The Beginning of The End

Currency of Love

Mad Men finales are always bittersweet.  This season ended with one of the most memorable client meetings in the history of the series rivaling Don's pitch for Kodak's Carousel in season one.  Not coincidentally, both episodes took place days prior to Thanksgiving.  During a pitch to the executives from Hershey, Don painted a Rockwellian portrait of his childhood linked to the memory of eating the iconic confection.  And then he course corrected the lie and told the truth.  The harsh truth of being raised an orphan in a whorehouse, and if he collected enough change from the johns' pockets "while they screwed", the girls would give him a dime for a Hershey's bar.  “And I would eat it, alone in my room, with great ceremony, feeling like a normal kid.”  The confession, along with a season of workplace negligence, got him fired, but it also moved him closer to redemption and salvaging his broken relationship with his daughter Sally.  The last image, the long shadows of Don and his children walking to a decaying crumbling house, the whorehouse from his past, made me wistful.  The innocence of the early 60s have certainly passed these characters and the country.  I was born in this tumultuous decade, my life forever shaped by these same movements and historic upheavals.  A part of me wants to hold on to the earlier seasons when Don's darkness was swept under the carpet and his charm hid his dark interior.  Don's drinking was sport, now it's alcoholism.  He is beyond the crossroads of who he may or may not become.  He is a drunk womanizer, an absentee father, a cheater, an irresponsible business partner, a selfish human being.  The die has been cast.  Don has been on this course for six seasons, as the main title sequence has foreshadowed from the beginning.  Will hitting  bottom change him?  Will he be able to pick up the pieces of his life, and if so, who will be there to greet the new version of Don? The Daily Beast's interview with Matt Weiner sheds some light on this season and the future which is all we have until next summer when the final season begins.

Mad Men Style

  

Mad for these Men

I savor ever line, every look, every needle drop.  When it comes to MAD MEN my viewing habits are frozen in the 80s.  I have an appointment every Sunday night, no desire to wait 24 hours and view it a day later.  However, I admittedly record the east coast feed so I don't have to watch commercials.  I know, the irony, it's a show about advertising.  Anyway, I'm already grieving, in three weeks the penultimate season of MAD MEN will be over.  Don and Megan's marriage has been a trove of wonderful material and character exploration.  A spectacular, unexpected surprise.  Days after I view, the brilliant dialogue does cartwheels in my mind.  I delight in every witty, loaded sentence, packed with innuendo and insight, shining high beams on future plot. Here's a sampling from this season

Joan: "You and me in mid-town — you with that look on your face?"
Don: "What look, baby?"
Joan: "God, you're irresistible."
Don: "You know what this woman said to me once? 'I like being bad and going home and being good.'"

Roger: "They make wines for Jews and now they're making one they want to sell to normal people."

Mona: "I thought you married Jane because I had gotten old and then I realized it was because you had."

Roger: "It's very interesting but a lot of times you think people are looking at you, but they're not — their mind's elsewhere."
Don: "Lots of people that haven't taken LSD already know that, Roger."

Peggy's mom: "You know what your aunt used to say? 'You're lonely, get a cat. They live 13 years, then you get another one and another one after that. Then you're done."

Glen: "How's the city?"
Sally: "Dirty."

Megan: "I feel like I abandoned the team."
Don: "You feel bad because you got to take off and they had to work? I don't. There has to be some advantage to being my wife."

Harry: "They're projections. They're derived from reality, but they're hopes and dreams."

Joan: "My mother raised me to be admired."

Two Roads

Personal growth isn't for cowards, just ask Don Draper who came precipitously close to confronting his demons this season. His dark journey could have served him well if he only had the guts to choose the alternative path, but when two roads diverged in a wood he took the familiar one.  His relationship with Faye represented a break from his self destructive patterns, a chance to be an average guy, an opportunity to get closer to his authentic self. Faye encountered a man whose interior life was much messier than his appearances would suggest. Yet, his panic attacks, benders and sullen moods didn't push her away, and for that she paid a price. When Don had the opportunity to restore his mythological image with Megan who seamlessly slipped into his perfect family snapshot he leaped at it with the fervor of boy cannonballing into a crowded pool.  Taking the easy road is anything but, as Don will most likely glean next season when the demons he pruned, but didn't uproot, propagate like weeds in his path.