Mad Men Rewatch 2013: Season 1 Ep. 13 “The Wheel” The power of family

 Don sits alone on the stairs on Mad Men

Photo Credit: AMC TV

It’s rewatch time!! For the first time ever this summer we will be watching an old season of a television show over the course of several weeks. Installments will be posted Sundays and Wednesdays with the posts spoiling only the episode that is being talked about. This summer the rewatch is on the first season of Mathew Weiner’s 1960’s period piece Mad Men, one of the great first seasons of television.

Thoughts on the final episode of Mad Men’s first season as soon as I buy that slide progector…

“Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”

-Don Draper

So before we get anywhere, I don’t think that throughout these recaps I’ve mentioned just how utterly fantastic Jon Hamm is as Don Draper, mostly because I just associate the actor with the role so much it doesn’t come as a first priority when writing about the show. But my goodness that pitch sequence is one dazzling piece of acting. Sure the scene is amazingly written in every way and ties the whole season’s (and really the series) themes into one beautifully crafted package, but my goodness does Jon Hamm elevate it to sheer masterwork. And the best part is I haven’t even begin to scratch the surface of that scene which is only about 3-4 minutes of “The Wheel” which is one of the finest episodes of Mad Men that has ever been produced. Ladies and Gentlemen this is how you go out on a bang.

Really the best part of “The Wheel” is that on a plot level there are no real bangs (unlike another all time great Mad Men hour the season 3 finale “Shut the Door and Have a Seat” which is almost all plot based) plot wise. Other than the revelation that yes Peggy’s weight gain is because she got pregnant (more on that later) not all that much is revealed that is neither surprising nor that moves to plot along all that much. Instead “The Wheel” is all about the characters and what they have been dealing with all season. In a way despite “Nixon vs. Kennedy” having the plot climax of the season (Don vs. Pete and the election) it feels like “The Wheel” really takes these characters to their final emotional climaxes and that it pushes them into some very interesting places.

Take Don for example, a man who all season just wanted to get away from his family and his life. The mistresses, the late nights at work, the constant coldness to Betty, and even in this episode his unwillingness to go to thanksgiving all are a sign of a man wanting to escape his family constantly. Then (about two episodes late) Don ridden with guilt caused by seeing that package phones his brother only to find that he hung himself. This hits Don so hard that he decides that he needs to rethink everything that he has done or that he has wanted to do throughout the season. He has a fundamental change of heart of everything he’s put Betty and the family through throughout the season.

All of this comes out in that magnificent pitch sequence. It’s a mix of an amazing pitch (seriously it’s 2013 and I wanted a Kodak slide projector after watching that pitch) all of Don’s surface level change towards wanting his family back. Is it truly sincere, absolutely not! It’s really is Don buying into his own sales pitch, and while it’s a masterful one, it’s one that he will most likely abandon when the time is right just given his character. In that moment though the twinge of the heart is powerful enough for Don to want to return to the family he’s been so desperately trying to escape all season long. Is it going to last, again based on what we’ve seen of Don all season long, absolutely not, but it’s a fantastic moment of surface level realization that comes out in one of the best written, acted and directed sequences in Mad Men (and really television) history.

The best part is that the scene is that it’s juxtaposed around Betty’s realization of Don’s bull crap sales pitch. The slow process that occurs throughout the episode of Betty going from having the idea of adultery planted in her head by Francine at the beginning of the episode to basically telling her therapist all of what Don’s been doing and feeling all season (without firsthand knowledge) was fantastic. The road is rocky on the way; she seems very childish when crying to Glen before entering the pivotal therapy session. In the end though it’s always darkest before the dawn and Betty’s dawn is magnificent. In that moment she knows that Don has been snooping around, that he doesn’t care about the family anymore, and that he’s been keeping tabs on her supposedly private treatment. In the end the thing that has made her seem childish and constrained isn’t the life of a house wife but instead Don’s whole lie of what their family is and what it means to him. Like Don the whole revelation probably won’t last all that long given the character, but finally Betty has gotten out of that childish decent and onto the upswing of being a more aware partner to a dishonest man.

It all culminates down into the final, brilliantly tragic sequence. Don returns home on the train expecting for the family to be there ready for him to make a sudden reversal on going to Thanksgiving weekend; instead Don get’s an empty house with nothing there but his own shame. Just when he begins to buy his own sales pitch it all comes crashing down on him without warning. Ultimately Don is left as he usually is alone, but this time as he sits on the steps there is a yearning for the past, and the family that he’s abandoned over the course of the season. It’s a beautiful and tragic and very Mad Men way to leave the season.

(Fun fact: Mathew Weiner actually wrote the final scene to be the happy family sequence and that the characters would ultimately have a happy end. After a heated debate he finally admitted his mistake and said that he just loved the characters too much and changed the ending to the one found at the end of the episode. I’m very glad he did.)

The final part of “The Wheel” involved Peggy and her Baby. First, on the positive side, she’s now a copywriter! On the other end though we now get to see what the reason for her weight gain really was and yes she was pregnant. It’s tragic to have to watch Peggy who gets a decent moment within the sound room earlier on in the episode to have to have a child that she never wanted, and with no one by her side. It’s not surprising at all when it’s reviled that she’s having a baby but the sequence as a tragic character moment worked surprisingly well as it was not very fun watching poor Peggy get crushed in the way she did because of that child.

“The Wheel” is the cherry on top of this fantastic first season of television. It’s so deep and introspective about the show’s characters and their feelings at the time and the place that they find themselves in. It’s a near perfect ending to a near perfect season and it shows the amazing emotional heights that this series can reach. Oh and that pitch is still amazing…

I love this show so very much!

That’s it for this year’s television rewatch! It’s been fun going through Mad Men season one with other people along for the ride! We’ll see what season of television will be tackled next summer but for now one last time:

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?