Mad Men Season Six - A Moment of Clarity

In perhaps the understatement of the television year, the on-screen cable guide for last night's season finale of Mad Men simply said "Don has a problem." You don't say. For the better part of 1968, whatever humanity Don had has been kicked away, his darkest secret revealed to his daughter, Peggy's affection for Ted aroused Don's masochistic streak as he bullied and humiliated his new business partner, he became obsessed with death, utterly removed from his wife and, as always, was tortured by the memories of his impossibly cruel and unloving childhood. 

That Don would hit rock bottom was a given, but now, not only has his humanity been stripped away, but all of the elements of the life he manufactured by being "Don Draper" have too - his partners send him on an indefinite leave of absence, his wife leaves him and his former protégé now inhabits his office. As with many people who attempt to turn their lives around on their own, Don simply could not do so before others decided to intervene. Landing in the drunk tank may have finally convinced Don he needed to get his drinking under control, but ritually pouring all the alcohol in your house down the drain is no more a long-term solution than tossing out the pack of cigarettes you now swear you won't smoke. 

Moving to California to be a "homesteader" for SC&P was something out of Draper 101 - beat a tactical retreat and start anew, wash away the failure of whatever it is you are running from and pretend like it never happened - but Don's plan to walk away from the chaos he created in New York is complicated by Ted, an otherwise good and decent man who recognizes he is in over his head with Peggy, and does not have the wherewithal to stay where he is and blow up his own life in the midst of everything that is going on around him. While Don's immediate reaction is to reject Ted's request that they switch spots on Sunkist, ultimately, Don capitulates, perhaps because he no longer felt the need to assert his dominance over Ted, or maybe because Don knew his life would not actually change, but Ted's could. Maybe he just felt a spark of decency toward his fellow man. 

But in agreeing to stay in New York, Don finally lights the spark that sends Megan out the door. Having already put in notice at her job and with a list of interviews in Hollywood beckoning, she leaves to pursue her own dreams. And who can blame her? Her once loving husband fell down a bottomless well of whisky, rarely talked to her and seemed completely unconnected to the world around him. Of course, Don's fly by the seat of his pants decision making (or, as Pete referred to it, being Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine [1]) is largely to blame. Having tried to solve one problem (needing to leave NYC) he created another (Megan quitting her job) that creates another problem (Megan leaving him when he decides not to move) when he goes back on the original plan.

Don's erratic behavior also finally caught up to him at work. Unaccustomed to getting work over the transom from the likes of Hershey's, Don has not adjusted to being a partner at one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. He will still disappear with no notice to drink himself silly, but the trump card of his own brilliance in pitch meetings can no longer justify his otherwise selfish behavior. There are simply too many people relying on his work, too much money at stake and too much prestige to lose. 

This is spelled out in perhaps the finest of the mirroring effects utilized this season. Don's pitch to Hershey's harkened back to his iconic presentation to Kodak at the end of season 1. [2] There, Don manufactured a narrative of his life with Betty and their children as being as American as apple pie, a life filled with opened Christmas presents, kisses at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and snowball fights. The conceit, of course, was that we knew this sepia-toned framing was a figment of Don's imagination, but hey, whatever it takes to sell some slide carousels. A similarly touching story unfolded for the Hershey's executives, one where young Don, fresh from mowing the family lawn, would go to the corner drugstore with his proud papa, hair tousled and stomach growling. There, Don got to pick any treat in the store and of course, picked a Hershey's bar. That connection, between pure childhood memories and their association with the eponymous candy bar, is what Don wants to sell. In other words, nostalgia in a foil candy wrapper. 

A pregnant pause and Don's now shaky hand later, we do not get what we might otherwise expect - dazzled executives happily agreeing to the well constructed pitch. No, instead we get a confessional, a raw, emotions-bleeding-out-on-the-floor monologue every bit as powerful as Don's Kodak presentation, but this time, the story is real, not fake. You see, young Don did have a connection to Hershey's, but it came from being rewarded by a prostitute who would get him the treat if he successfully pilfered money from the pockets of the men she serviced while they were otherwise indisposed. Don's connection to Mr. Hershey stemmed not simply from love of chocolate, but discovering there was a place where orphans like Don were raised in a good and decent environment, loved and cherished, instead of being looked upon as mistakes that could not be eradicated. 

It was a breathtaking moment, mesmerizing in its delivery and devastating in its impact. Laid bare was the ugly truth of Don's creation and rearing, a confessional that lifted a weight off of Don's shoulders even as it nuked the agency's chances of landing the iconic chocolate maker as a client. It also became the final straw for Don's partners, who call him in for an emergency meeting on Thanksgiving to tell him that he's out, at least for now, from the agency. His solo act, which worked to great effect when the firm was a small fish in a big pond, will no longer do. With Megan out of the picture, Don takes his first, hesitant step to whatever the future holds by driving his children to the whorehouse he grew up in. The structure is still standing, though it is now rundown, garbage strewn around it and a forlorn little boy sitting on the front porch. Don shares a a glance with his daughter Sally that can't wash away all the hurt he has caused her, but at least begins to open the door so she can understand who her father is. 

It appears Don's replacement at the agency will be Peggy. Don's body isn't even cold before she has started using his office to review client matters. This may be small consolation for her, but the hard lesson she learns is that the work is the thing - the men in her life are unreliable and withholding. The transference of father figure from Don to Ted may be overly simplistic, but their inaccessibility was the same. Don was no sooner going to give her the credit she so desperately craved than Ted was going to leave his wife and kids to be a "scandal" with his copy chief. For now, the corner office will have to be her consolation prize. 

The other threads of the finale also suggested second chances. Joining Ted in California will be Pete Campbell, who, it turns out, really cannot tangle with Bob Benson's "kind." The scam Bob and Manolo started because they thought Pete's mom was wealthy comes to a predictable end - a rush wedding between Manolo and the dementia-addled Mrs. Campbell followed quickly by a mysterious (and hard to investigate) death at sea. The manservant disappears soon thereafter (perhaps when he discovers Mrs. Campbell has no money), but Pete's desire to take his revenge on Bob blows up in his face. In Detroit, Bob sets a trap for Pete, suggesting Pete take a spin in a Camaro. Pete, a poor driver, accidentally drops the car into reverse instead of first gear, and like that, Bob is now the senior account man on Chevrolet and Pete is packing his bags for the left coast. Bob has gone from the farm team to the big leagues and is spending Thanksgiving with Joan and little Kevin. Meanwhile, Roger, snubbed by his actual family and looked upon solely as a breadwinner, is left to try and bond with a little boy who does not even know who "Uncle" Roger is, another penny to put in his pocket on the way to you know where. [3] 

Ultimately, I am leery of Don's conversion. A flashback to a minister preaching forgiveness and a drunken swing at a proselytizer in a bar does not a new man make. In this way, In Care Of reflected back Don's other attempts at conversion. At the end of Season 2, he came clean to his wife about his infidelity and was allowed back into their marriage. At the end of Season 3, he came to terms with losing that marriage (and his agency), choosing to start anew. At the end of Season 4, he started a new life with a new soon-to-be wife, but for all of the time fans spend rooting for Don to get his act together, it feels as though the writers of this show spend just as much time beating us over the head reminding us that whatever we are seeing is not real, it will not last. 

Don has had opportunities before to truly look into who he is and has demurred. His own worldview has been out there for all to see - "people don't change" - [4] and he was self-aware enough to tell Megan long ago that he would try, but likely fail, to be a good person. [5] In years past, Don's armor of cool distance, of being, as Lane described him, the boy everyone followed but was unaware of anyone else's presence, [6] made him hip, desirable and we excused his play-by-his-own-rules attitude, but now, creeping into middle age, the veneer that shielded him from the rest of the world largely stripped away, it is not envy we feel towards him, but pity. 

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy

END NOTES

1.  For Immediate Release, Season 6, Episode 6. 

2.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus

3. The Doorway Part I, Season 6, Episode 1.

4. The Mountain King, Season 2, Episode 12.

5. Tomorrowland, Season 4, Episode 13. 

6. Commissions and Fees, Season 5, Episode 12. 

Mad Men Season Six - Secrets & Lies

Aside from the sex, adultery is just another form of gambling. Gambling that you won't fall in love, that you won't get caught and can live with yourself in those quiet moments when it's just you, alone with your thoughts. Cheating on your spouse is a selfish act where the consequences are always clear but difficult to quantify unless and until the day comes when you do fall in love, get caught or can no longer live with yourself. 

And so it was that through a confluence of events that led Don back into Sylvia Rosen's arms, that the big reveal in the episode titled Favors was Don getting caught cheating by his daughter Sally in the tawdriest of ways - in the heat of passion, with his pants literally around his ankles as he and Sylvia rekindled their affair. Sylvia's reaction was one of shame and anger, she had escaped Don's clutches without getting caught and thrown it all away again because she could not resist him at a time of vulnerability. Don hid at the bottom of a bottle, fully expecting to walk into his penthouse apartment and a shitstorm from Megan, but instead, finds an ordinary (if icy) dinner playing out with Megan, Sally and Sally's friend from school. 

