I Want to Start Over—Mad Men Season 7, Episode 13—The Milk and Honey Route

Against all odds, Pete Campbell closes in on a happy ending

By John Andrew Fraser

            I’ll be interested to see what other critics say about “The Milk and Honey Route.”  While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a bad episode of Mad Men (although to be fair, I don’t think I’d call any episode of Mad Men bad), it does seem like a rather strange way to spend the show’s penultimate hour.  There was no Roger Sterling tonight, no Peggy Olson, and no Joan Holloway.  Instead we got scenes with Don at an American Legion gathering in Kansas with a bunch of characters we’ve never met before.  Yet to be fair, this hour of Mad Men did appear to wrap up a couple storylines—one brutally, and the other with what seems to be a sense of hope. 

            For years, Mad Men fans have speculated that Don, once the ace ad man for big tobacco, would fall victim to some terrible smoking-related illness like lung cancer or emphysema.  This episode is a classic example of the show zigging when we thought it would zag, as we find out early in the hour that Betty has been diagnosed with very aggressive, late-stage lung cancer.  There’s no getting better, and most of the medicine and treatment will be palliative.  Some may argue that this end to Betty’s arc is too melodramatic, however, I found it to be the biggest gut-punch the show has delivered since Lane Pryce’s suicide in season five.  Betty had finally found fulfillment in her life—she had returned to school and was going to pursue a career in psychology—perhaps something she had wanted to do for a long time (she told Don last week, “I’ve always wanted this” as she read Freud at her kitchen table).  This makes her diagnosis that much harder to take, Betty seemed destined for something close to a happy ending, and in the span of an episode, it morphed into a nightmare.  In her final note to Sally, she almost serves as a mouthpiece for the show, stating “sometimes it’s best not to prolong things.  Sometimes you need to accept when things are over.”

            Meanwhile, Duck Phillips makes a surprise return in this episode.  He informs Pete that there’s a great job opportunity at Learjet, but that he’d have to move to Wichita to take it.  At first, Pete balks at the possibility.  Yet, over the course of the hour he channels his inner Don Draper and realizes that Wichita could be a place for him to start over—and he comes to realize that he needs and wants to start over.  He has dinner with his brother, Bud, who mechanically recounts his own philandering ways.  He treats his daughter’s bee sting with some toothpaste, and he seems to remember just why he and Trudy made such a good team.  By the end of the episode, he’s ready to move to Kansas with his wife and daughter.  Not everyone gets a second chance in life, but apparently Pete Campbell does. 

            I’m guessing there will be some discussion as to whether Pete “deserves” this ending (if this is in fact his ending, since we still have one more episode left).  Many fans of the show have long seen Pete as a kind of villain—Full disclosure, I am not one of these people.  For better or worse, Pete has always been one of my favorite characters on the show, and the character with whom I most closely identified.  So in his defense, I would ask—has any character changed as much as Pete Campbell over the course of the show’s run?  Think back to the Pete in season one—the little weasel who tried to blackmail Don, and look at him now.  He had to nearly ruin his life to understand just what he had, but Pete spotted an opportunity to turn things around, and he took it.  That represents progress.  Mad Men, like The Sopranos before it, is fascinated with the question “can people change?” and Pete Campbell has changed.  That’s why it looks like there’s hope for him in the future, and maybe, just maybe, he’s earned it.

            Kansas represents a new and better life for Pete, but what does it represent for Don?  Purgatory?  A different location where he still can’t escape his past?  As has been the case several times this season, many of the scenes involving Don in Kansas take on an almost dreamlike quality—the episode even starts with an actual dream, where Don is pulled over by a policeman who tells him that they’ve finally caught up with him.  He’s pressured into attending a veterans gathering, and my first thought was that these were the kind of people Dick Whitman would’ve been hanging out with if he had never ditched his identity.  But Don isn’t Dick anymore—even though he confesses to the other veterans that he killed the real Don Draper back in Korea—it’s obvious to everyone at the event that he has money and that he doesn’t belong.  When they believe that he’s stolen their money later that night, they break into his hotel room and accuse him of being the imposter that he is.  However, Don didn’t steal the money, a new Don Draper named Andy, the local handy-boy did.  Don realizes this, and tells Andy that if he commits a crime like this he’ll have to be somebody else, and that won’t be what he thinks it is.  Yet despite this advice, the episode ends with Don giving Andy the keys to his car.  He ultimately offers him a way to escape—a way to start over. It’s becoming clear that Don doesn’t want to be Don Draper anymore, but he can’t really go back to being Dick Whitman either.  As he sits alone at the bus stop as the episode ends, we’re left to ask yet again, “who is Don Draper?” At this point it looks like he might disappear completely.

