Shut the door. Have a seat.
Also: What the hell just happened?
It seems like only yesterday we were tuning in to see Don and Megan leisurely exploring the beaches of Hawaii, calm and carefree in direct contrast to the lifestyle that awaited them back in Manhattan. And yet, here we are in the wake of the Season Six finale, our favorite characters thirteen episodes older but seemingly none the wiser. Don? Still a self-sabotaging walking contradiction. Pete? Still a miserable mess regardless of whatever hand he’s dealt or trump card he possesses. Harry Crane? God I hate Harry Crane.
When the season first began, we were briefly lulled into a false sense of security, led to believe there was some sort of equilibrium in the chaotic Mad Men universe. Megan was happily famous. Don was happily married. Peggy was happily setting her own standards and delegating to her own subordinates. And then it all went flying out the window like the suited silhouette in the opening credits.
There were several underlying motifs to this most recent string of broadcasts, thick layers of main story lines accented with interesting subplots. Perhaps the most prominent theme, one that found its way into every chapter, was Don’s deep, almost innate desire to sabotage’s anyone else’s happiness. He befriended a brilliant, compassionate surgeon in that of Dr. Rosen, only to turn him into a cuckold as he repeatedly – and sometimes demeaningly – vanquished Sylvia. Megan became the new Betty, the woman foolishly, and sadly, believing she could tame, or even trust, him. Teddy and Peggy are having an increasingly serious and awkward office flirtation? Don will destroy it in the most public way possible. Stan shows a bit of ambition with the secondary benefits of rolling a J on a SoCal beach? Don will make the same, word-for-word pitch to Megan in order to steal his place. He cannot and will not let others experience an ounce of joy on his watch unless it serves to benefit him, all other ventures and aspirations be damned. Teddy, who had served as the angel on the firm’s shoulder to Don’s devil, briefly crossed to the dark side in his tryst with Peggy, telling her “I don’t want anyone else to have you”. If anything, this was Teddy wishing he was Don, delivering an admission far more suited for his worse half. Truthfully, at this point, Don’s narrative has shifted from “How will he redeem himself?” to “Will he redeem himself?” to “Can he redeem himself?”. Frankly, I don’t know. But we’ll revisit that in a bit.
One of the more intriguing plot lines of this spring came in the form of a young, handsome schmoozer by the name of Bob Benson. His first appearance was almost an afterthought in the premier, another random character used to illustrate the state of flux and expansion SCDP found itself in at the time. But while other staffers affirmed their insignificance by taking a back seat or disappearing entirely from the script, Bob remained, coffees in hand, eager to please at a moment’s notice. Whatever the task – be it playing with your child during a summer beach outing or recommending a retired army nurse to fake-seduce your mother – Bob was up the challenge, excelling as a personal assistant while never seeming to have an actual job to perform. His role grew in a way similar to Peggy’s waistline in Season One, at first virtually unnoticed, then a curiously unexplained detail, eventually building to a moment of revelation that ultimately put a mirror to the psyche of – who else? – Don. It’s always about Don, and that’s how he prefers it. In the case of Peggy’s pregnancy, he visited his protege in the hospital to start her on the Draper Guide To Dealing With A Troubled Past – bottling it all up inside and pretending it never happened. In the case of Bob, Don was given a doppelgänger, a fresh face in the company who had never actually been hired and subsequently climbed the corporate ladder with heavy doses of charisma and deceit. Although, truth be told, it appeared Don had been too preoccupied with himself to notice any of this. Really, any of anything.
In this penultimate season finale, the overarching theme was that of bottoming out and attempting to find an entirely different place to start over. Don, Pete, Stan, Teddy – it was like the second coming of the gold rush with the way everyone was lining up to relocate to California. The single, bearded, marijuana aficionado of the bunch was likely just eager and curious in this instance, but his competitors were all looking for a way out. Don had spent a night in jail for punching a minister after weeks of problem-drinking, Teddy was doing the noble thing and sacrificing a scandal with a new flame to save the family structure of another, and Pete – wait, why the hell was Pete kissing his child goodbye to head west? I mean, his power in Detroit was certainly usurped by that iron-in-every-fire fellow Mr. Benson, but what about his prospects in New York? Ousted by his wife and without a family to anchor him, it would seem that Trudy was right – he was truly free.
Manolo, in a way, was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to the Campbell brothers. Their mother was, indeed, taken care of, maybe just not in the way they imagined. Their reluctance to authorize a PI to solve the crime based purely on cost said it all. In the hospital, they would have signed the Do Not Resuscitate paperwork; in practice, it was Do Not Investigate instead. They had been relieved of a burden, which seems callous to say, but I challenge you to find a person who has cared for a parent into the advanced stages of dementia that would not admit to discovering the silver lining of relief in the dark clouds of sadness that came with their passing. Unless of course if Manolo has somehow connived himself into the family’s inheritance, which is up in the air going into Season Seven. Either way – after the fates of their respective parents, I would be reluctant to take any mass public transportation in the immediate future if I were one of them.
With all the drama involved with boys, it would seem easy to gloss over the accomplishments of other members of SC&P’s staff, but we would be remiss if we did not touch on the powerful female characters that quietly helped to carry this season. The allure of Mad Men began with the unparalleled charisma and philandering of Roger and Don, with secondary characters yearning to attain their id-driven lifestyle that, on the surface, appeared to come without consequence. But in recent episodes, there has been a sea change of once-proud men being marginalized in the face of strong women choosing to be autonomous. Roger may be Joan’s baby-daddy (somehow I doubt they’ll use that term), but he will enter the life of their son on her terms. Betty relapsed into a one-night-stand with Don, but this time he was her plaything, a hookup to be tossed aside when the real man in her life arrived. Peggy seems to think she doesn’t have a choice in her relationships when it comes to the whims of a man, but what she is slowly realizing is that, be it a mustachioed pre-hipster or a turtleneck-wearing square, she is truly the one calling the shots, even if her decisions so far have been ill-advised. Who was sitting in the creative director’s desk at the end of this past episode? Peggy Olson, that’s who. [Also – Holy Cow, Peggy! Chanel No. 5? Burning the fabric candle at both ends? A vixen, indeed.]
The season came to a close with Don finally enduring a bit of backlash from his last few months’ transgressions. His daughter won’t talk to him. His (second) wife is finally fed up with him. And in the closing moments, we learn that his company – the one he helped to nurture, expand, and merge – has decided to indefinitely suspend him for his increasingly unpredictable and destructive behavior, a potential replacement with a foot in the door before he has had a chance to vacate the premises.
The biggest question that remains to be answered in the upcoming, final season is if Don will get another chance to repair his broken life, and more importantly, if he will actually make good on it. We’ve seen him bounce back again and again, a cat with nine lives, only to repeat history on his way to alienating anyone who might ever truly get close to him. There was a glimmer of hope in that final scene, as his children gazed upon the dilapidated whorehouse in which Don spent his formative years. His daughter, every day adopting more and more of his persona and his conflict avoidance strategies, turned and looked at him with a sense of understanding: This is why you are the way you are. It’s by no means an excuse, but maybe, just maybe, it will help him to begin to understand his past’s impact on his present and future. And if he recognizes the source of the problem, perhaps he can address it. Only then will his viewers be able to witness the rise, fall, and redemption of Don Draper.
Until then? We wait.
“Going down?”
Hell yes.
About Andrew Rose
Andrew Rose is a writer and editor for Rookerville. He also manages a travel blog for his friends and family. His book, “Seizure Salad”, is a work of fiction - not in that it is a tale of fantasy, but in that it does not actually exist.