The three problematic decisions were: firstly, protracted voice-over by Don Draper. Voice-over to reveal motivation violates a basic modern screen writing rule - but perhaps like a split infinitive, one that would be better honoured in the breach? And it violates the four-season long Mad Men rule, that we never see inside Don's head, we just infer.
The second decision is once again a double-violation. Firstly of a minor series rule - that a piece of era-defining music plays over the end credits. Not a crucial rule, but they broke it this time, with 'I can't get no satisfaction' over the starting credits - and utter silence at the end. More crucially, they illustrated each line of the song - like a slightly laborious fan vid - with literalisms: 'he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me' - Don lights a cigarette. Srsly?
And thirdly, towards the end someone mentions an Aesop fable which neatly points up a significant issue in the rest of the episode. Don firstly makes the person recount the whole fable, and then laboriously makes her explain the (perfectly obvious) meaning of the fable. This is very peculiar. They don't lead you by the hand down meaning lane in Mad Men. Nobody ever says 'this is what the story means'. This has got to be a joke for us, a meta-joke, yes?
So - interesting. I've got to believe this is on purpose. If so, it's very self-confident to play at poor writing and direction? I don't know.
The rest of the episode by the way was not crap at all, and did figure people blowing it, literally and figuratively.