Other Thoughts:

·   Looking back, the show had hinted at Betty’s death several different times.  In the season five episode “Tea Leaves,” she has a benign tumor removed from her throat and she ponders what life would be like without her.  Earlier this season in “A Days Work,” Sally mentions getting Betty in the ground.

·   In season six, Duck Phillips informs Pete that he has a job opportunity for him in Wichita, to which Pete responds, “Anything on planet earth?”  This is a classic Mad Men moment where a small, seemingly insignificant exchange comes back and figures into the plot in a big way.

·   I’ll see everyone next week for the series finale “Person to Person.”  I don’t know what it says about the show, but I still feel like there’s so many different ways this story could end.  I remain confident that Matt Weiner will deliver a satisfying conclusion.

This is Ground Control to Major Tom—Mad Men Season 7, Episode 12—Lost Horizon

Betty reading some Freud

By John Andrew Fraser

By all accounts, Semi Chellas is Matthew Weiner’s protégé. Over the years she’s written some of the show’s finest episodes, such as season five’s trippy “Far Away Places,” and season seven’s “The Strategy.” But it was her work on another season five episode, “The Other Woman,” that should have prepared us for this week’s hour. In that episode, Peggy Olson walked away from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in search of a new beginning while Joan prostituted herself in order to earn partner status at the agency. We’ll get to Peggy shortly, but this week was the final straw for Joan. Back in “The Other Woman,” she agreed to something terrible with the assurance that it would lead to more autonomy, more respect, and more power—and for awhile it did—she had finally climbed the ladder at SC&P and earned the job she had always wanted. Yet now that the agency has been absorbed by McCann, Joan’s worst fears from last week have already come to fruition—she’s nothing but a junior-level executive at McCann. Everything she’s worked for, after everything she’s been through, has been taken away, and she’s willing to take fifty cents on the dollar just to get out so she’ll never have to deal with it again. Just as Peggy did in season five, Joan leaves the agency—although with just two episodes left, I don’t think she’s coming back.

If this is the end of Joan’s arc (and it may be the end of her work-related story, but I’m almost 100% sure that we’ll see her again in the next two episodes), it’s worth asking whether any other character has changed as much during Mad Men’s run. In seasons one and two she was worried about meeting the right guy and moving to Glen Cove. In the pilot, she even told Peggy to put a paper bag over her head and really evaluate her strengths and weaknesses. Now, she’s staring down Jim Hobart and talking about Betty Friedan after her new boyfriend has offered to get Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante to come over and make him listen to reason. Would season one Joan even recognize season seven Joan if you put both of them together in a room?

We also found out this week that Roger Sterling knows how to play the organ! (Side question—why was there ever an organ in the SC&P office to begin with?) I guess it’s only appropriate since this episode did serve as a kind of funeral for the agency. Every scene with Roger and Peggy this week was solid gold. I loved seeing him play the organ while Peggy roller-skated through the halls of SC&P, I loved when he gave her Bert’s old painting of an octopus pleasuring a woman (was that the most Roger Sterling thing to do or what?), and I especially loved the slow-motion scene where Peggy walks down the hall at McCann for the first time wearing sunglasses while she’s clutching Bert’s octopus painting. I really hope that this scene hints at how Peggy will act during the rest of her time at McCann—showing up more than a little buzzed at 4 p.m. while just generally lacking respect for authority. Overall, these scenes seemed to serve as comic relief in an episode that was otherwise somewhat heavy at times, while also allowing the two characters to relive the time they spent at SC&P together, yet there was also a sense of sadness hanging over them. As Roger notes, “you’re never safe, even when your name’s on the door”—with the end of Sterling Cooper & Partners, he has quite literally been erased.

