The Season 1 finale of Mad Men is a pretty heartbreaking hour of television. Behind every personal triumph there's something deeper and darker waiting for each character, which puts a fine point on the show's running theme of the hard reality behind glamor and success. Mad Men is a show about a lost lifestyle, a period in our culture that broke down and transformed. More specifically, it's the story of why that lifestyle disappeared. Past all the fancy hotels, liquor-fueled brainstorming sessions and sexy after-hours parties, Mad Men is a deeply moralistic show. The way the Madison Avenue set conducted their lives, this show suggests, led to their downfall.

The first big triumph of the episode is Don's sentimental pitch to the Eastman Kodak Company for their new circular slide projector. It mythologizes the origin of the now popular name for the wheel-shaped slide mechanism, the Carousel. Faced with the death of his adopted brother Adam and the implication that Betty knows about his infidelity, Don conjures the bittersweet memories of his ever-more-distant past to sell Kodak on his idea. The pitch scene is one of the most beautiful moments of the season, especially since it carries the weight of so many sad stories.

For the story of a more literal weight, Peggy ends the episode with a promotion she didn't expect and a baby she didn't know she was going to have. The sudden labor pains and subsequent delivery in what looks like a low-end public hospital add a significant amount of retroactive irony to all of Peggy's coworkers' comments about her being plump and moody. More and more it seems that Mad Men is positing Peggy as a casualty of her era. She's trapped between two competing mindsets, one that supports the old-fashioned social mores of her workplace and another that encourages an independent, free-living lifestyle. The combination of the two pushes Peggy to trade pieces of her decency and sanity for confidence and success.

But if anyone is a victim of her time, it's Betty Draper. After her best friend Francine discovers her husband's affair with a woman in Manhattan, Betty finally admits to herself that she knows about Don's own extramarital habits. In a nicely underplayed scene with her therapist, Betty describes how careless Don is in concealing his infidelity, whether it's coming home smelling of perfume or spending too many nights at a hotel in the city. Though a lot of fans are iffy on Betty as a character (and I admit I've had my moments of doubt, too), I think she's a pretty fascinating figure. At times she's very childish and self-restricting, but she also has glimmers of incredible clarity and strength. Betty isn't naive or stupid, she's just adept at self-deception.

Best Moment: Don's Kodak pitch. It's the perfect convergence of everything that has happened over the course of the entire season.

Notes: Historical accuracy check- The Kodak Carousel didn't launch until Spring 1962, rather than Winter 1961 as depicted on the show. A small nit to pick, I know.

Episode Rating: 4.8/5- Aside from one or two awkward scenes (i.e. Betty talking to Glenn Bishop in the bank parking lot), "The Wheel" is a stunning hour of television. It does what a season finale ought to do, which is get viewers excited about another season, but it does so in a respectable way.