It is only when Dr. Rosen stops by to thank Don for helping put the Rosens in touch with the Air National Guard that Sally's rage surfaces. Megan, unaware that Don had done this favor, lovingly kisses him, calling him the "sweetest man in the world." This is all too much for Sally, and she storms off, locking the door to her room and weakly (and unconvincingly) accepting her father's excuse that he was simply "comforting" Mrs. Rosen during a time of need. In this moment, as we have at so many other points along Don's continuum, we were left to wonder whether it was the consequences or discovery of his secrets that Don feared more. When Betty found out about his Army desertion, Don came clean, feeling unburdened; [1] but when forced to confront his liaison with Bobbi Barrett, the best he could choke out was that he had been "disrespectful" toward his wife. [2] 

Now, as the closing shot made Don's bedroom seem like a million miles away and as ominous as something out of the Overlook Hotel [3], we are left to wonder in which direction Don will go. On the one hand, his interest in his wife waxes and wanes, but a man who only likes "the beginnings of things" did not back up his admission to Megan that he had been "away" with much in the way of action.  Forget the one off he had with Betty, Don's eye was already wandering again during his trip to California, and it took little to get him back into Sylvia's apartment. Now, he has shamed himself in front of his daughter and must live with the gamble that a rebellious teenager will not divulge his secret, never mind the corrosive effect her discovery will have on the parent-child relationship.

Spilling the beans may be the least of Don's concerns as they relate to Sally. For years, she has generally ignored his spotty parenting. All the way back in Season 1, he got drunk and forgot to pick up her birthday cake, but returned home with a dog to make up for his error. [4] More recently, he scored tickets to see The Beatles after a dust-up with his sometimes wayward daughter. [5] Of course, Sally has always been precocious and in the aftermath of the "Grandma Ida" incident she told her father that she didn't really know anything about him, but now, she knows more than she would ever want to. The devastation, to parent and child, that played out after her accidental discovery of his liaison felt total, complete and irreparable.

Of course, favors also come with strings, or at least the opportunity for the one granting the favor the chance to ask for something in return. For Bob Benson, who referred Pete to a male nurse named Manolo to care for his ailing mother, this meant finally, albeit elliptically, expressing his feelings toward Pete. And while this is far from the first time that the show has flirted with closeted gay men, [6] the Benson "reveal" must have crushed the army of Internet bloggers and commentators who were hoping that Bob's presence at Sterling Cooper & Partners was either more nefarious or surreptitious. [7] 

It was unclear whether Pete's impotent rage, taken out on an empty box of Raisin Bran, was directed at Bob's flirtation or Pete's own lonely lot in life. He got to share intimacy with Peggy as the two of them decompressed after their Ocean Spray pitch, but regardless of the years (not to mention parentage) between them, Pete sees Ted's infatuation with Peggy and is non-plussed. For her own part, Peggy is thrown when Pete's mom encourages their reunion, only to realize that the older woman is confusing her for Trudy. Another secret revealed, another shame experienced. 

Ted Chaough's request to Don for helping him get Mitchell Rosen into the Air National Guard seemed more innocuous - a truce to the undeclared war that Ted felt has been waged ever since the two men came up with the idea to put their heads (and agencies) together in an effort to secure General Motors. And while Ted certainly has an interest in the appearance of laying down his arms, he has been schooled by his now deceased partner Frank Gleason about doing battle with the enigmatic Mr. Draper. [8] With GM firmly in Ted's pocket, pulling a small string because Don feels sympathy for young Mitchell or wants to ingratiate himself with the Rosens or simply make himself feel like "the sweetest man in the world" is of no moment. Don, a man of his word (at least when it comes to things outside his wedding vows), earnestly thanks Ted for this favor, and (perhaps) with it, handing a strategic gain to his longtime rival. After all, a favor is rarely done without consequences.

Follow me on Twitter - @scarylawyerguy

END NOTES

1.  The Gypsy and the Hobo, Season 3, Episode 

2.  Meditations in an Emergency, Season 2, Episode 13. 

3.  The name of the hotel in the book and movie, The Shining.

4.  Marriage of Figaro, Season 1, Episode 3.

5.  Hands and Knees, Season 4, Episode 10.

6.  The Hobo Code, Season 1, Episode 8, Out of Town, Season 3, Episode 1, Wee Small Hours, Season 3, Episode 9. 

7.  http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/who-is-mad-mens-bob-benson.html

8.  Gleason quoted from Sun Tzu's Art of War in advising Ted "If I wait patiently by the river, the body of my enemy will float by." He also suggested a nascent version of the rope-a-dope, allowing Don to win "the early rounds" and expend all his energy, allowing Ted to win a victory as the "fight" wore on. Man With a Plan, Season 6, Episode 7. 

Mad Men Season 5 - A Wolf At The Door

Mad Men has never been a particularly upbeat program.  Its main characters constantly struggle with their own foibles and shortcomings, often making bad decisions and acting callously.  But where in years past their emotional turmoil and suffering was expressed existentially, in introspective poses that suggested desperation and quiet moments alone with their thoughts and the repercussions of their actions, the show's velocity no longer affords such distance.  Now, crises appear in color and right at their front door.  

A third of the way through Season 5, a quartet of episodes have moved the show calendar less than two months, but the atmosphere and tone has turned dark and foreboding.  Everywhere our characters turn, danger lurks just out of sight.  The mood is set early, with references to riots, worker strikes and the killing of eight women in Chicago by a psychopath. It is against this backdrop that new copywriter Michael retools a pitch for women's shoes after the client has accepted an initial idea.  His brooding on the idea of a Cinderella being pursued in the dark of night ends up resonating with the executives but earns him a stern reprimand from a feverish Don.  

Back at the office, Peggy successfully leverages Roger's panic at being unprepared for a pitch meeting with Mohawk Airlines into a big payday for doing extra weekend work.  When she discovers that Dawn, Don's new African-American secretary, has been sleeping at the office because of fears set off by the Speck murders and also because she lives too far away from the office to safely commute late at night, she invites Dawn to stay with her.  Peggy's self-satisfied moment of bonding quickly dissolved when, back at her apartment, a pregnant moment occurs where she realizes her purse, now stuffed with $400 from Roger, is laying on the coffee table within Dawn's easy reach once she goes to bed.  The following morning, Dawn has quietly alit from the apartment, the only sign of her stay being a polite courtesy note thanking Peggy for her hospitality.

While Peggy and Michael channel the news of the day, Joan experiences the uncertainty of being a "war bride" front and center when her husband Greg returns from Vietnam.  At first, their reunion is heartfelt and full of promise, with Joan's mother discreetly leaving the two alone so they can have sex, but quickly dissolves when Greg reveals he has volunteered for another year's duty.  Whereas Joan had accepted Greg's initial enlistment with some frustration (but resignation), she is no longer willing to mutely comply with her husband's unilateral decision. In an intense scene, they finally have it out - Joan digging up, albeit in code, Greg's ugly rape of her in Don's office before they were married and Greg expressing his desire to feel like a "good" man, something that only occurs when he is leading a team of doctors in the theater of war.  The denouement is Joan's simple, but difficult decision to tell Greg to leave their home for good.  When he threatens to take her up on it, she says nothing, and so it goes. Divorce and dislocation, something that was dirty and private when the show began, now feels far more pedestrian and mainstream. 

The Speck murders linger in the background of the Francis home as well.  Grandma Pauline, babysitting for Sally while Henry and Betty are out of town, wants to shield Sally from this horrific news.  When precocious Sally pilfers a newspaper from the trash and reads about the senseless killings, she is frightened beyond belief, asking to sit up with Pauline and ultimately being doses with seconol to help her sleep.  When Henry and Betty return the following morning, the two are comatose, grandmother slumped on the couch and Sally out like a light underneath the couch, like a scared cat. 

The other person all of this unrest affects is Don, who has a brief encounter with a former paramour in the elevator at work in front of Megan, resulting in an awkward moment.  Later, as he's struggling with a fever, the woman, Andrea, reappears at his apartment door, seeking a sexual liaison.  Don shoos her out, wanting to be faithful to Megan and not sliding back into his old habits.  When Andrea somehow comes back in, he relents and they have sex, but afterwards, she angers him, and he chokes her to death.  Of course, this is all a hallucination, but the intensity of his reaction to his own conduct says everything.  He is a man still haunted by his demons.

In the span of an hour, and in "show time" two days, the world our characters inhabit spiral quickly out of control.  Joan is getting divorced, Peggy's subtle bigotry exposed, Sally has now been introduces to pharmaceutical medication and Don has (literally) wrestled with his demons.  If this was not bleak enough, show creator Matt Weiner chooses a song titled "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)" to end the episode - it's lyric of violence an apt coda to this dark and disturbing hour of television. 

Don Draper Is A Square

"My God, so square you've got corners." Megan Draper to Don Draper

Long time Mad Men viewers have been caught short in Season 5 at the abrupt emasculation of Don Draper.  Having watched Don bed a succession of women during the show's first four seasons, swing his metaphorical dick at anyone with the temerity to challenge him in the office and basically, as he told Rachel Mencken in the show's very early days, live his life like there was no tomorrow, this older, more reflective, and frankly, less fun version of Don is taking some getting used to. Or, as Peggy put it in the season premiere, "I don't recognize this man. He's kind and patient … it concerns me." 

As "The Sixties," as we now think of that decade, have bled into the previously staid offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, Don now seems reactionary.  When he strikes up a conversation with a Rolling Stones groupie backstage at one of their concerts, instead of seduction, which would have been the default for Don in years past, he comes across as a scold, admonishing the young woman about giving herself freely to a musician and questioning what she knows about psychiatrists.  Her posture is telling.  Instead of recoiling from Don's authority, she impishly pulls his tie off and gives a lecture of her own, questioning why Don's generation, who didn't "have any fun" wants to deny hers of their enjoyment.  Don's response? "We're worried about you."  She can't be bothered, blowing Don off at the purported sighting of Mick and the boys.  