This idea of erasure follows Don throughout this episode as well. He’s invited to attend a meeting with Miller about a new low-calorie beer, but he finds that about twenty other Don Drapers (along with Ted Chaough) are also in the meeting. Just as Joan’s worst fears about McCann became reality this week, so did Don’s. He’s simply a cog in a huge machine, surrounded by drones who all turn their pages at the exact same time at the conference table. Don looks out the window and sees a plane fly by the Empire State Building and off into the distance. He senses that it really doesn’t even matter whether he’s in this meeting or not. He’s proven correct as he gets up, leaves and literally no one seems to notice. He shows up at the Francis residence to take Sally back to school, but she’s already left. Nobody seems to need him in either his work or his family life, so he decides to do the one thing any sane person would do—leave everything and drive to Wisconsin.

Don has always had a little Rabbit Angstrom in him, but nothing on the show has called back to John Updike’s 1960 novel quite like Don’s impromptu cross-state road trip in this episode. He’s looking for Diana—the waitress who everyone hated from the first two episodes this half season—but when he reaches Racine he can only find the remnants of the life she left behind—her daughter, her home, her ex-husband, and his new wife. I mentioned in an earlier review that Don probably saw a lot of himself in Diana, so maybe it was important for him to see what she left behind since he was always unable or unwilling to go back and witness the people he abandoned in his past. As the curtain closes on this episode Don is still driving. He picks up a hitchhiker who’s heading toward St. Paul. Assuming Don’s still in Wisconsin, he’s heading west. Who knows, he just might make it to California after all.

Other Thoughts:

• After the previous four episodes ended with older songs, this one closed with David Bowie’s Space Oddity. I could not have been happier about this.
• Usually more stuff slips through the cracks at a bigger company, but it doesn’t sound like Don will just be able to go AWOL at McCann like he sometimes did at Sterling Cooper. He’s already missed two client meetings and Jim Hobart doesn’t sound pleased. Will Don quit or get fired, or does it even matter anymore?
• Seriously, where did that organ come from? I remember that one of the kids was playing it in last week’s episode. Also, was that some left-over Vermouth from the Pima Ryan ad that Peggy and Roger were drinking?

I’ve Toyed With You Long Enough. No—Mad Men Season 7, Episode 11—Time & Life

Jim Hobart doesn’t give Joan an account. What’s her future at McCann?

By John Andrew Fraser

I’m guessing that for all the people out there who have been disappointed in this final half-season of Mad Men up to this point, “Time & Life” was a welcome episode. It’s one of the more heavily plot-driven Mad Men hours in recent memory and it mostly eschews minor characters and subplots, and focuses on people we’ve known and cared about for much of the show’s run. Pete Campbell even flipped the script and got to punch someone, so we’ve got that going for us, which is good.

Remember how season seven’s midseason finale was titled “Waterloo?” Well we didn’t know it at the time, but Roger’s decision to make Sterling Cooper & Partners an independent subsidiary of McCann really did mark the end of the agency. In a sense, that episode was the characters’ last stand, while this one represented their ultimate defeat. SC&P is no more, dissolved and swallowed up by McCann Erickson, like a fish by a whale. At first, Don, Roger, and the other partners try to pull off a desperation Hail Mary, much like they did in season’s three’s “Shut the Door, Have a Seat,” and season six’s “For Immediate Release,” (and even in “Waterloo” itself), by planning to move to SC&P West’s office with their accounts that have conflicts with McCann’s existing clients. However, this time, there’s no Lane Pryce around to fire them, there’s no merger, there’s no bigger company to buy them out. This time, the deal has been done—they’re trapped.

