!" "And then when your hand lingered on my shoulder!" "We are so awesome!" "Beers on me!"
NEXT: Best lines of the night
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