After several episodes with multiple plotlines and hefty thematic weight, “Souvenir” felt much like a television version of a short but sweet jaunt to Rome – memorable, intense, and uncomplicated. (At least, as uncomplicated as an episode of Mad Man can be.) It was also more directly about the visual, which happens often on the show but particularly when the plotline moves its characters out of their familiar settings, as in last season’s The Jet Set. So much storytelling happened here on a visual rather than verbal level – Betty looking out the hotel window, Pete Campbell slumped on the couch oblivious to time passing, Sally watching her mother looking in the mirror.

Perpetually throughout “Souvenir,” I found myself distracted by clothing. The (rape?) subplot involving Pete and the German au pair used a ruined party dress as a classic Macguffin, where the dress itself had no meaning other than its use as an object to introduce the two characters and allow the au pair to feel beholden to Pete. (It also allowed us to see Joan in her new job, but that could have been arranged without the elaborate stained dress plotline). That it was a dress mattered very little – the au pair could easily have broken a vase or stained a rug and the result would have been the same, which is how a Macguffin works. But while the fluffy dress held little meaning other than as a plot instigator for Pete Campbell, its presence in the episode acted as a key for other characters and other plotlines, a sort of self-annotated item that floated through scenes with its own footnote – “Hey, look at that giant dress! What’s going on with clothing in this episode?”

Enter Betty, three times. In the first third of the episode, she wears a white dress with a pleated skirt and a blue patterned scarf tied around her throat, her naval-inspired Junior League outfit. It allows her to slip readily from her city council meeting, to her developing affair with Henry Francis in a dark car, and then back into her kitchen, where she chats with her husband about city politics. It’s sharp and attractive, but it’s not overtly sexy, which is in accord with the way we understand Mr. Francis’s attraction to Betty. He first met her, after all, when she was nine months pregnant, and the maternal housewife is clearly part of her appeal. Next we move to Rome, where Betty makes an appointment at the beauty parlor in fluent Italian and then strolls out onto the darkened streets like a figure straight off the runway. The camera gives her a full body pan-up, beginning with her feet and moving up to her black fringed hem, oversized beaded necklace, multi-stranded cleavage-bearing neckline, giant pearl earrings, and finally, her dramatic, impeccable beehive. She wears heavy, shadowy eye makeup, carries a tiny black clutch, and is fully high fashion, sexy, educated and sassy. The game she plays with Don at the table underlines the point – this is Betty without marriage or children or the Junior League. She loves it, and is good at it.

Finally, we return to Betty at home, after beehives at the beauty salon and sex in the shower with her husband. From the first season of Mad Men, set in 1960, Betty has been dressed as the perfect fifties housewife, with wide, tea-length skirts, and short coiffed hair. As season two progressed, Betty began to shift toward more modern fashions, with narrower skirts and bright floral patterns, but always a recognizable Betty Draper. Suddenly, after returning from Rome, Betty wears an outfit that makes her look like the fifties are a distant memory. Her floor length color block patterned dress is almost shocking, a sharp departure from tailored suits and Junior League scarves. It is – dare I say – casual, a tone further emphasized by her practical, embroidered headband.

The narrative here is not hard to follow. All along, Mad Men has been right at the edge of major cultural change, shifting slowly but noticeably away from the fifties and into the sixties. With a trip to Rome and a return home, it seems as though Betty Draper is the first character to really make the leap, internally and externally. She begins with her almost fussy white Junior League dress, rediscovers that she has sex appeal and value, and ends the episode in a casual sixties dress, frustrated with her limited options in life. The dress Pete Campbell replaces for the au pair is like Betty’s old dresses – it has a large, fluffy ballerina skirt and tight bodice. It is also, as we learn at the department store, “last season.” Before everyone else on the show, Betty has begun to move forward. I doubt she’ll ever go for full-on hippie status, but the seeds of discontent and self-awareness may have finally been sown. Bring on the sixties.