I’m actually glad that Don’s dream of moving the partners and some of their accounts to California didn’t come to fruition. We’ve seen that kind of “re-up to preserve the status quo” story several times on this show, and with only three episodes left, I don’t think it would have worked well to go in that direction again. Plus, California has always kind of been a new frontier for Don—a place where he could escape from reality and run from his problems back in New York (although one could argue that this hasn’t been the case as much ever since Anna Draper died in season four). Now that door has basically closed for Don. It’ll be more interesting to see what he and the partners do now that they don’t have the option to run anymore. They have no choice but to face reality. They’ve died and gone to advertising heaven, as Jim Hobart puts it. And it’s true—Don, Roger, Pete, and Joan have been defined by what they’ve built at SC&P, and now that that’s gone, a part of them is too. But are they in heaven?—that part is debatable. McCann didn’t respect the idea of SC&P as an independent subsidiary for long, who’s to say that they’ll accept Don working on Coca-Cola, or Roger handling Buick for very long either.

The other main storyline tonight involved Peggy and her choice to give her child up for adoption. Over the course of the episode, Peggy found herself in several situations that forced her to ponder her life not lived—first, in a brief scene with Pete, then with a small girl whose mom has left her at an audition, and finally with Stan. While we’ve seen Peggy interact with children on this show before (especially while in Pete’s presence), we’ve never seen her talk to someone like she did with Stan tonight about her decision to give up her child. I liked how Peggy kind of dances around the details of the story when Stan asks her what she did, but she gives him enough information so that he knows what’s going on. I imagine that would be a pretty realistic response from someone who has been hiding a painful secret for a long time. I also like how she tells Stan that she doesn’t know how her son is doing, not because she doesn’t care, but because she can’t know because that’s the only way she’ll be able to move on. This echoes back to what Don told Peggy while visiting her in the hospital—“get out of here and move on. This never happened. It will shock you how much this never happened.” Just as Don sometimes seems to be filling Roger’s old role, Peggy sometimes seems to be filling Don’s.

Meanwhile, as is often the case on Mad Men, Pete Campbell’s difficulties mirror Peggy’s in this episode. While he technically maintains some presence in his daughter’s life, she isn’t getting into Greenwich Country Day in part because she can’t properly draw a picture of a man, and even when Pete comes back to his former home in Cos Cob, he insists on leaving before Tammy gets back from the park. It’s no wonder she can’t draw a man—Pete would rather save the Seacor Laxative account than his relationship with his own daughter.

So will “Time & Life” quiet some of the negative chatter surrounding this final half-season of Mad Men? I still have no idea how the series will end (and that’s good, I prefer it that way), but this was the first episode of the final seven where I feel like Weiner and the other writers can’t be accused of wheel-spinning and focusing on the “wrong” characters. They’ve given us a major plot point and at least suggested new directions for many of the show’s main characters; while, at the same time, making it feel like things are starting to wind down. Only three episodes to go. Lets see how it all plays out.

Other Thoughts:

• I liked how in the final scene the partners were completely ignored in the office meeting after they announce that they’ll be moving in with McCann. Don and Roger used to command so much authority, now nobody really bothers paying attention. Don tries to sell the move as a new beginning, but nobody’s really buying that. They all know it’s the end.
• “Greenwich, Connecticut is built on divorce!” I don’t know if that makes it into the pantheon of great Pete Campbell quotes, but it’s very close.
• I’ve mentioned this in other reviews, but how many of these characters end the show working in advertising? Peggy says she’s going to McCann. Joan is the only partner who doesn’t get an account from Jim Hobart. Don looks disillusioned. I could honestly see all of them moving on from advertising completely.

But What’s Next?—Mad Men Season 7, Episode 10—The Forecast

Don ponders his future in “The Forecast”

By John Andrew Fraser

Back in the old days, whenever Don Draper would blow up his life, he would have a plan—or at least he would make it look like he had a plan. Now, Don stares at his apartment building, empty except for a few pieces of patio furniture. It’s representative of the blank slate that is his life—the blank slate he has so often craved over the course of the show’s run. Yet this time, it seems clear that Don has no plan. While many have commented that Mad Men’s previous two episodes have dealt with the idea of “the life not lived,” “The Forecast” shifts the show’s focus to the future, and just like Don, many of Mad Men’s other main characters have no clue what they hope to gain as their lives progress. When Don asks Ted Chaough “what’s next?,” all Ted can come up with is that he’d like to sign a pharmaceutical company, and when he asks Peggy, she says that she wants to become SC&P’s first female creative director. Later in the episode, he asks Sally what she wants to be when she grows up. Her only response is that she wants to eat dinner. As Don tries to probe deeper, the answers only get more murky.