While Don's boorishness and poor treatment of women may have spoken to an Eisenhower-era view of the sexes and his casual infidelity as of a piece of the broader subjugation of women as housewife and harlot, at his heart, Don is a "little c" conservative.  His values are animated by his Midwestern upbringing, where it was impolite to talk about yourself and you never discussed money.  In Don's world, men don't have bawdy conversations in elevators with women present (and they certainly don't leave their hats on while doing it), smearing a man's "name" as the younger copywriters and account executives did at Freddy Rumsen's expense, is poor form and even when your wife has discovered you are a philanderer who has faked his past, *you* don't ask for the divorce, she does. 

Don's provincialism and simplistic view of gender roles went unchallenged through his adulthood, where everyone's place in society was well defined and rarely challenged.  At the show's inception, he's involved with Midge, a beatnik in Greenwich Village whose friends get a firm lashing from Don when they criticize his job. Of course, in those days, when the cops showed up to Midge's building to investigate a report of domestic violence, Don is the only one who can leave the apartment unmolested because of his suit and tie.  And even when flashes of changing culture invaded his neat little universe, as when he discovered Sal was a homosexual, Don, who knew something about hiding secrets, was non-plussed until it affected business. After Sal rejected a pass made by Lee Garner, Jr. putting the Lucky Strike account in jeopardy, Don's distaste and bigotry bubbled quickly to the surface, as he referred to gays as "you people" and suggesting Sal should have acquiesced to Lee's sexual come on before cruelly firing him. 

Perhaps Don's personality change is just a natural evolution that many people experience as they reach middle age or maybe this is Don's attempt to, as someone speculated, become the Dick Whitman he always wanted to be, and shed the Draper persona.  If nothing else, Matt Weiner and crew should be given credit for allowing Don's character to remain consistent.  A man who could not utter the word "infidelity" or "cheating" but instead referred to his indiscretions as not being "respectful" toward his wife is not the kind of man who will easily understand a youth culture that will glorify free love and recreational drug use. To a man who grew up poor, serving fancy people at a roadhouse who would not allow him to use the toilet, the rebellion of teens in the 1960s will unquestionably challenge his worldview.  And for a man whose own children are quickly growing up in a country that will careen toward social revolution, Don seems ill equipped to evolve with the times.  The world Don now inhabits is not one where a man's word is his bond and a handshake seals the deal. Now, kids openly get high, snub their elders and protests for civil and equal rights and against war, will define life for years to come.  Since we should not expect Don to "tune in, turn on and drop out," the next few years are likely to cause him to become more conservative, in his attitudes, conduct and behavior, than less.  The evolution, as with all things Mad Men should be fascinating.

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 2 - A Matter of Life & Death

In seasons past, the theme of mortality was dealt with at the margins of Mad Men.  Grandpa Gene died, but he was old.  Don was advised by his doctor to cut back on smoking and drinking, but, some "performance issues" aside during a getaway with Betty, lead being in his pencil has not been an issue. While Roger flirted with death in Season 1, his back-to-back heart attacks are now mentioned only in passing.  It was probably inevitable that as the show migrated into the heart of the 1960s, where youth was coming into its full flower, the generation that fought World War II and Korea would start to feel the creeping grip of death.  

The writers of the show also made a virtue of necessity by converting January Jones's real life pregnancy into a storyline related to middle age weight gain instead of a more predictable "new baby" storyline, but Betty's cancer scare is the closest the show has come to bringing life and death into the conversation around the show's main characters since Roger was wheeled out of Sterling Cooper nearly 6 years (in show time) ago.  If Don has always been a handsome cipher (as the reporter from Advertising Age described him in Season 4), Betty has always been a blank page, drifting through years of suburban anomie with little direction or motivation.  Her one move of empowerment saw her jump from the bed of one accomplished, yet distant white collar professional to another. 

Whereas Henry and Megan seem to be mirror images of each other, the former, taking his second chance at marriage as an opportunity to erase the mistakes of the past, the latter not having been corrupted by the years of drudgery typically associated with children and a house in the suburbs (see, Campbell, Pete and Crane, Harry, but more on Mr. White Castle later), Betty is very much a woman locked in her past.  Upon receiving her potential diagnosis, she immediately picks up the phone to call Don, all she wants to hear is "what he always says," that everything will be ok.  He easily shifts to calling her "Birdie," his pet name for her.  Their shared concern is for *their* children, not the people who they are now married to.  Betty falls to pieces when a charlatan reads her tea leaves and calls her a strong woman because she knows she is not.  She is a college educated model who has trafficked on her looks that are now fading and, along with her attendant weight gain, make the idea of burning out, rather than fading away, more appealing (perhaps that is where Neil Young got the idea?).  

A different kind of mortality is being shown within the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  After landing Mohawk Airlines, Pete makes an ostentatious display of humiliating Roger in front of the entire office, asserting his alpha status by reminding everyone that Roger will have day-to-day oversight of the account while he (Pete) is kept fully advised of its status.  Don feels the hot breath of youth on his collar too, he just refuses to submit.  Although Megan may not be that much stronger as a dinner companion than Betty was, Don lowers himself to slinking backstage at a Rolling Stones concert with Harry Crane after his Heinz contact suggests a twist on "Time Is On My Side" as a jingle for a commercial.  

The choice of song was not unintentional.  Time is something that Mad Men typically does a good job of inserting into the show's broader tapestry.  Harry is a man attempting to evolve with the times, in his clothing, in his attitude and his style.  He is taking the skirt chasing mentality of his elders and transferring it to the burgeoning free love movement, expertly handles marijuana and the looser morals of the day while expressing the same lament of boredom and tedium in his marriage. Don, on the other hand, rebuffs any flirtation with a backstage groupie in favor of attempting to pick her brain about understanding the youth movement and how to market to it.  Don is quickly sized up as a square who is not hip to the culture, but that is because the gap between Don the ad man and Don the parent is not that acute.  Although he wants to understand how to get young people to buy things, he also lets slip a deeper motivation - "we're worried about you" - he tells the groupie, a clear nod to the slowly expanding generation gap that will threaten to tear the country apart. 

My one quibble with the season thus far is the dissonance between, on the one hand, the ham (and heavy) handed and, on the other, the deft touch, the writers are applying to the rapidly changing culture.  Whereas Don's 40th birthday party and the backstage at the Rolling Stones scenes felt like they could have been done by some of the cheesier (and short-lived) shows like American Dreams, the writers have shown they do not need to be that obvious in commenting on social change.  Pete's total emasculation of Roger spoke volumes about the power structure within SCDP, and more generally, about the torch passing (or grabbing?) of one generation to the other in a much more organic way than Harry taking deep pulls of a joint at a rock concert.  Along a longer spectrum, Peggy's slow accretion of power and prestige has been noted at multiple points along the show's history - from Don's selection of her (over Kinsey) to leave with him to SCDP, debating who to fire at the end of Season 4, and now, in Roger's acknowledgement to Peggy of her enormous value to the firm.  The introduction of Dawn, Don's new black secretary, spoke for itself, but a caricatured "loud Jewish" copywriter felt forced and obvious, especially since Peggy's boyfriend seemed to be similarly stereotyped last season.  

One thing is clear.  This season will be about birth and death, of a generation looking at the precariousness of life and another just coming into its own.  For those who are lustily booing from the bleachers, I sympathize, but also recall that in past seasons, the sum was always greater than the individual parts.  While each season does have its stand out episodes, when you watch them in full, you come to realize it is the accumulation of storyline and character development that makes the show unique.  So sit tight and have some faith.  Who knows, maybe Harry will dose the office coffee pot and we will go through the looking glass too. 

Mad Men Season 5 - The Times They Are A Changin'

The fifth season of Mad Men opened with all the subtlety of a jackhammer and all the nuance of a steamroller.  A protest outside the offices of rival Y&R announces that the Sixties have truly started and our characters are at the water's edge of the most radical social transformation of the 20th century (they just don't know it).  Over the next two hours, Matt Wiener unfolded a scattershot of plot lines that are sure to keep die hard fans eager for another Sunday night of entertainment. 

In the new Draper household high atop a skyscraper in New York City, Don is celebrating another birthday - his 40th - and the imagery is interesting.  At the beginning of Season 3, Don also celebrated his birthday - his "real" birthday - with a painful flashback to his conception and birth to a prostitute who died shortly after delivering him and named him "Dick" after suggesting his father's penis should have been boiled in hog fat.  That scene took place in the first Draper family home, at night, without anyone around.  In 1966, Don is dutifully making breakfast for his three children as sunlight streams through the apartment windows and his new wife Megan ambles out to join the family.  

The birthday he will celebrate on June 1st is not his, but rather, that of the real Don Draper, but the season premiere suggests that the Don Draper we have known for the past four seasons, who lives in shadows, is petulant and egotistical, and swallows his misery in whiskey is gone, replaced instead by a man at peace - who does not attempt to talk Heinz into accepting a creative pitch, rarely touches the bottle and arrives (and leaves) work on time, with his wife.  After refusing to back up Peggy in her Heinz pitch she says of Don, "I don't recognize that man.  He's kind and patient … it concerns me."  Peggy's concerns could be shared by viewers who were probably saying the same thing - who is this guy?  It was telling that Don had shared the "Dick Whitman" secret with Megan (think of the years he withheld that information from Betty) and engaged in erotic role play with her in the apartment - he wants to be happy (and he notes, in opining on the futility of white carpet, wants to make Megan happy).  

