I'm confused about Don's transition from the farm as a boy (which was shown in earlier seasons), to the whore house, I guess as an older kid. Has that transition been outlined in previous seasons?

I actually buy the Campbell brothers cold reaction to their mother's death. Alzheimer's or advanced dementia can have a significantly alienating effect on loved ones. I'm sure Pete has a lot of processing to do, but his initial reaction of distance and relief is perfectly realistic. What I didn't exactly buy was the soapy plot contrivance. I'm sure that stuff happened, but the whole thing seemed winged in as an afterthought.

Other than that, I thought the episode was beautiful. I'm not as hard on Don as most -- the central tension of the show, for me, is a deeply damaged and flawed man teetering between self-destruction and redemption. Don has virtues. As an abused and neglected child, he's deeply empathetic and more forgiving of others than most. We just forgot he had those virtues since he spent this season acting like a deranged, manipulative monster.

Regarding Don's "revelation" of his childhood home to his kids, I doubt he's capable of grasping the enormity of the gap between saying "this is where I grew up" and the massive pile of questions it would raise in their minds. Nothing in his past suggests he's going to want to answer those questions. So he went through some motions of disclosing his past without really doing it, much as Pete and his brother exchanged glances indicating they're both aware of a foreign-to-them social expectation to give a shit about their mother's death, when they plainly don't.

Don's stab at disclosure is all the weirder for the fact that earlier in the episode, he did enough disclosing of his past to alienate the Hershey's execs. I don't see what in that (or anything else) pushed Don toward embracing and sharing the whole truth -- quite the opposite.

I'm not sad this increasing mess of a show is winding down soon.

Awww YEA. Donnie D. is BACK! Y'all see that wry grin of his at the bar? Damn, nothin' but big accounts, smooth speeches and buckets of beatnik trim in his near future!

WAIT. We're talking about this year's finale, not last years? My mistake! Everything came up D. Drapes this season I presume, right?