Roger and Cutler on Mad Men
Photo Credit: AMC TV
A Review of Tonight’s season finale of Mad Men coming up as
soon as I eat my sandwich before one of you does….
“The only unpardonable sin is to believe that God can’t
forgive you”
-Preacher
Over the course of the last six seasons of Mad Men we’ve
seen Don being put into a lot of dark places. He’s been divorced, and lived out
of a bottle to name a small few. But Don has never sunken this low before, now
he’s lost everything he cares about. His job, his wife and the love of his eldest
child have all been taken from forcefully from his grasp. Don’s broken in ways
that, at this point, are nearly impossible to fix. It’s time for Don to take a
big leap into change, and with tonight’s brilliant and fantastic finale Mathew
Weiner and crew take us a step closer to the big change that’s closer than it
may initially appear.
Before we begin analyzing where Don is as a character let’s
just recognize how fantastic Jon Hamm is in this episode. Over the course of
this show Hamm has been consistently the show’s anchor providing many
spectacular moment of acting prowess after the other but tonight’s finale was
one of those moments where Hamm rises above even that. This was one of the
finest hours Hamm has ever had on this series period, and that is saying
something. The moment when Don is shaking and telling the Hershey clients about
his life at the whore house (which we’ll get back to in the context of the episode
in a while) was perhaps one of Hamm’s best moments of the entire series. What’s
so brilliant about the performance is that time and time again Hamm can go to completely
different places with Don Draper, each more elegant and sublime then the last.
Hamm continues not to win awards for this role and after watching this episode
the question of why not comes through with loud intensity.
Now on to Don the character, let’s start with work. Yes Don
was asked to go onto leave for what may be forever (as soon as Don’s potential
replacement was coming in early the hints of they don’t want him back began to
creep very close) and for good reason. It was a whole collection of mistakes
and destructive waves throughout this season specifically that led the partners
to this decision and what happened with Hershey was just the straw that broke
the camel’s back. Don hasn’t been doing what’s really right for the agency, nor
has he been all that productive for about a year now and he’s bringing the
company down with him. It started with the many failed pitches and then
deformed into utter debacle first with Jaguar and then with Hershey. Even the
one victory for Don all season, that being Chevy merger has caused ultimately
more grief than actual good for Don and the agency. Ultimately Don has reached
a low point in the workplace and the decision for the partners to go was one
that has been a season in the making.
Then there is Don’s personal life, which is falling apart
worse than even getting kicked out of his chair has done for his professional
life. Don really shouldn’t have promised living in California as a viable
option to Megan because, as can be predicted, it couldn’t happen. Something got
in the way seemingly as usual and Megan had to quit her job and try to move her
life around for absolutely nothing. Safe to say that was the final straw in a
relationship that was already far on the rocks. Megan seems to be out of Don’s
life, and unless we pick up a while later to find out differently it seems that
the once energetic marriage that has been barren all season is most likely
over.
Of course then poor drunk and emotionally detached Sally comes into the equation.
While we have known this for a few weeks it’s now pretty much confirmed that
Sally is emotionally separated from her deranged father. It’s really bad when
Sally won’t even show up in court to prosecute the robber from earlier this
season and tells Don that he can tell the judge what she saw. It’s tough at
this point as Don is losing everything at once which makes the continued demise
of Sally’s affection even more devastating.
With the demise of Don’s life as we know it change is eminent,
and it begins as Don begins to blur the line between Dick Whitman and Don
Draper. Never before has Don blurred the lines between his old life and new,
and never before has Dick Whitman began to creep into the new life of Don in
such a substantial way. Don’s Hershey debacle was particularly telling as it
shows, for the first time in a long time, how affected Don has now become by
his past life. Never before has Don become so vulnerable so that he lets his
guard down as much as he has in that sequence. The last of these transformative
sequences we find Don letting his guard down to his kids as he shows them the
old hoar house where he grew up. It’s going to be interesting to see how far
Don goes down the road of the past come next season as he begins to rework his
life yet again.
Then we move to the people who are headed on to the new life boat
that is California, Ted and Pete. Ted has to move off to California after being
scared of the emotions he feels for Peggy. Ted has a sexual encounter with Peggy
for the first time after swooning over her for so long and can’t contain his
emotions towards her. This scares Ted a lot as he doesn’t want to throw away
the life he has (even though he said at one point in the episode that he would
rather stay with Peggy) with his family so he decides to jump on the lifeboat.
This crushes Peggy, who continues to be devoid of choices in her own life and
is now forced into a broken hearted situation with no say in how it will work
out. Peggy is emotionally devastated by
the man who told her that she has the chance to love him and guide her own
destiny and only a day after is told that it can never happen.
The other California escapee is Pete whose work life
dramatically closes upon after his encounter with Bob Benson. After Pete’s
mother goes missing off a ship Pete isn’t happy with Bob for hiring the Nurse
who apparently has now tried to marry his mother. It turns so bad that Bob
Benson has to finally humiliate Pete at Chevy by showing them that he can’t
drive a standard. It’s a big move that finally puts Pete back on track with a new
work career in toe.
Ultimately “In Care of” was an amazing finale and probably
the season’s best episode. It took the series into a newer and darker place
that sets up new and interesting dynamics going into the final season of the
show. What a powerful way to end this strange yet great season of television. Let’s take a breather before coming back next
spring to do it again one more time.
That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?
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