If it has taken Don until mid-1966 to find happiness, junior partner Peter Campbell appears to be at the other end of the suburban anomie train that led Don to 6th and Waverly and the arms of his 25 year old secretary.  Same train, same commute, same wife and daughter (even the same home layout that has Pete entering through the kitchen).  But whereas Don's sense of alienation stemmed from his belief that he did not belong, that he was somehow a fraud, Pete's frustration comes from lack of recognition for work well done - "there's no fruit to my labor," he whines to Trudy after a long day at the office.  To which ever cheerful (and quippy) Trudy reminds him "dissatisfaction is a symbol of ambition."  Of course, Pete's problem has never been a lack of ambition, but as opposed to the naked version of it he showed early on, now his desire for career advancement is tied directly to years of dues paying, to cultivating new clients, growing small accounts into larger ones and now, with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce poised to rebound, to the future of the company.  

Pete's pushy manner in Season 1 led him to try and blackmail Don into promoting him, but now, Pete tries to make a rational argument for taking Roger's corner office.  Roger, sadly, is not even a shell of his former self, having brought in no business since the departure of Lucky Strike nearly a year before, he appears to be resting on a rather large stack of money that he uses to bribe his former full time secretary into coming back and sitting in front of his office and into paying off Harry Crane to switch offices with Pete so Roger will not have to.  In his personal life, Roger and Jane appear bored and uninterested in each other, though for what reasons we don't know, Jane has become a cipher who makes a random appearance and then sort of fades out, but Roger slips a not so subtle warning to Don when he notes that they (second wives) are great until they "start asking for things."   

The set piece for A Little Kiss is Don's surprise 40th birthday party, an event that the writers use (albeit a bit ham handedly, to me it felt like Mad Men meets Austin Powers) to show the swiftly changing culture, in the vibrant colors of psychedelia popping on Trudy's dress, the shortness of Megan's hemline and the casual use of marijuana on the apartment deck.  While youth mingle regardless of race or sexual orientation, the men of Mad Men belie their comfort with the counter culture by the amount to which they cling to the fashion of yesteryear - on the extreme from stodgy jacket and tie for Don and Roger, to Ken's middle ground, and toward Pete (in a jacket one can only hope ended up being burned) and Harry, who appears to most fully embrace the times (although his wife has not been seen since Season 3's "My Old Kentucky Home.").  What is most interesting about how this narrative will play out is the audience knows that the Summer of Love is just 12 short months away, that political assassinations and a chaotic Democratic National Convention are 2 years away, and a war that was distant and largely ignored will take center stage and split the country for years to come.  

In the balance, a few crumbs were tossed to viewers - Roger's glib comment that Joan's baby always needed attention suggests little Kevin is a chip off the old block, Abe and Peggy are still dating, and Lane may have died and gone to "chocolate bunny" heaven when he collected resumes of the black women who sat in (in) the lobby of SCDP in response to a gag ad the firm placed in the New York Times (the presence of his wife in New York appears to have made him more unhappy, not less). In the end, if Season 4 was largely about how women's roles were evolving in the 1960s, it appears quite clear that Season 5 will be about men and how they experience the change around them.  Roger, clinging to his role in the office, Don, striving for happiness and balance, Pete, trying to bridge that half-rung that stands between him and the other firm partners while transitioning to suburban life, and the others, grappling their way through what will be turbulent years (and horrible fashion).   

The Big Questions For Mad Men Season 5

We are now just three weeks (!) away from the Season 5 premiere of Mad Men.  In prior blogposts, I reviewed Season 4 (http://scarylawyerguy.blogspot.com/2011/10/tomorrowland.html) and suggested episodes from Seasons 1-4 that should be watched to get ready for Season 5 (http://scarylawyerguy.blogspot.com/2012/01/12-essential-mad-men-episodes-and-4.html).  Today, I am going to discuss the big questions that surround the show's 5th season:

When Are We?  I'm also an unabashed, though recovering, LOST fanboy, so this question seemed particularly apt.  We all know that Matt Weiner likes to do some minor time travel between seasons.  In this way, plot points can be inferred without having to see things happen.  For example, Season 3 found the nascent Sterling, Cooper, Draper Pryce Advertising Agency operating out of a suite at The Pierre hotel.  When Season 4 started, the agency was ensconced in the Time Warner Building without our having seen any of the transition.  Similarly, Season 2 ended with Betty finding out she was pregnant with Season 3 picking up about 7 months or so later, as she was in the late stages of her pregnancy.  

The minor passages in time also allow for subtle changes to the scenery the show inhabits.  The societal evolution, interior design and fashion all reflect the country's passage from the show's beginning, as the Eisenhower era drew to a close, to where it left us in Season 4, with the Rolling Stones and Beatles, Vietnam, the beginnings of urban decay and the budding growth of the youth movement.  A jump of just a few months from the Season 4 ending in October 1965 is unlikely to show much change.  A more meaningful transition deep into 1966 or early 1967 would be a watershed. 

The Second Mrs. Draper.  The whirlwind courtship of Megan by Don resulted in their engagement at the end of Season 4. Although rushed, the Don and Megan romance had a certain ambiguity.  On the one hand, it is easy to see Megan as a sort of Betty 2.0, someone raised with good social graces and a liberal arts education but with better mommy skills and a greater capacity to feed Don's ego while never challenging his stature.  Her presence in his life dovetails with Don's attempts to get more in touch with himself and reduce his drinking; however, when Don was challenged to fully evaluate himself by Dr. Faye, he opted for the safer route Megan offered of tacit acknowledgement that his best efforts at self-improvement aside, he may fail.  On the other hand, if Don truly does want to be a better person (and become one), he claims Megan is the woman to help him do it.  Ok, who are we kidding, Mad Men would not be Mad Men with a chaste, monogamous Don Draper. 

The Other Mrs. Draper.  No, not Anna.  She's dead.  But Betty, who, when we last saw her, was making goo goo eyes at Don just before he dropped the engagement bomb on her.  As fans of Mad Men know, Matt Weiner was a writer on The Sopranos, who spent most of its 5th season slowly angling Tony and Carmen back together after they separated.  Might history repeat itself?  It's an intriguing possibility, as Betty's role became much more peripheral during the 4th season, where she was often reduced to a tantruming harpy lashing out at whoever angered her at a particular moment.  If not, we will see what direction her up and down relationship with Henry Francis heads in.  

Baby Sterling.  When we last saw Joan, she was in the early stages of a pregnancy resulting from a one off encounter with Roger while trying to convince her husband Greg, currently on a tour of duty in Vietnam, that the child is his.  Quite the soap opera.  It is clear Joan wants this baby, it's less clear how Roger will react once she delivers.  One of the things I enjoyed about the latter part of Season 3 and Season 4 generally is the connection between Roger and Joan.  They complement each other perfectly - she is the nurse maid and mother figure for his terminal arrested development and he is the financial bulwark offering the life of home and family she so desperately craves.  These two belong together.

The Future of SCDP. This is actually three questions in one.  First, what will become of the ad agency?  At the end of Season 4, the firm was teetering on he edge of insolvency after losing American Tobacco and North American Aviation.  The partners had to take out personal loans to make payroll and a round of layoffs thinned the company's ranks.  Peggy swooped in and closed a new account in the season finale, and Don pitched both Heinz and the American Cancer Society, but came up empty handed.  In what shape will we find the agency when Season 5 starts? 

Second, will Bert Cooper still be with the agency?  In the fallout that resulted from the loss of American Tobacco, Coop bade farewell to the office, but we could not tell whether he was serious or not.  Although Bert's role was significantly reduced in Season 4, his presence would be missed if he was not padding around the office barefoot when Season 5 begins.

Third, did Lane Pryce give up his "chocolate bunny" for the fog of London?  Lane's father traveled from England to New York to communicate, in no uncertain terms, that Lane had to get his marital home in order.  All of the changes that could come from an ascendent SCDP (new characters, or perhaps the return of some old friends?) offer additional plot points and story lines that are yet to be told.

I Know Pronounce You Man & Peggy.  In Season 4, Peggy rejected straight laced Mark for rabble rousing (and we can assume, Jewish?) socialist-hippie Abe.  As I discussed more fully in my season review, Peggy's internal struggle between wanting to be a wife and not finding anything as interesting as what happens in the office was on full display.  Will Peggy, at the ripe old age of 26, finally find her husband or will she train her sights on career advancement at the expense of a husband.  

Like all of you, I cannot wait for the new season.  What are some of the big questions you want answered starting March 25th? 

Twitter: @scarylawyerguy

12 Essential Mad Men Episodes (and 4 More For True Fans)

With the fifth season premiere of Mad Men in sight, if you need to catch up on past seasons, or are new to the show (but don't have time to watch all 52 episodes), here are my suggestions for three "must see" episodes from each of the first four seasons and a few "honorable mentions" if you want to drill a little deeper:

Season One

Babylon (Episode Six)

Why it's important:  Peggy's nascent copywriting skills emerge as she coins the iconic term "basket of kisses" after she and a group of secretaries complete a sampling of Belle Jolie lipstick colors.  Roger and Joan's affair is revealed.  We witness the first flashback to Dick Whitman's childhood and experience the birth of his younger brother Adam. Betty recalls her first kiss, with a Jewish boy she describes as "gloomy." The first cracks in Don's relationship with Midge emerge as he discovers she is also involved with a beatnik in the Village. 