One thing that’s becoming increasingly clear is that the people in Don’s life are no longer afraid to call him out on things. Last week, Megan called him an aging, sloppy liar. Within the first five minutes of this episode, Melanie, the real estate broker tasked with selling his apartment, tells him that his home reeks of failure and unhappiness. Later, after Mathis completely bombs in a meeting with a client, at least partially because of advice Don gave him, he tells Don that he has no character and that he’s only succeeded because he’s handsome. And finally, Sally tells him that she just wants to get away so that she won’t turn out like him or Betty. What’s interesting is that Don seems to actually internalize all of this. Sure, he lashes back at Mathis and fires him. Sure, he grabs Sally’s arm and tells her that she’s more like him and her mother than she thinks, but you can tell that he’s legitimately hurt by both comments. The old Don was Teflon, none of this would have phased him. Yet the new Don takes these comments to heart, probably because he knows, at least on some level, that Megan, Melanie, Mathis, and Sally are all right to criticize him. At the very least, they’re not wrong.

Ever since Betty gave Glen a lock of her hair way back in season one, the two have had one of Mad Men’s strangest relationships. That relationship reached its apex tonight as Glen actually tried to make a move on Betty. This was, in-part, a reaction to Glen’s own uncertain future, as he informs Betty that he’s failed out of college and is joining the army (hey, maybe Betty wasn’t completely delusional last week when she told Don that people seek her out to share their confidences). And even though Betty ultimately rejects him, it’s obvious that she finds some kind of strange pleasure in what’s happened. I guess this was an appropriately weird way for one of the show’s oddest storylines to conclude.

The other main story tonight centered around Joan, who met a wealthy real estate developer while she was on a business trip in Los Angeles. At first, he appears to be every bit her equal. The two hit things off, and it even looks like he might figure into Joan’s own personal-life forecast. However, when she tells him that she has a four-year-old son, he reacts so selfishly that it looks like things will fall apart completely. Joan’s been hit from all angles during season seven—whether it be lack of respect at work or in her personal life (remember when Bob Benson proposed to her in “The Strategy,” by basically telling her that she wasn’t getting any younger?). That’s why it definitely seems like a victory—at least for now—when he turns up at SC&P and apologizes. Yet at the end of the day, can we really say that Joan’s forecast is any clearer than the rest of the characters?

But ultimately, these final episodes seem to be asking whether there’s any chance that Don Draper can actually change. Earlier this week, Todd Vanderwerff wrote a piece for Vox, in which he mentioned that he hopes that the show will conclude with Don approaching some level of self-realization before reverting back to his old ways one last time, much like Tony Soprano did in The Sopranos. While it’s still too early to say whether this will be the case, Don does seem to be on a path toward something—at least that’s what all his questions about the future and increased level of introspection seem to suggest. He’ll keep on chasing it, but what he finds is another question entirely.

Other Thoughts:

• The previous episode ended with Don alone in his empty apartment. This episode ends with Don standing alone, outside his apartment, which has just been sold. He’s moving farther and farther away from the person he used to be.
• When Don probes Peggy on what she would like to achieve, she eventually says she would like to produce something meaningful and lasting. Don’s response—“You think you can do that through advertising?” Again, this seems to be another example of a character who used to define himself through his work realizing that maybe that work was hollow all along. What are the chances that Don quits advertising by the end of the series?
• To be fair, I’d be grossed out too if I were Sally and both my parents were hitting on my friends.

What If You Never Get Past the Beginning Again?—Mad Men Season 7, Episode 9—New Business

Don and the Swedish Chef

By John Andrew Fraser

We begin with Henry Francis stopping by to literally drink Don’s milkshake and we end with a wide shot of Don standing alone in his empty apartment, the one that was once so elegantly decorated by Megan—the one that was supposed to represent a new beginning. “New Business” is a wild, somewhat disjointed episode, similar to, yet very different from “The Runaways” from the first half of this season. Both episodes balance a multitude of characters and storylines, and many of these storylines deal with the characters making rash, impulsive decisions and/or encountering borderline surreal situations.

