FEMALE TROUBLE: Last Sunday’s episode of Mad Men was sponsored by Heineken, in case you didn’t notice, though if you didn’t, you were probably either asleep or the kind of person who tried to play old cassette tapes on an iPod or insists on “who’s that supposed to be?” during Simpsons episodes.

This sort of product placement integration is going to get more common as broadcast television disappears, but Mad Men is probably a misleading test bed for media buyers to go by – while it’s so much more elegant to be able to slip brands into a show set in an advertising agency than into, say, a sci-fi show, Mad Men limits its prospective clients to a select group who’ve been on the market in the United States for nearly fifty years.

Everybody’s heard of Heineken and Cadillac, of course – the two highest-profile beneficiaries of Mad Men’s last two episodes – but I doubt if I’m alone in presuming that creator Matt Weiner and his writers had made up Utz Chips, the Sterling Cooper client shilled by Jimmy Barrett, the Jerry Lewis-esque comedian cuckolded by Jon Hamm’s Don Draper. It turns out that Utz has been around for nearly 90 years, a Pennsylvania-based snack food company known to anyone in the U.S. northeast. Now would be a good time for US Airways to revive Mohawk Airlines, the regional carrier unceremoniously dumped by Sterling Cooper earlier this season, if only to capitalize on all the free advertising.

Product placement aside, the show hasn’t jumped a shark yet this season, and Sunday’s episode shifted gears from cruise control to emotional meltdown; not coincidentally, it was the episode where the show’s women finally got to take up their share of oxygen. The show’s love of visual puns was in full effect; kicking off her episode-long breakdown now that the fact of Don’s infidelity is finally sinking in, Betty Draper (January Jones) smashes a dining room chair while her children watch silently from the living room, and as she kneels down to pick up the pieces, a bottle of Pride furniture polish takes pride of place in the centre of the screen.

The shoe dropped for Christina Hendricks’ Joan as well, as the statuesque redhead who seemed content to play queen bee of the secretarial pool realized that she actually liked her brief flurry of executive duties assisting Harry with his TV clients; her expression when told offhandedly that she’d been replaced by yet another affable but dimwitted fellow was accurately described as “heartbreaking” on the show’s fan forums.

Elizabeth Moss’ Peggy finally returned to centre stage as well, albeit briefly, with the return of Colin Hanks’ earnest young priest to prod her conscience and give her a glimpse of purgatory with a parish social committee meeting. Peggy, like Don, is a bottled up reservoir of emotional blowback waiting to happen, but the show let Hanks get the always-poignant final scene. Taking off his collar and pulling out a guitar, Father Gill launches into a robust version of a folk spiritual tune that seamlessly cuts to Peter, Paul & Mary for the credits. It’s been hard to figure out just what role Fr. Gill would take in the show, but with the revelation that he’s the man responsible for folk masses, it’s clear that he’s a villain as sinister as Darth Vader or Jack Palance in Shane.