Mad Men Power Rankings, Week Eight: 'When You Don't Have Any Power, Delay'

2. Betty Draper (up) Last week: 4

What's this? Betty Draper, allowing the dashing, powerful Henry Francis no more than a kiss through the window of her dead father's car as thanks for stopping the reservoir development dead in its tracks? Even after she bought some ugly-ass antique sofa last week to remember a head-spinning day of pie and window-shopping every time she collapsed onto it in a frustrated heap because Baby Gene just won't stop crying? And then this same Betty Draper jets off to Rome with her husband for a marriage-reinvigorating vacation, when she has the opportunity to stay home and finally put out for a man so patient in his pursuit that he was willing to wait until she squeezed out a baby before closing the deal? We hardly recognize this Betty.

We do, however, recognize the Betty who whined about hating her friends and her boring old Tarrytown life and her rotten kids and pretty much everything that doesn't involve 48 hours of carefree hotel sex in a faraway place. That Betty, that's our Betty.

3. Pete Campbell (up) Last week: 7

Oh, Weasly Pete Campbell, Caddish Despoiler of German Nannies! Of course, even with Trudy away, he can't manage to pull off what seems like it should've been the perfect au-pair-diddling crime, setting up the vulnerable frau for some sexual payback by fixing her dress and possibly saving her job. No, he's the Bizarro Draper, somehow reducing the nanny to postcoital tears (perhaps because of some unspeakable act he begged for, like the Bavarian Butter Churn) and breaking down in front of a totally unsuspecting wife who wants nothing more than to ignore her husband's extramarital shenanigans. Still, he did get laid and didn't lose his marriage, despite his utter bungling of a simple, one-off affair, and in the Mad Men universe, that's worthy of a decent bump in the Power Rankings.

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