Last week, I assumed Diana, the waitress from the diner who was reading The 42^nd Parallel, would be a one-off character in the same mold as Neve Campbell’s mysterious stranger on a plane from season seven’s first episode, “Time Zones.” But less than ten minutes into “New Business,” Diana is back. I had no idea what to make of Don’s interactions with Diana in “Severance,” and I still find it odd that Matthew Weiner would bring a character like this in with only a handful of episodes to go, but after learning some of Diana’s back story, I get the feeling that Don sees a lot of himself in her. They’re both from the Midwest, they both abandoned their families (Di’s dead daughter even calls back to Don’s brother Adam Whitman, who hanged himself in season one after Don rejected him), and they both seem to possess the same world-weary sadness when it comes to life. The main difference between the two is that Diana doesn’t want to forget the pain she’s caused those she’s left behind, while Don in large part refuses to remember. Maybe that’s why Diana’s around—to make him remember over the course of these final five episodes.

Diana still seems to exist in a kind of half-dream state. She’s like a reprieve from the real world for Don, and he needs it in this episode, as his divorce with Megan looks like it’s going to get messy. However, the ever-impulsive Don tries to take matters into his own hands by writing Megan a check for $1,000,000. How much cash did Don make from the McCann deal? Maybe he ends up living in some small, rundown apartment with Diana as the series concludes. He certainly seems to be quietly divesting himself of his possessions in this episode. He’s paid off Megan and lost a large sum of money in the process and he’s definitely going to need some new furniture. I liked how Don told Roger early in the episode that Megan wasn’t Jane, yet Megan gave Don almost the exact same speech that Jane must have given Roger when they divorced. She even got to tell Don that he’s getting sloppy and old (surely reminding him that he’s running out of chances and that eventually age, and death, will catch up with him).

The other prominent storyline this week involved Peggy and Stan dealing with a photographer named Pima Ryan, who was shooting an ad for SC&P. While Pima may have been talented, she was also a con-artist of sorts, coming on to both Peggy and Stan to advance her own work. Was it a coincidence that Peggy told Stan that Pima was in advertising more so than art? Wouldn’t you expect Peggy to be the one to argue that advertising is important, that it is art? Maybe Pima’s helping her see that there needs to be more in her life than just advertising. Yes, Pima’s had a lot of adventures along the way. Yes, her work may have led to fame and notoriety, but Peggy ultimately rejects Pima because she realizes that she (like advertising in general) is insincere. Perhaps I’m reading into this too much, or maybe even if Peggy is starting to come to this realization she’ll just be pulled back into the advertising machine like Ken was last week, however, I do think this is something to keep an eye on over the next five weeks.

If last week’s big thematic element was “the life not lived,” this week seemed to be about looking at the reality of one’s life and then desperately trying to turn away from it. Don would rather cut an enormous check than go through more divorce proceedings with Megan. Roger would rather sleep with Marie Calvet than face anything in his personal or work life, and Harry Crane…well lets not even get started on that one. Oddly enough, Pete Campbell, who has had very little screen time this half-season so far has become pretty philosophical. Last week he mentioned how he felt like he was really changing his life in California, but now it just feels like a dream. This week, while on his way to a golf outing with Don, he basically sums up one of the major ideas that Mad Men’s been exploring all along—“You think you’re going to begin your life over and do it right. But what if you never get past the beginning again?” The carousel keeps spinning, aren’t we just bound to get off where we got on?

