Bullet Points: Mad Men -- "Waterloo"

Disconnected, spoilery thoughts on the Mad Men mid-season 7 finale...

• Can Elizabeth Moss get a freaking Emmy already? What an episode for Peggy, between the Burgerchef pitch (pretty clearly evoking memories of Don’s famous carousel pitch in Season 1’s “The Wheel”) and the moment comforting young Julio in her apartment (and tying the latter scene into the former). It’s all the more meaningful because we know she is using maternal instincts previously suppressed when she gave up the child conceived with Pete, something that happened six seasons (and in the universe of the show, nine years) ago.
• Roger Sterling! Making moves! Nice to see him take Cooper’s leadership advice to heart to orchestrate the sale to McCann-Erickson, and it wasn’t completely out of the blue after he stuck up for Don in the partners meeting in “Field Trip.” His character has seemed aimless at times since SCDP lost Lucky Strike in Season 4: absent for stretches of episodes or unbelievably taking LSD. But this triumph definitely marks a new direction for him.
• Harry Hamlin has been great as the increasingly imperious Jim Cutler but who wasn’t thrilled to see that bland look of self-satisfaction wiped off his face when he learned of the sale? Cutler is the most logical subject of the “Waterloo” episode title.
• Well done connecting the moon landing (predictably the real historic event that would coincide with episode 7) and who watched it together with the notion of not strictly nuclear families. Roger is at Joan’s apartment with her mother and their son while Don, Peggy, Pete, and Harry are at a hotel in Indiana.
• I agree with Matt Zoller Seitz that Ted’s character wasn’t particularly well-served this year, but with Ted back in New York, there should be more to do for him moving forward. And how will ex-romantic interest Peggy takes this news?
• “Marriage is a racket!” Never stop being awful, Pete.
• Sally is the only reason I care about the scenes at the Francis household anymore. Just as Betty described Don as analogous to a bad boyfriend in the distant past, she seems to be a vestige of an earlier version of the show.
• One blemish: the Bert Cooper dance number didn’t work for me. It just seemed out of place, tonally off, and lacking purpose other than to have Robert Morse singing and dancing. Why would this be Don’s hallucination? 
• The final shots of Mad Men finales are memorable in symbolizing a direction forward for the plot. Last season ended with Don and his kids looking up at the whorehouse he grew up in, symbolizing Don at least beginning to reckon with his demons. Season 5 concluded with a woman at a bar asking if Don was alone, foreshadowing the Sylvia affair and Don’s backsliding. But the musical number was too strange to clearly indicate anything.