The Hobo Code (Episode Eight)

Why it's important:  The distillation of Don's hardscrabble upbringing is explained - he's a "whore child" whose father is a "dishonest man."  Meanwhile, his step-mother is a god-fearing Christian who barely acknowledges him.  Pete and Peggy continue their affair and Peggy's copy for Belle Jolie is approved by the client, resulting in her being invited into Don's office for a celebratory drink. Sal acknowledges his homosexuality to one of the Belle Jolie directors, but declines his invitation to the man's hotel room. Don realizes that Midge loves another man but signs over a $2500 bonus check to her as he leaves. This episode also has a classic "Draperism" - "There is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent" and a famous line from his stepmother (in describing life): "it's fat in the middle, open on both ends and hard all the way through." No wonder the poor kid changed his identity.

Nixon v. Kennedy (Episode Twelve)

Why it's important:  Pete attempts to blackmail Don into making him head of accounts by threatening to tell Bert Cooper about Don's desertion from the Korean War.  Don displays what will become a pattern throughout the show and decides to flee, asking Rachel Mencken to leave with him to Los Angeles.  She demurs, and Don refuses to give into Pete's request.  Pete divulges Don's secret to Bert Cooper, who shows no interest in it and gives Don permission to fire Pete (which he does not do).  A flashback shows us the incident that resulted in Dick Whitman switching dog tags with a deceased Don Draper and assuming his identity.

Honorable Mention - The Wheel (Episode Thirteen)

Why it's important:  Contains perhaps the single most famous scene in the history of the show, the "Kodak Carousal" pitch.  If you want to skip the rest of this episode, just go on YouTube and watch that three minute scene, it's classic.  Otherwise, Peggy is both promoted to junior copywriter and gives birth to Pete's child (which also explained her noticeable weight gain during the season).  Don finds out that Adam committed suicide after Don snubbed him and, in the season's final scenes, the writers juxtapose Don's imagined life where the family spends Thanksgiving together, with his actual life, where he blew off Betty and her family and returns to an empty home.

Season Two

The Gold Violin (Episode Seven)

Why it's important: Jimmy Barrett tells Betty that Don and Bobbi have been having an affair. A flashback introduces Anna Draper and we learn that Don was once a used car salesman.  After purchasing a new Cadillac, Betty vomits in it on the way home from the party celebrating Jimmy's new TV show. Sal's wife feels unloved and unwanted by Sal when Ken Cosgrove visits for dinner. Roger intervenes in a personnel dispute when Joan fires Jane after discovering she snuck into Bert's office after hours.  This episode is a pivot point in the Draper marriage - from here on out, Betty will never again fully trust him and the disintegration of their marriage picks up substantial speed.  It also lays the foundation for Roger's eventual marriage to Jane. 

The Mountain King (Episode Twelve)

Why it's important:  Having escaped New York and left Pete at a convention in California, Don visits Anna and vents his frustration at ruining his marriage, expressing regret for the first time over his actions.  Don's self-awareness is bracing, he describes his attempts to claw his way into his own life and fear that he is alone in the world.  His visit to Anna is also interspersed with flashbacks to their relationship at the time Don met Betty. Meanwhile, Sterling Cooper agrees to be acquired by Putnam, Powell & Lowe, allowing Duck Phillips to angle himself into what he thinks will be operational control over Sterling Cooper.  Most disturbingly, Joan is sexually assaulted by her fiancé Greg in Don's office after hours. 

Meditations in an Emergency (Episode Thirteen)

Why it's important:  Don comes back and although he doesn't admit his infidelity, apologizes to Betty for being "disrespectful" toward her. Betty learns she is pregnant (the result of a one off liaison with Don while they visited her ill father) and, after engaging in some revenge sex with a guy she picks up at a bar, allows Don to come home. At the meeting to discuss the new direction of Sterling Cooper as a part of PPL, Duck tries to assert his authority, but is cut off at the knees when Don threatens to quit. This episode also has what is probably the second most famous scene in show history - an intimate and powerful scene between Peggy and Pete that takes place against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis and risk of nuclear war where Peggy tells Pete that he got her pregnant and that she gave the baby up for adoption.  A haunting image of Pete, alone in the office with a rifle in his hands, is followed by an equally difficult scene of Don and Betty at the Draper family table, awkwardly coming to grips with the fact that they are again going to be parents. 

Honorable Mention - The New Girl (Episode Five)

Why it's important:  Don and Bobbi get into a bad car accident and Peggy comes to their rescue.  Peggy's willingness to house Bobbi while she recovers and keep Don's secret is a key building block in their deepening bond.  Bobbi also imparts some words of wisdom to Peggy about how to succeed as a woman in the business world.  The character of Jane Siegel is introduced as a replacement for Joan as Don's secretary. 

Season Three

My Old Kentucky Home (Episode Three)

Why it's important:  Betty meets Henry Francis at a "Derby Day" party thrown by Roger and Jane Sterling. Don meets Conrad Hilton at the same party and they bond over their similarly trying upbringings and distaste for "old money" types who throw lavish parties for themselves.  This episode also underscores the deepening stratification in the office, where Pete, Ken and Harry are now closer to upper management, while Peggy, Kinsey and Smitty are working over the weekend to prepare copy.  At the office, they get high with one of Kinsey's college buddies. 

Seven Twenty-Three (Episode Seven)

Why it's important:  It does what great Mad Men episodes do - it explores the inner conflict and turmoil characters experience.  Here, the story is told almost entirely in flashback, beginning at the end result of what unfolds during the rest of the episode. Peggy is wooed by Duck Phillips to join him at Gray.  She declines, but ends up sleeping with him and feels guilty about it afterward.  Betty continues her flirtation with Henry, and purchases a "fainting couch" that she places in the middle of her family room, masturbating on it while thinking of Henry. Hilton won't sign with Sterling Cooper unless Don has a contract, which he initially refuses to sign.  During a drunken late night drive, he picks up a couple who drug and rob him.  He signs the contract after Bert, leveraging his knowledge of Don's secret past, reminds him that signing really means nothing because after all, "who's really signing" the contract? 

Shut the Door. Have a Seat. (Episode Thirteen)

Why it's important:  This episode is all about death and renewal.  The death of Sterling Cooper as we had come to know it over the first three seasons of Mad Men, as Don, Roger, Bert and Lane conspire to flee and start their own agency ahead of the impending merger with McCann.  The completion of Don's backstory, as we witness, along with young Dick Whitman, Archibald Whitman's death from a horse's kick to the head as he prepares to sell his wheat at market for next to nothing in an attempt to save his farm.  We see renewal in the recruitment of Pete and Peggy to the new agency, Joan's return to handle logistics and office management, and in the episode's closing shot, where Don, having ok'd Betty's temporary move to Reno to secure a divorce (with Henry and Baby Gene in tow) looks out to the open hotel room at The Pierre, where the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Advertising Agency is busy at work. 

Honorable Mention - The Gypsy and the Hobo (Episode Eleven)

Why it's important:  Simply put, it's the worst day of Don Draper's life.  It's the day when he is confronted by his wife not about his infidelity, but about his manufactured past. The long scene between Betty and Don is as devastating and gut wrenching as you would expect, but once he's caught, Don does not try to hide his past and explains it with a poignancy that will be explained in Season Four, when he tells Anna that once Betty knew who he really was, she wanted nothing to do with him.  

Season Four

I wrote a full season recap for Season Four:
(http://scarylawyerguy.blogspot.com/2011/10/tomorrowland.html), but suggest these episodes if you're interested:

The Rejected (Episode Four)

Why it's important:  Pregnant with meaning and subtext, the writers reward long-time viewers with a great storyline around Trudy's pregnancy and the unspoken past affair between Pete and Peggy.  More broadly, it explores the theme of youth in the 1960s and Peggy's place in it, being hit on by a gay woman and kissing a man she meets at a house party.  Pete flexes his account management muscles by pressuring Trudy's father to agree to give SCDP more of Vick's Chemical Company's advertising business.  Don's secretary Allison is brought to tears during a focus group convened by Dr. Miller when elliptically referring to Don and quits. The end of this episode contains an amazing tracking shot as Peggy and her crew of young friends are entering the elevator outside the office and she catches Pete's eye as he stands with the older executives from Vick's Chemical.  Their glance is knowing and poignant, a mutual recognition that something that passed between them will never be again. 

The Suitcase (Episode Seven)

Why it's important:  One of the five best episodes of the entire series and one of the three most important, The Suitcase takes place on Peggy's 26th birthday, which, instead of celebrating at dinner with her boyfriend and family, she spends alternately fighting with, tending for and sharing personal information with Don, who won't let her leave work because he cannot stand to be alone to call California and hear what he already knows is true - his rock, his ballast, the "only person who ever understood" him has died - Anna Draper. The episode's denouement occurs in the wee hours of the morning, when Don sees the ghost of Anna Draper in his office, she nods approvingly at the passing of his oversight to Peggy Olsen and heads to the great beyond.  

The Beautiful Girls (Episode Nine)

Why it's important:  Strong social commentary on the plight of women in the mid-1960 and a harbinger of the struggles ahead.  Sally runs away from home and lands in Don's office, Dr. Faye shows she cannot be a mother figure (but Megan does - to great effect later in the season), Peggy finds a socialist rabble rouser to be pushy and aggressive, but also naive and paternalistic, and Joan ends up getting impregnated by Roger after a heat of the moment liaison that follows their being mugged on the streets of New York City. Oh, and the silent shot of Joan, Peggy and Dr. Faye in the elevator at the end of the episode, each lost in their own disappointment, is priceless.