Other Thoughts:

• Betty only shows up for a minute here, but she’s going to get a masters in psychology from Fairfield University. Interesting how the tables seem to have turned since season one when Betty was in therapy. But would you really want Betty as your psychologist?
• We get a Sylvia and Arnold Rosen sighting in the elevator. Arnold seems to be really amused by Don and Diana. If he only knew.
• I love how Roger is kind of haunted by his past in this episode. He can’t play golf because Bert Peterson will be there, and Megan basically walks in on him and her mom, but in the end he just doesn’t care.
• Harry Crane’s indecent proposal was pretty cringe-worthy. Harry will never cease to be a sleaze-ball. Seriously, do people really think Pete is sleazier than Harry at this point?
• I honestly felt bad for Megan in this episode. She seemed like she wanted to make the divorce as civil as possible, but her family just kept dragging her down. You can always count on Marie Calvet to stir the pot.
• “What career? She’s a consumer!”—Roger Sterling

Is That All There is?—Mad Men Season 7, Episode 8—Severance

By John Andrew Fraser

When AMC first announced that it was splitting Mad Men’s final season into two halves, Matthew Weiner stated that the first seven episodes would deal with the material world, while the series’ final seven episodes would take a closer look at the things that exist beyond that world—things like family, happiness, and self-fulfillment. All of SC&P’s partners are very wealthy thanks to the McCann deal—in one specific scene Peggy even says to Joan, “you’re filthy rich, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do”—but are they happy? The answer certainly seems to be no.

Despite her newfound wealth, Joan still can’t seem to gain the respect she clearly deserves. When she’s not being mistaken for a former department store employee, she’s being verbally harassed by a group of McCann executives in a meeting. I’m eager to see what road Weiner and the writers have mapped out for Joan in these final six episodes. On one hand, she seems like someone who finds a pretty deep sense of purpose in her role at SC&P, but on the other, I think it’s fair to ask just how long she can stay in an environment where so few people recognize her talents. She could be the most knowledgeable account woman on Madison Avenue and still not command a room of clients like Roger or even Pete, just because of her gender and good looks. Still, it seems really weird to imagine an SC&P without Joan.

An SC&P without Ken Cosgrove will be weird too. Ken—who many have said is the lone good guy at the agency—was the first (and my guess is that he won’t be the last) casualty of the McCann deal. At first I was strangely happy for Ken when Roger gave him the axe. I always felt it was pretty clear, ever since he was writing robot science-fiction under the pen name Ben Hargrove in season five, that Ken’s real interests were elsewhere. I was definitely rooting for him to move to a farm and become a writer full-time. That seems like it would’ve made him happy, but will being head of advertising for Dow Chemical? Maybe screwing over his former bosses will make the position worth it, but Ken really needs to be sitting in front of a type-writer in a cabin in rural Vermont. I’m pouring one out for all the robot novels we’ll never get to read.

And then there’s Don. When he asks the fur model in the opening scene, “look at yourself. Do you like what you see?” He might as well be talking to himself. The end has never been closer for Don (we only get him for six more episodes), and I’d be willing to bet that he still feels like he did in “The Strategy” when he told Peggy that he worries that he’ll never have anybody and that he’s never done anything. Death follows Don Draper everywhere in this episode, whether it be Rachel Menken’s passing, a red wine stain on his carpet that resembles blood, or an waitress who is literally named Di. Luckily, Don has an endless supply of fur models, mistresses, and, well, waitresses named Di to take his mind off his eventual demise. I’m guessing that many will speculate that all these details suggest that we might actually get to see Don’s death on screen before the series ends. While I wouldn’t rule this out completely, knowing Weiner, it might be just as likely that he’ll end the series by having Don experience one final figurative death. He might not actually die, but he’ll continue to be trapped in a life where he has no one, and hasn’t done anything. Don, like many of the other characters on this show, seems to have reached the mountain-top upon first glance, but is that all there is?

Behold the glory of the ‘stache

Other Thoughts:

• I didn’t mention Peggy in this review, but while super drunk she decides she’s going to Paris with Mathis’ brother-in-law. Will Peggy finally find happiness in her personal life which has so often seemed cursed on this show? Based on her sober reaction to the night, I’m skeptical, but I did love that Stan was all about her Paris plans.
• All scenes involving Don and Di, the waitress, were super weird. Maybe I didn’t pick up on something, but was she just there because she made him think about Rachel Menken, or was there something more to these scenes?
• Roger Sterling’s mustache—a thing of beauty.

