Thanks to Conrad Hilton, everyone was taken over by the spirit of colonization, both personal and professional, literal and figurative. Oh, Don is back to his old tricks with a crazy lady, and Sal turned down some hot action.

The center of last night's action was the powerful taking over the weak and trying to use them for their own selfish ends. We saw it in the Draper home, at Sterling Cooper, and especially as Don climbed the stairway to heaven to find Miss Farrell's room over the garage. The lights were on, and somebody was at home. We wish the same could be said for Missy.

Also this week, the civil rights struggles of 1963 are starting to seep into the action, and in the ego-driven world of Mad Men, we learn more about the characters from how they react to them than the impact the events had on history as a whole.

Sal and Lee Garner, Jr: The most powerful man in this pairing is not either of these two, but Lee Garner, Sr. Two gay men in the early '60s had no power whatsoever. Everything that Junior does is to please his father—from sticking with Lucky Strike instead of going into the movies to pretending to be straight. When Sal rejects twangy hunk Lee in the editing suite, he opens Lee up to the possibility of exposure, which would upset Senior, which would mean that Lee is out of a job and a fortune. Lee then uses what power he does have over the Lucky Strike ad budget to get Sal fired. Too bad, because that commercial (which looked like it was taken from gay classic Querelle) was pretty darn good. And after looking at that wonderful model all afternoon, it's no wonder why Lee was ready to go.

As soon as Lee hit on Sal, he was pretty much doomed at the firm. Even if he had gone through with it, Lee probably would have been so guilty that he would have had Sal fired anyway, so he might as well have gotten a hot piece out of it rather than just getting a pink slip. The reason he didn't is because he realized that he had no power in the situation. How is he going to defend himself from some rich, powerful client, especially when the threat of everyone learning the truth about his personal life is so close to office? Earlier this season, when the bellboy came onto him as aggressively, Sal was all about it, because what is a lowly wage slave in another city going to do to Sal?

Unfortunately, it is that event that does Sal in. When he fesses up to Don about what went on, Don doesn't believe his story. While Don never brought up the fact that he caught Sal pink handed with the bellboy, he does use the information against him now. Why would Don trust a known homosexual's word against someone rich and upstanding like Lee Garner Jr? But, in the end, Sal's biggest sin wasn't liking guys, it was putting business in danger. While Lee may not have successfully exploit Sal, he did wield his power to have him put out.

So, where does that leave Sal? Making calls to the missus from a pay phone in the park. There is a guy wearing a leather hat next to the phone booth, and nothing says gay like a leather hat, so that means Sal must be out cruising for dick in public. Stripped of his job and ambition, Sal is left powerless and isolated.

Don and Miss Farrell: We know that Missy has some serious daddy issues and probably a drinking problem, and now it seems like she's up at all hours of the evening running around deserted streets and sitting in her cozy apartment in killer frocks. God, there is so much wrong with this girl. Why can't Don see it?

Her biggest problem, though, is she cedes all her power to Don. When he picks her up on the side of the road and when he first arrives at her door unexpectedly, she has all the control. She knows what he wants and she has to give her consent. She even tells Don "I know how this ends." Yeah, we do too, with you heartbroken and boiling Don's bunny! Once she gives into Don, it's over for poor Miss Farrell, because he has the power to ruin her, and he does it so he can have an escape from his sad little life, and to exercise some control over another after being tossed around at Conrad Hilton's every whim.

When he finally embraces her he says, "I want you. I don't care. Doesn't that mean anything to someone like you." As always, Don is all about selfishness and ego. He's able to exploit Missy, a common school teacher who should be happy that Don deigns to look at "someone like her."

We also get a peek into their psyches when they react to Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the radio. Missy says she's going to teach it to the kids on the first day of school. Ever the idealist, she thinks that the world can change for the better, just like she thinks that she can probably change Don and that their dalliance will turn into something more—or at least something she can control.