Honorable Mention - Tomorrowland (Episode Thirteen)  

Why it's important:  It tees up Season 5.  Don uses Anna's engagement ring to ask Megan to marry him.  Betty whines about wanting a new life and Henry basically tells her to "grow up." Peggy lands a new account just when SCDP is on the ropes and gets lost in the undertow of Don's engagement (Joan is not impressed).

Tomorrowland

AMC's hit TV show Mad Men entered its fourth season having pulled a massive storyline "game changer" to close Season 3 - the break-up of advertising agency Sterling Cooper and the divorce of its main character, Don Draper, from his wife Betty.  If this was not America and entertainment was not a consumer product that corporations monetize, the show would have ended on the ambiguous final shot of "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" - Don, having hung up the phone by wishing his soon-to-be ex-wife well in her life, opens the door to the makeshift office of the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce - an open room in The Pierre Hotel.  This parting view offers hope and optimism tinged with uncertainty, much like our own lives and experiences.  The first three seasons of Mad Men formed a perfect narrative arc that slowly but inexorably destroyed the unblemished (albeit phony) facade of Donald Francis Draper, Creative Director, Sterling Cooper, married father of three, down low philanderer and cipher to all around him until, broken, he is forced to pick up the pieces of his life and start anew.

Of course, TV *is* a consumer product and Mad Men is one of the most critically acclaimed television programs of the last 30 years, so no matter how elegant the 39 episodes that made up Seasons 1-3 were in telling the story of Don Draper and the other characters in the program, ending the Draper marriage and launching Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was a logical plot device to extend the series, continue exploring shifting social, political and gender mores and deepen the development of the show regulars.  Beginning 10 months after the close of Season 3, the fourth season of Mad Men delivers a giant wink to its viewers with the very first line of the first episode, when a reporter interviewing Don asks him - "Who is Don Draper?"- a question, writ large, at the core of the show.  As a framing device, the early scenes of "Public Relations" do one of the many things the writers of this show excel at, allowing the action and dialogue to fill in the temporal gaps while paying due attention to the window dressing of shifting style, attire and culture. The agency has moved from its modest hotel room to prime real estate in the Time Warner Building, the partners hustle new clients and the hierarchy that once separated Bert and Roger (and to a lesser extent Don) from the rest of the staff has been removed. 

Unlike seasons past, where Don and his life were the clear and dominant center of the narrative, one of the most compelling parts of Season 4 is how the writers widen the show's lens to focus on the other main characters and how the 1960s, now halfway over, but in many ways just starting, begin to affect their lives. These changes are shown most clearly in the story lines of the main female characters, Peggy, Joan and Betty, but also in the smaller female roles of Sally, Dr. Faye Miller (a street wise but formally educated psychologist who conducts market research for the agency), and the secretaries in the office pool.   Indeed, whereas prior seasons sometimes fell back on a cliché of grab ass, casual sexual harassment in the workplace, Stepford wife suburban ennui and mistress as sexual object, Season 4 is a rich tapestry for exploring the challenges that women faced in the mid-1960s in balancing work and home, the expectation of marriage and children and sexual liberation. 

Nowhere are these competing tensions seen more clearly than in the person of Peggy Olsen.  Having been tapped as Don's number two in the new agency, Peggy is clearly feeling her creative oats and desires professional advancement; however, she also wrestles with the societal expectation of marriage and children.  Peggy takes responsibility for firing an obnoxious underling, blows off a fancy birthday dinner with her boyfriend and family in favor of pitching ideas with Don ("I know what I'm supposed to want, but nothing is as important as this office"), and, in the season's final episode, when the agency is teetering, lands a new client through ingenuity and pluck.  Peggy battles for respect and advancement in the workplace throughout the season and shows, by its conclusion, that she is beginning to master the finer points of advertising and client development and has grown immeasurably as a copywriter. 

By the same token she wants marriage and children, just on her terms.  This nuance is the seed of what will become in decades to come one of the defining issues for women - how to balance the desire for a rewarding career and family, but because this idea is relatively unknown in 1965, it weighs heavily on Peggy. When she runs into Peter's wife Trudy in the bathroom on her 26th birthday, Trudy reassures Peggy that "26 is still very young." During a focus group, Don spies Peggy trying on Dr. Miller's wedding ring and Peggy has a big blow out argument with Freddie Rumson over the meaning of Pond's Cold Cream as a product to help women attract men for marriage.  Even so, Peggy is removed from the secretarial pool, who commiserate over the bad behavior of ex-boyfriends, beauty tips, and define themselves entirely by their ability to attract men.  When Allison, Don's secretary, dissolves into tears at the thought of a drunken romp that Don tried to forget but meant the world to her, she expects Peggy to sympathize with her (wrongly assuming Don had slept with Peggy too), but instead, Peggy snaps "your problem is not my problem, get over it."

At the same time, Peggy is very much a young woman who wants to experience and enjoy life as a liberated 20-something in New York City.  Peggy's liberal bent, which was shown in prior seasons through her smoking marijuana, befriending Kurt, a homosexual, and healthy sexual appetite, continues here.  Her stodgy boyfriend is jettisoned for Abe, a socialist rabble rouser, she is non-plussed by an advance made by new friend Joyce ("your boyfriend does not own your vagina" ... "yes, but he's renting it") at an art house party and she becomes more socially aware by challenging the policies of a client, Fillmore Automotive Parts, in not hiring blacks (to which Don retorts, "our job is to make men like Fillmore, not make Fillmore like negroes [sic].").  This open-mindedness notwithstanding, Peggy is savvy enough to understand the commercial (monetary) value of the art she sees at the house party and seems surprised when the artist who produced it does not see it too. 

While Peggy hovers near the ground that is slowly becoming the women's liberation movement, a few paces removed from her is Joan Harris, whose competing desires for stability and family on the one hand and a successful career on the other, show how even a few years age difference can color how one views the world.  While Joan and Peggy are separated by less than 10 years, they inhabit different professional and cultural spaces.  Joan's view is backward looking and she clings to the middle class ideal even as its pulled out from under her at every turn.  Her doctor husband enlists in the Army so he can be a surgeon and is sent to Vietnam.  Her curvaceousness, which garnered the attention of powerful older men when she was younger, is now mocked and ridiculed by a younger generation who see her as a combination of shrew and harlot to be objectified on the one hand and disobeyed on the other. Although her abilities as an office manager are unmatched, when she receives a promotion to Director of Agency Operations, it is without a raise.  She can turn a low-rent Christmas party into a bacchanalian festival in no time, but what she senses is that the life she wanted for herself, with a husband who provided for her and children to take care of, is slipping away. When a heat of the moment sexual encounter with Roger results in her getting pregnant, instead of undergoing a third abortion, she grasps for a final chance at motherhood, as fraught with risk as that decision is.

If Joan sought a cautionary tale on the peril of suburban domesticity, she would need look no further than Don’s ex-wife Betty. Having run off with divorcee Henry Francis, Betty finds herself locked in the same trap of her own creation.  Same house, same kids, same car, just a different man sleeping next to her.  She adamantly refuses to move out of the home she and Don shared even though she and Henry end up paying Don rent to live there, is belittled as a "silly woman" by Henry's mother and gets drunk at an important dinner meeting Henry is having with a political connection after seeing Don dining with a younger woman.  Betty's childishness comes into sharp relief over the course of the season in her bonding with Sally's child psychologist Dr. Edna, her jealousy toward Sally over Glenn, the neighborhood boy Betty befriended back in Season 1, petty jealousy toward Don ("he does not get to have this family and that"), firing of long-time maid Carla (even refusing to write a letter of recommendation for her) and immaturity any time she does not get her way.  Indeed, after an argument with Henry during the final episode, there is a clear implication that she sets up a "chance" meeting with Don at their former home in Ossining in the hope of mending fences with him and maybe even trying to seduce him.  Betty's immersion in the suburban, stay-at-home mother model makes her the least equipped of the main female characters to adapt in the rapidly changing 1960s.   

The fast pace of cultural and personal change is being felt under Betty's roof by her precocious pre-teen daughter Sally.  Sally's character development is pronounced during this season and the impact of her parents divorce is clear.  Her cries for attention pinball between petulance, as seen when she acts out at the Francis family Thanksgiving dinner and when she lashes out at her father when he returns her to Betty after Sally runs away to the city ("I'm not going.  I hate it there."), and self-expression, by cutting her own hair to get attention and masturbating during a sleepover party. For her behavior, she is sent to therapy with matronly Dr. Edna, who, quickly sizing up Betty (and Betty's maternal limitations), steers Sally toward a course of conflict avoidance and passivity.  While this strategy works for a little while, the final straw between Sally and Betty occurs when Sally befriends Glenn, Betty discovers the friendship and forbids it.  This becomes the tipping point that finally pushes Betty to leave Ossining but not before firing Carla after finding out she allowed Glenn into the house to say goodbye to Sally.