Mad Men Season 7, Episode 7—Waterloo

By John Andrew Fraser

A little over a week ago, I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library just outside of Boston. There, I was reminded that it was Kennedy who initially wanted to put a man on the moon. He presented this goal at the beginning of the decade, when Peggy Olsen was a secretary, when Don Draper was hanging out with his bohemian girlfriend in Greenwich Village, and when Roger Sterling was puking up oysters. Nobody could have predicted the twists and turns the decade would take at that point—Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam, the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the beginning of the Nixon presidency. Yet there we were on July 20, 1969, fulfilling Kennedy’s dream (in many ways this event tied the tumultuous decade together). The way we got there was strange, but it happened. Like the times in which they live, Mad Men’s characters’ lives are often unpredictable, but they, like us, can always count on the past morphing into the future without advance notice. Time waits for no man and the future inevitably leaves people behind, and nothing says “the future” quite like the wide open possibilities of space.

More than anything, ‘Waterloo’ feels like an ending. Torches are being passed all over the place in this episode. I guess it’s fitting that Bert Cooper died right after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon—he always loved astronauts (remember his eulogy for Ms. Blankenship in season four?). But Bert also represents the last of an old generation that has faded away. He was someone who Don and Roger looked up to, now they take their place as the next in line to kick the bucket. When Bert told Roger that he wasn’t a leader, it seemed to shake Roger from his eternal childhood trance. This led to the McCann deal, which seems like it will lead to the sale of Bert’s company mere days after his death. Like I said, the future often ruthlessly replaces the past without warning. Time waits for no man.

In many ways, Jim Cutler represents this relentless rush toward the future more than anyone else on the show. He’s one part stone cold pragmatist and one part villain, and his attempt to oust Don from the agency leads to another great torch-passing moment in this episode. With Don’s job hanging in the balance, he decides to hand the Burger Chef pitch over to Peggy at the last second. It seems like Don’s really letting go and realizing that other people need to fill the shoes that he once filled. The agency really is just one big ecosystem where some people die out or move on while others move up the food chain and assume their positions like it’s a law of nature (In this way, the Mad Men world reminds me of the streets on The Wire). Peggy proves that she’s more than ready for the moment here. Her pitch is so good that it harkens back to Don’s famous carousel speech in ‘The Wheel.’ Was there any doubt that SC&P was going to pick up Burger Chef’s business after that? I’m pretty sure I even saw a tear beginning to form in one of its executives’ eyes as Peggy was wrapping things up. One of the best things about this half season of Mad Men has been the way Don and Peggy have mended their relationship. It has been well documented that one thing that may truly “save” Don going forward is his role as a mentor and friend to Peggy.

Finally, there’s the deal with McCann Erickson. This plot point sets up so many interesting questions for the final seven episodes of the series. It certainly creates an existential crisis for Don. He has had various opportunities to work at McCann, literally since season one, and has always been deeply unimpressed by the opportunity to work for such a huge agency where he’d be just a cog in a machine. However, I think the first couple episodes of this season showed us that Don really needs to be in the business or he loses his sense of purpose (he even tells Ted as much in this episode). The fact that his relationship with Megan seems to be beyond repair only serves to further drive this point home (side note: I don’t think Don and Megan will ever officially get divorced, at least on the show. They’ll just remain separated and very distant). At the end of the day, selling the agency to McCann will make all the partners very rich, but will it make them happy? Will they still have purpose?

In several interviews, Matthew Weiner has said that he intended for the first half of this season to be about the material world and the second half to be about things beyond the material world, such as happiness, spirituality, and personal fulfillment. With this in mind, it seems that Don’s vision of Bert Cooper’s bizarre dance routine was a strangely appropriate way to lead us into the show’s homestretch. “The best things in life are free,” Bert sings. We hear this a lot, but what will it mean for these characters, as we prepare to leave them forever next spring? I can confidently say that I have no idea, but I can’t wait to find out.

In closing, I want to thank everyone who has read my posts this season. I’ve had fun writing these, and I hope that I’ll be able to write recaps for the final seven episodes of this great show in the Spring of 2015. I’d also like to thank Colin for agreeing to post my recaps on his blog every Monday. Whenever he gets a free second at work on Monday mornings he’s making sure that things look good and that they’re ready to post. Without his hard work I’d just be a guy sitting at a computer.