Don instructs her that she is naïve. Just like Don's behavior never changes, he thinks that the world will never change, and that this speech is just so much hot air. He's not against progress, he's just never been able to muster it up for himself, so how could the rest of the world be able to do it?

Betty and Henry: No wonder Betty is with Don, because she loves being controlled. Even in her dream, a man overpowers her with his touch while she lies on her fainting couch of desire. But through their interaction, we see just how powerful a privileged housewife like Betty is over someone like Sal or Missy.

When Henry arrives at her door unannounced, she invites him in and then quickly sends him away, unlike Missy who invites Don in and allows him to get her into the sack. She forgets that she is the one who reached out to him by sending a letter, igniting the whole situation. Trying to prove her innocence in front of Carla, Betty plans a fundraiser to cover up her indiscretion. When Henry doesn't show, Betty is in a mood. She even pouts while wearing yet another of her spendid ensembles.

She's so distraught that he didn't show that she can barely pull a look together to go let him have a piece of her mind in Albany. She shouts at him for making her look like a "sap" for not coming. She wanted him to arrive on his steed and throw her down on the couch and take control, but when he says to her that she had to come to him, she's turned off. Though they kiss, she won't have some messy romp on an office chair or a motel room. Betty is above being "tawdry," and doesn't want to be the one calling the shots. She leaves for good, probably.

Back at home, she and Carla discuss the girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing. Betty says it's a travesty, but maybe it means that civil rights isn't supposed to happen now. That's so like her. As she said in her letter to Henry, she "has ideas," but they're not fully formed. They're just bubbling under the surface as undirected anger. She wants to do something about it, but she keeps delaying, waiting for the perfect time so that it can emerge clean and fully-formed. Just like civil rights, Betty's quest for fulfillment is going to be long and messy, and if she's not willing to get dirty, then it's never going to come.

Don and Conrad Hilton: Conrad Hilton is the great colonizer. Not only does he use his money and influence to push Don around, call him in the middle of the night, and order him to have drinks at all hours, but he wants America to colonize the world. He thinks that by having Hilton hotels in every location, that he can bring a bit of freedom and religion to the far reaches of the world. Communism can offer idealism, but America can offer clean towels and hamburgers! There are more shades of the just ended national nightmare of George W. Bush in him than I care to point out.

Don gives him what he wants, a brilliant ad campaign showing Americans that their influence is taking over the globe, but it isn't enough for his finnicky client, who expresses his concern that Don didn't comply with his strange and specific demands.

Don's biggest disappointment must be that he sees failing Hilton as failing his father all over again. Hilton is like a hillbilly who made it big, and thereby someone who Don sees as worth impressing, but also reminds him of his past that he's trying to reconcile with his present. Connie says that he looks at Don as a son (a sentiment that seems a little premature) becuase, like himself, Don is a bumpkin who hit the big time, something that Connie's kids, raised in the lap of proselytizing American luxury, can't understand. More and more, we see that he is a little bit touched, and when Don didn't put the moon in his ad campaign, he is offended, the more so because of his rushed acceptance of Don as a member of his spiritual family. Whenever the ruler turns on the ruled, it's never pretty.

Don and Roger: This clip is worth watching for Roger's lawnmower quip alone, but the continuously uneasy dynamic between the two makes it especially significant. Roger, whose name is on the wall in the lobby, grows more and more resentful of Don, now that his former subject is rising up against him and trying to take the star role at the firm. Don even outlawed the man from his office and his presence, forgeting who is really in charge. When Roger tells him he's "over his head," he's probably right, something that Don will hate to admit later.

Roger is also an old-school colonizer, as evidenced by his lovely blackface display a few weeks back. Just as Don thinks the civil rights movement will change nothing, Roger wishes that things would go back to the way they were, when blackface was funny and the black populace working to make the white man richer. He also longs for things in his own firm to go back to normal. He sees Don as nothing more than a house slave, there to make him money and useless without his wisdom. The two will probably be each others' downfall.