The writers utilize a subtle touch with the female characters and go to great lengths to show the nuance and complexity of how women (and girls) had to navigate a society that was moving quickly into a modern age that would uproot long-held gender stereotypes. In this way, we are shown that greater choice was not an entirely positive thing for women at that time.  Five years before, housewife or secretary appeared to be the two basic life options, but as the workplace opened in different ways, new challenges were created.  Dr. Miller wears a wedding ring even though she is not married to ward off men, but takes the ring off when she’s conducting a focus group. She is put in the position of defending her life choices but feels diminished by them. Betty’s role of mother and housewife, prized just a few years ago, now appears marginal and limited. Peggy and Joan, both of whom are veterans of the workforce, still struggle against stereotypes and fight for recognition.  In the wake of Don’s announcement of his engagement to Megan, they have the following exchange:

Peggy:  You know, I just saved this company.  I signed the first new business since Lucky Strike left.  But it’s not as important as getting married.  Again.

Joan: Well, I was just made Director of Agency Operations.  A title, no money of course. And if they poured champagne, it must have been while I was pushing the mail cart.

Peggy: A pretty face comes along and everything goes out the window.

Joan:  Well, I learned a long time ago to not get all my satisfaction from this job.

Peggy: That’s bullshit.

<Both Laugh>

Peggy and Joan, who at times circled each other warily, share a moment of solidarity crafted out of a mutual feeling of disrespect and lack of appreciation. They foreshadow similar challenges women would face as more of them entered the job market and had to struggle for validation and acceptance. 

From the other side of the spectrum, the male characters are also experiencing a certain amount of dislocation.  Long accustomed to complete hegemony in the workplace, a wink and nod attitude toward marital infidelity and generally treating women more as objects than equal partners, as 1965 dawns, the men of Mad Men begin to see a world that looks less familiar to them.  Nowhere do we see this disorientation more intensely than in the person of Roger Sterling, who, although to the manner born, now finds his place at work marginalized.  Having never worked hard to corral accounts because of the long-term (and highly lucrative) American Tobacco (Lucky Strike) portfolio, Roger's skills as an account manager have eroded and he spends much of his time on a self-indulgent memoir filled with insider gossip and slurred memories of a life of little effort or struggle. A man locked in his past, Roger retains deep bitterness about World War II, which he shows in his antipathy toward the Japanese businessmen of Honda Motor Company, who are interviewing agencies to market its motorcycle and is wistful for a life he never had with Joan ("all the good stuff was with you.").  When the opportunity arises to write a different future, Roger is ambivalent.  The loss of Lucky Strike and Joan's accidental pregnancy offers Roger a second (third?) chance, but his behavior belies his cowardice.  With Lucky Strike, he buries the bad news, fakes a trip to North Carolina to try and “reclaim” the lost account and, when he admits the rouse to Joan and she snaps at him, whines "don't yell at me."  Similarly, instead of fully supporting the idea of her keeping the baby, he visits a doctor with her to get an abortion referral (though gentleman he is, he does offer to pay for the procedure). 

Roger's polar opposite is Peter Campbell, whose professional development and personal growth turn him into the stable core of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  Having shed his entitled attitude and gotten his hands dirty in the business, Peter rises in Season 4 as an account manager just coming into the prime of his career.  His care and attention to North American Aviation has turned it from a small account into a nearly $4 million a year billing.  When Trudy gets pregnant, he's ruthless enough to leverage his father-in-law's pride into expanding the Vick's Chemical portfolio, dumping Clearasil on a smaller agency and receiving back a larger set of consumer products in return.  Finally, when his former rival from Sterling Cooper, Ken Cosgrove, is recruited to work at SCDP, Peter quickly establishes the pecking order, disabusing Ken of any idea that they are still peers and further cements his standing when Ken refuses to use *his* father-in-law to cultivate new business after Lucky Strike leaves.  Pete's maturity is also shown in his refusal to consider leaving SCDP when Ted Chough offers him a name partnership in his firm and even when he debates tapping into his child's savings to help keep SCDP afloat when money becomes an issue at the end of the season.  Trudy ultimately delivers a baby girl and Peter's home life is far more normal than in seasons past, there is no philandering, no tantrums resulting in dinner being tossed off the balcony, and much less alcohol.  In short, Peter is a man growing into the responsibilities and obligations of an executive who is earning his stripes, has ceased taking shortcuts to the top and is growing as a husband and father. 

Although Season 4 offers a more expansive exploration of these supporting characters, the heart of the season and the show remains its fascination with the tortured psyche of Don Draper.  Having filled in the final pieces of Dick Whitman's backstory in Season 3, which tellingly opened with a flashback to Archie Whitman's visit to a prostitute after his wife delivers a stillborn child and ended with the senior Whitman dying in front of young Dick from a horse's frightened kick to the head, and stripping away both the personal and professional foundation upon which Don Draper functioned, Season 4 explores what happens to a man suddenly unmoored.  The early results are not promising.  Don's personal life is a shambles of bottomless glasses of Canadian Club, aggressive advances towards a rotating cast of women including his next door neighbor, secretary, 18-year old niece of Anna Draper, diner waitress, female advertising executive and Dr. Faye Miller, and a venality at work that serves to underscore the insecurity of his ego and need for validation (Peggy: “We are all here because of you.  All we want to do is please you.”).  If Season 3 closed the loop of Dick Whitman's entrance into the world and shoddy upbringing, the death of Anna Draper in Season 4 takes away the one person who Don Draper opened up to completely and forces him to confront his future without a true loved one. 

Anna's death is a central plot point of Season 4 and is handled in two parts.  In "The Good News," Don pays what he expects to be a brief visit to Anna on his way to Acapulco for New Year's.  The visit begins with Anna's niece Stephanie tagging along with Don and Anna to a local bar where Don and Anna engage in a post-mortem analysis of Don's failed marriage.  In discussing Betty's discovery of his true past, he says, "Once she knew who I really was, she never wanted to look at me again.  Which is why I never told her in the first place."  Even with all his professional success, material wealth and plaudits, not only did Don not see himself as good enough for a woman of Betty's background (Main Line upbringing and Seven Sisters college education) but knew from the get go that the woman he wanted to marry would not accept a "whore child" who rose from hardscrabble roots to earn everything he achieved.  Anna greets this intimacy compassionately, saying "I am sorry she broke your heart," to which Don, in a wonderfully self-aware moment, responds "I had it coming."  The catharsis which we expect from this admission is instead subverted later that evening when Don drives Stephanie home and she tells him that not only does Anna have terminal cancer and is unlikely to survive long, but that the prognosis is being withheld from her.  The following morning, Don wants to stay and help, to retain the best doctors and get second or third opinions, but he is reminded by Anna's sister that he is merely "a man, in a room, with a checkbook."  With that, Don chokes out a goodbye, knowing he will never see Anna again. 

The second part of this storyline occurs several episodes (and in "show time" months later) in "The Suitcase."  Don receives an urgent message to call Stephanie but refrains from doing so, knowing the call will only confirm what he already knows. Instead, he skips out on a client dinner and the Ali-Liston II fight to work on a pitch for Samsonite, tormenting Peggy into staying to help him even though it is her birthday and she has dinner plans with her boyfriend.  The evening is eventful for reasons unrelated to Anna's passing, but when Don finally musters the courage to make the call in the wee hours of the following morning, he is still crestfallen.  As it happens, Peggy is in the office when he makes the call (the two had passed out on the couch during the early morning hours) and watches his reaction. When she asks him what happened, he says that the "only person in the world who really knew me died."  At that, he bursts into tears, pulling himself into Peggy in a moment of deep vulnerability and pain.  Anna's passing pulls the last piece of Don's old foundation away but Peggy’s presence assures viewers that a new figure is there to take Anna’s place. A tight shot of Don's hand in Peggy's serves as visual confirmation of their cemented bond. 

Anna’s death serves as the emotional climax of “The Suitcase,” however, the night and early morning Peggy and Don spend together is equally telling for reasons unrelated to Anna.  First, we get to the core of Peggy’s unhappiness over the CLIO-award winning Glo-Coat commercial.  She thinks Don has taken all the credit for its creation without properly recognizing her contribution.  A huge fight ensues, with Peggy claiming the idea as her own, Don disagreeing and reminding her that all of her ideas are ultimately his ideas and that her “thank you” is the money she receives as salary.  He also chastises her eagerness for career advancement, essentially telling her that she would be nothing without him. 

While Peggy stews in her office, Don stumbles across dictated recordings Roger made of his memoir, discovering embarrassing details about Ms. Blankenship (a sexual hellcat) and Bert (a eunuch).  Don shares the tapes with Peggy and they head out to a bar to listen to the Ali-Liston fight.  There, Peggy's abandoned baby comes up when Don asks if she ever thinks about her child and she responds " … sometimes, playgrounds ..." and Peggy reveals a nagging insecurity by asking Don why he never made a pass at her.  He begs off (calling her “cute as hell”) but the audience understands that Don is paternalistic toward Peggy and does not view her sexually, but rather as someone he shares a deep emotional bond with, which, for Don, is far more powerful than a sexually desirable woman.  The night continues in a seedy diner, where they discover each saw their father die and lands back in the office, where Don throws up from overindulging before squaring off with an equally drunken Duck Phillips, who snuck into the building to defecate in Don's office.

The events revealed in “The Suitcase” are the last pieces in a puzzle of connection between Don and Peggy that began when Don saw a not-as-naive-as-she-looked Peggy come up with the "basket of kisses" tag for Belle Jolie lipstick, carried through Don's visiting Peggy in the hospital, encouraging her to move on with her life, Peggy's discreet handling of Don's car accident, and his recruitment of Peggy to join him at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  What the evening confirmed was that Don and Peggy are kindred spirits, people who came from limited means, who value work over personal relationships (which they struggle with) and share an intense privacy about themselves that they reveal to very few people. 

