We are heading, sadly, into the last two episodes of Mad Men for this season. Much of the discussion out on the web concerning the goings on at Sterling Cooper and Partners (the agency's new post-merger name) has been over the hidden motives and objectives of the strangely "straight" Bob Benson (James Wolk) and, more recently, if Megan Draper (Jessica Paré) will be going the way of Sharon Tate. While these are interesting twists, what has kept my attention, not just this season but over all six, is the moral train wreck that is Dick Whitman's altar ego Don Draper (Jon Hamm). In him we have the perfect example of the fact that sin makes us unhappy. Like many of us though Don has become so attached to his vices, like Gollum to the ring, that he can't break way and make the changes necessary to truly be free and happy. Year after year he just keeps on making the same mistakes, expecting different results, the very definition of insanity. The way things have gone down hill for him this season it makes me wonder, as others have, if he'll be around for the seventh and final season in 2014. While I really don't think that they will kill off the main Mad Man before the series finale next year, I can't argue that things don't look bleak for the ad exec we love to hate, or at least pity.
Matt Weiner (pronounced wine-er), the show's creator and chief writer, has said that he knows how he plans to end the story next season, down to the final shot. This doesn't mean that he has every episode or plot twist worked out, but there is a trajectory, and what I've noticed this season is that he is already tying themes together from seasons past. We are not dealing with repetition, but with very deliberate attempts to show how things in life come full circle, and can leave you just where you started even with all our good efforts.
Earlier in this season Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) tries to fire a secretary for falsifying a time card and finds herself undercut by Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), much like she was in a similar situation by Roger Sterling (John Slattery) in season 2. The difference is that then Roger was a partner and Joan was the office manager. Now Joan is a partner being successfully bucked by an underling. Part of this has to do with Harry's resentment that she's risen past him in the company, and what she did to get there. All Joan knows is that she has a new rank earned through hard work, no matter what any one may think, but she is still treated like an over glorified secretary. A few episodes later she tries to validate her position to the others by clandestinely wooing new business, even though Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) was given the assignment. Pete was guilty of a similar breach of protocol in season one and was almost fired for it. Rather than remembering his own actions he blows up at her in front of the other partners, essentially trying to get her ousted, for breaking a "fundamental rule" of advertising, the very reason he was almost gone years before. In both cases history is repeating, and not for the better. In Pete's case though, he seems to forget that he was once the one breaking the rules and being pardoned for it (Oh, hypocrisy: of all the vices on this show, the one it seems everyone shares).
If there's been a season long throw back it's Don's downward spiral, reminiscent of a his near breakdown in season four. Back then his decline was manifested by a slow physical deterioration. He had a hacking cough that wouldn't go away and was beginning to black out, sometimes waking up with unexpected company. The years of boozing, smoking and womanizing were taking their toll. Newly divorced, there were now no stops on his already self destructive habits. His personal problems were spilling over into his professional life, and things were generally getting out of control. Then he met Megan, they married and most of season five was spent in relative stability, if not exactly marital bliss. He was faithful to his wife, and as happy as this very unhappy man had ever been.
Season six began with Don backsliding. Again we can see echoes of the past. The series' very first episode presents Don as a devil may care ladies man about town, with a touch of existential nihilism thrown in, ending with a surprise reveal: the man we were led to believe was an eligible, if roguish, bachelor was actually a married father, complete with the big house in Westchester. This season we go the first episode thinking Don has stayed on the straight and narrow (in spite of last year's season ending foreshadowing), to find in the final scene that he's having an affair with his best friend's wife, who happens to live one floor below the Draper's apartment.
Can you say "self destructive?" I knew you could.
Most of the commentators out there focus on the therapeutic aspects of Don's problems; he's a sex addict, or he's a control freak, or all his self destructive behavior stems from his highly dysfunctional childhood (which we've gotten clued into over the years by periodic flash backs). All this is true. But in our postmodern world no one wants to talk sin. That Don is caught in a web of sin doesn't negate the other therapeutic reasons for his predicament, or that the reasons he turned to these self destructive behaviors can't be seen as serious impediments to his freedom. But because we have found ourselves in a cycle of addiction does not mean that we are condemned to stay there. There is a way out, if we have the courage to surrender.
This season has high lighted a tension within Don: He needs to be in control but is constantly losing it. He seems to be losing his creative touch at work and, since the merger with their main rival, control in the office as well. The bloom is off his marriage since Megan gained greater independence by way of her acting career. The implication is that she no longer needs him in the same way as before, thus another loss of control. As all this is happening he tries to tighten his grip on the one aspect of his life he thinks he does have control over by his manipulative games with his married mistress Sylvia Rosen (Linda Cardellini). Even she eventually breaks away from his grasp. Don is all about control, and losing it makes him look to other options, like possibly abandoning his present identity and starting over, like he did when he deserted the army by assuming a dead man's identity.
The big speculation out there is that this season might see the ultimate in Don shedding his current persona. There have been overtones of death since the first episode when Don presented an ad campaign for a Hawaiian hotel that made people think of James Mason drowning himself in the Pacific at the end of A Star is Born as opposed to taking a leisurely dip in the ocean (we won't even get into him reading Dante's Inferno on the beach). Don has some serious issues that he needs to deal with, holes in his soul that need to be filled. With all the loss of control and continuing dissatisfaction with his life, maybe checking out permanently is the answer? But he's told in a hallucination (near death experience?) by a soldier he had met who was killed in Vietnam, still missing an arm in the afterlife, "Dying doesn't make you whole."
What makes you whole is coming to terms with the demons, both psychological and literal, that are haunting you, acknowledging personal responsibility for your sinful behavior and surrendering to God, with the understanding that control apart from God is an illusion. Don is constantly running, seeking escape in drinking and sex, but remaining unsatisfied because when he wakes up the next morning hung over and alone he's back where started, the same person with the same problems, even if he's taken another man's name. In life if we don't take the steps to break the cycle of sin then we just keep hurling down a corkscrew shaped slide, repeating the same turns but into deeper and deeper levels of depravity and self destruction until we hit the ground in a dead stop.
Addiction is real, but is not a life sentence. I know people who have been in Alcoholics Anonymous, sober for decades, that will also say that sobriety doesn't come to everyone on the first try. It's surrender to what they call a "Higher Power," but also depending on sponsors, friends, family, as well as coming to grips with why drinking has become problematic that will bring ultimate liberation. There may be set backs along the way, but they can be overcome if these safeguards are in place. Again, being honest with ourselves and allowing ourselves to confront the underlying issues of our lives is also important. As people who suffer from compulsive eating disorders will say, The problem isn't what you're eating, it's what's eating you. In the case of Don, he has issues with intimacy, he's a father who had no solid role model himself. He never knew his mother, and any mother figure in his life was either cruel or took advantage of him somehow. Does he need a therapist? You bet ya. But he also needs God, and to surrender to His loving mercy if he is going to get past the hurts, the addictions and the self destruction. If not he'll be just spinning around that corkscrew until he lands face down in the dirt.
This is incomplete, but I've written way too much already. Another major theme running through the show is what is the nature of happiness. In my season ending analysis of Mad Men season 6, I'll hit this topic, as well as tidy up this one.
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