While my love of cinema has never abated, my enthusiasm for its less artistically ambitious stepchild Television has waned considerably since my misspent youth as a TV junkie. Outside of sporting events I don't watch much of it anymore. So that I became so enthralled with the now concluded series Mad Men is a surprise to me. This is the only show that I've seen every episode of, and since watching it in "real time" in 2012, I've never missed a Sunday night telecast: a level of personal commitment to a show unprecedented in my 48 years on this earth.
My indoctrination came in late 2011 while the show was on its long, controversial hiatus. I binge watched the first four seasons on Netflix pretty much on a whim. I'd heard about the show, but it being off the air for over a year at that point, it fell off my radar. I started seeing articles about the show's return and became intrigued by the 1960's setting, how Matthew Weiner and his crew were obsessive about detail, and decided to take a look. The sixties was the era I was born into, and have always had a fascination with. From that point, I never looked back.
I did have to do some soul searching though. In many respects Mad Men was a soap opera: one with fantastic writing and production values, but a soap opera nonetheless. So why did I like it so much? What it came down to was that it was one of the few programs on TV dealing with ideas. It was a soap opera at times, but the characters were well drawn. Weiner tried to make sure that even minor characters had a back story so that they weren't just serving someone else' motivation. It did give you a view into the advertising industry of there 60's, but it wasn't a procedural drama or antiquarian exercise. In many ways the campaigns they were working on were unimportant. The important things were the big issues: sexism, racism (which some critics feel they did't handle enough), changing sexual mores and religious values, and the evils of capitalistic consumerism. But it also hit deeply personal issues of self identity, guilt, isolation, alienation and the meaning of life in general. So, for me, the historic details are what drew me in, the melodrama that made me feel a tad guilty, and the overall depth of characters and themes that kept me and drew me in.
So what about the the finale, and the last half season?
I'll hit the second point first, just so I can get the criticism out of the way. I do believe that splitting up the last season into two parts hurt the overall flow of the story. I'm not up on the economics of it all, and my understanding is that this was primarily a money issue for the network, AMC, but the whole thing would have been better served by two full seasons or just one, unified season seven. Last year the show was on it's typical roll, and then it felt like it had an artificially quick wrap up. Mad Men was always a slow moving ship. The themes and story lines unfolded little by little, almost imperceptibly. Many times we'd be getting down to the last five or ten minutes of an episode and I wouldn't be sure what the story was about or where it was heading. Most network TV is predictable; you can drop in at almost any point and figure out what's going on. Not with Mad Men; you had to watch from beginning to end to get it. And increasingly, as the seasons progressed,a viewer needed to have seen it from the first episode to understand what was happening in a given moment. Each show may have had a self contained story, but the subtext was vital, and not being in the know would leave you as stranded as Don at a rural bus stop with just the cloths on his back and a Sears bag of dirty laundry.
For Season 7.5 the issue was time, and tying off old strings while keeping things fresh by introducing some new ones. Looking back I can see what Weiner was up to in the second half, but his meandering ways were at odds with the urgency of the ticking clock counting down to the final scene. Many fans were disconcerted about the introduction of the Diana Baur character (Elizabeth Reaser) as a new love interest for Don. With only a few episodes left we wanted to see more of Joan, Peggy or Pete. There are only so many more opportunities to savor a Roger Sterling zinger. Even another Bert Cooper hallucination would be welcomed. All many of us were asking was, "who is this woman and why should I care?" And, "can we get back to Mrs. Rosen, please."
In spite of the hemming and hawing, and as much as I hate to admit it, it fit: Diana represented many things. My guess is that, because of her physical resemblance, she was the ghost of both Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff) and Sylvia Rosen (Linda Cardinale), two of Don's lost, idealized loves. She also is a female version of Don: a person with a past she is running from, riddled by guilt and remorse. Unlike Don she's not trying to forget or reinvent herself, at least not in the same way. Don grew up in rural poverty, living out his adolescence in and around a brothel. He swindles and cons his way into a middle class, and later upper class existence. All the while hiding behind a stolen identity, trying desperately to blot out any remembrance of Dick Whitman. Based on Don's visit to Diana's former Wisconsin home, she is escaping a comfortable middle class life. She goes downward, living in squalid SRO's and working in roach infested greasy spoons. She even engages in prostitution, albeit inadvertently, mistaking an extravagant tip from Roger for solicitation by Don. She is descending into hell, or at least purgatory, running away from the comfortable life she knew, but never allowing herself to forget why she's there.
Don becomes obsessed with her. He sees a kindred spirit: a wounded soul like his own running from the past. But she has no interest escaping her final judgement. When she moves, leaving no forwarding address, he goes off to look for her (his reasons for bouncing from McCann-Erickson to go on yet another extended, unauthorized road trip are manifold, though). He gets to Wisconsin assuming not one, but two more false identities in the course of a few minutes, to try and get information as to Diana's whereabouts. But the ex-husband sees through it, knows he's a fake, sternly sending him on his way.
Now his journey is not so much about finding a particular woman as it is about, once again, trying to find out who he really is and where he belongs. He passes through a small plains town and sees a glimpse of what things might have been like if he had lived life as Dick Whitman; idyllic at first, but then he's run out of town when he's falsely accused of stealing by the same folks that seemed so amenable before. After giving his car away to the young grifter who set him up, he finds his way to Utah, helping out a couple gear heads getting their hot rod ready for a competition. They're appreciative, but a little suspicious of a stranger with no car who knows more about motors then they do. When he finds out that his first wife, Betty, has terminal lung cancer his immediate response is to want to go "home" and take custody of the children. But neither Betty nor their daughter Sally thinks this is a good idea, and tell him to stay away. He visits California next, dropping in on Stephanie, the real Don Draper's niece, who, after greeting him warmly, also looks with suspicion on his unexpected arrival.
This theme of Don's displacement was prominent through out the season. Two brief visits to Betty's new home and family situation makes it clear that he is the odd man out, not only in Betty's life but in his children's lives as well. When he visits the now deceased Rachel Menken's apartment where relatives and neighbors are sitting shiva, her sister is none too happy to see in the flesh a man she had only heard about. She asks a question that would be echoed either literally or in subtext throughout these seven episodes, "what are you doing here?" He more and more feels as if he has no home, and isn't wanted. He's not even at home in his own apartment, since second wife Megan surreptitiously took all the furniture on her way out of their marriage. The one place that wants him, McCann-Erickson, Don wants no part of. He's a trophy for this giant firm, one stag's head mounted on the wall among many others. So he bounces, mid presentation, to take to the road, ostensibly to find Diana, but really, once again, to try and find himself and where he belongs.
I'll never get all my thoughts on Don out, let alone touch on the other cast of characters and their fates, in one post. So I'll end it here, and save it for next time.
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