As the episode ends, Don has turned over a new leaf - his vomit stained shirt is gone, replaced with a crisp and clean one, his hair is back in its slicked back place and his door, frequently closed, is now open. When the season shifts to its second act, summer is in the air, the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” is introducing sights, sounds and smells that laid dormant during the colder months and Don is ruminative, writing in a journal, swimming at the local YMCA (advice Anna had given him to help clear his head) and monitoring his drinking. The remaining time we spend with Don focuses on two related beliefs Don holds about human behavior.  The first, that "people don't change" and the second, that "people tell you who they are, but we ignore it, because we want them to be who we want them to be." Don does try to change, at least for a time. 

Change is something Don deeply desires but struggles with.  Any sign of stress is met with a knee jerk move for his trusty Canadian Club, but to his credit, he directs his new secretary Megan to keep track of how many drinks he has (daily limit: three), he starts dating Dr. Miller and shows up to baby Gene's birthday party without incident.  These small building blocks are easily relatable to anyone who has experienced deep trauma and longs for a new beginning.  Changing patterns of behavior is hard, Don’s tentative entrance to the Francis home for Gene’s birthday is poignant, but he quickly makes himself comfortable, scooping Gene up and tossing him in the air. 

We root for Don to change, to better himself as a man, but the ultimate conceit behind the Draper persona, of someone who is not who he says he is, cannot be so easily altered.  Even though he is comfortable enough with Faye to divulge his “secret” desertion from the Army, instead of doing the hard thing, of coming clean and seeking forgiveness for his actions, he puts the firm in jeopardy by directing Peter to terminate the agency’s contract with North American Aviation when he learns the Department of Defense has “red flagged” his security application. This decision is doubly damaging because Roger is secretly holding back the fact that Lucky Strike has also parted company with SCDP. 

In his personal life, Don is offered a similar choice between what is hard (but potentially rewarding) and what is familiar (and easy).  Faye Miller is close to an equal – a smart, insightful and no bullshit professional who encourages Don to come to grips with his checkered past but also offers him the potential for a fully-formed, adult relationship.  Then there is Megan.  She is in no way Don’s equal and does not ask him to consider his conduct or behavior, she validates it. 

Don and Faye first interactions are choppy – he blows off a test she gives to the agency’s main characters and she later observes that although he’s recently divorced, he will re-marry within a year.  When he objects to that comment, she casually reminds herself that “no one likes to be told they are a type.”  Don pursues Faye but she has enough awareness to reject his advances while he is drinking and waits until there’s a time where he appears more stable.  Their first date is chaste, she encourages him to attend his son Gene’s birthday party, they have an easy rapport and pleasant time, but, in a sign of his attempt to change, Don ends the date in the cab instead of following her into her apartment building. 

Although the relationship seems promising, Don quickly reverts to type.  Imposing on Faye to babysit Sally at his apartment when Sally runs away from Ossining and then asking Faye to talk to Sally when Sally refuses to leave the office at the end of her unplanned visit.  Faye is “not good with children” and she gets angry with Don for placing her in that position and also is reminded of her own decisions about career and motherhood. 

Things head further south when SCDP must scramble for new business in the wake of the loss of Lucky Strike.  First, Don leverages his relationship with Faye to get a meeting with one of her other clients who is dissatisfied with their current ad agency.  Don makes this request without shame or concern for Faye's ethics, missing entirely her discomfort with mixing the professional and personal.  In his life, work *is* everything and everything is done in service of getting ahead.  In her world, there is the office and there is her personal life.  Next, when Don takes out a full page ad in the New York Times explaining that SCDP will no longer accept tobacco accounts, it results in the separation of Faye's company from SCDP, something he did not even stop to consider.  Don's tunnel vision about his career and job blinds him to the people around him and how what he does impacts them. 

During this time of turmoil, Don mostly succeeds in keeping his drinking under control thanks in part to his new secretary Megan.  Megan begins the season on the periphery, one of a number of secretaries at the firm who assist in arranging meetings and parties.  But she ascends to Don’s desk after the death of Ms. Blankenship and quickly shows her resourcefulness when Sally falls in the office and Megan consoles her.  When Don stays at the office late one night, they have sex, but Megan is confident enough in herself to essentially tell Don that she is not Allison, a former secretary Don also had sex with, and their liaison will not impact her work. 

When Betty fires Carla, who Don had expected would accompany him on his trip to California to handle the sale of Anna’s house, Don asks Megan to join him.  There, she is a veritable Mary Poppins, teaching Sally and Bobby a French lullaby and calmly tidying up a spilt milkshake instead of making a scene. Laying in bed together one night, Don and Megan have the following exchange:

Don:  You don’t know anything about me.

Megan:  I know you have a good heart and are trying to be better.

Don:  We all try, we do not always make it.  I have done a lot of things.

Megan: I know who you are now.

This conversation is telling for several reasons.  First, it shows that Don has a high level of self-awareness about himself, his past and the less than good odds he will successfully change.  Second, it appears that he wants to engage her in a conversation about those “things” he has done, which would also suggest personal growth on his part.  Third, she gives him a pass both for his anticipated failure in changing (he’s “trying” after all) and in sharing his past shortcomings, because she “knows” who he is.  A changed man would not take that pass, he would say “No. You really do *not* know who I am and this ‘change’ you’re seeing is predicated entirely on my survival instinct and need to avoid losing my agency and career.”  Instead, Don puts a ring on her finger and asks Megan to marry him.

This scene is a perfect bookend to a much different conversation Don has with Faye at the beginning of this same episode.  Don has already revealed to Faye that he was a war deserter and this breakthrough encourages her to push him to come to grips with his past:

Faye:  If you resolved some of your personal issues maybe that sick feeling will go away. You don’t have to be alone.

Don: And then what happens?

Faye:  Then you are stuck trying to be a person like the rest of us.

A future stuck “trying to be a person” holds no appeal to Don.  Instead of confronting the issues that have haunted him for so long, Don chooses a woman who will let him continue his charade.  Further, all of the introspection and self-examination Don did in writing is literally torn to pieces when he pens his “open letter” to the New York Times.  While the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed, destroying the evidence of his inner thoughts in favor of burnishing his public reputation allows Don to reclaim his image as an implacable executive in total control of his life. 

When offered the choice between a mature, open and challenging relationship with Faye Miller and a familiar, caretaker for his children who does not push him to confront his past or go into therapy, Don confirms his own belief - people do not change. He exchanges Betty for a newer Betty with (what appear to be) better parenting skills instead of staying with Faye, who is awkward around children and forces Don to face uncomfortable truths. When Don informs Faye of his engagement, she insightfully responds that his intended should know “you only like the beginnings of things.” 

This incident is one of several that illustrate Don's general view toward women - they are in his world to be bent to his will and needs - they clean his apartment, watch his children, are offered money and "thank you" when one of his kids aimlessly wanders the subway, monitor his drinking, act as sexual supplicants and when his business is in danger, violate their own ethics to please him.  The two most common phrases Don utters to women are “Thank You” (typically for doing something to clean up one of his messes or avoiding the creation of one) and “I’m Sorry” (usually for acting in a callous, unthinking or selfish way). Don has told us who he is, over and over again, yet the women who orbit him fail to see it because they want him to be someone else.  While Don’s change is ultimately within the power of the show’s writers, consistency in his character would suggest that his relationship with Megan will be ill-fated and brief.

Lastly, Season 4 offers small insights and images that provide a richer mosaic of how the relationships between the main characters have evolved and changed.  One particularly poignant moment occurs at the end of “The Rejected,” where Peter, having expanded the Vick’s Chemical portfolio, is in the lobby with the other partners from SCDP and executives from Vick’s.  The group is homogenous, all white, middle-aged (except Peter) and male.  Through the glass doors, Peggy emerges to meet Joyce and her friends for lunch.  They are multi-cultural, young men and women and more casually attired.  Peggy and Peter catch one another’s eye as she heads for the elevator and the camera lingers on that moment, so pregnant with meaning – of what could have been and what is. 

Other winks and nods occur when Don, in a moment of drunken hubris, perverts his own classic “Wheel” pitch from Season 1 in a meeting with Life Cereal and winds up repeating a slogan that was told to him earlier that day by a failed job applicant (who he ends up hiring to avoid embarrassment).  Another tidbit is shared in the lone flashback episode, “Waldorf Stories,” where we learn that Don essentially tricked Roger into giving him a job many years ago by getting Roger drunk and then just showing up to work the next day claiming Roger had hired him.  We learn that Betty has taken over Don’s study, that place of such dark meaning during their marriage.  When Stephanie calls Don “Dick” in “Tomorrowland” Bobby asks his father “Who’s Dick.”  The question itself is the mirror opposite of “Who’s Don Draper” and Don’s complicated relationship to and feelings for his own children are wrapped up in that simple question.  His answer, “It’s me. It’s my nickname sometimes” is sufficient to placate Bobby but means so much more. 

Ultimately, Mad Men provided its fans with yet another great season of writing, acting and character development.  As with all things related to the upcoming 5^th season, little has been revealed.  We know that the show will run, at most for 7 seasons, but true fans hope that temporally, the writers have the discretion to avoid the sight of Don and the gang in loud polyester leisure suits and awful sideburns.  No one wants to contemplate the sight of wife swapping at a suburban key party in 1973.  What will make Mad Men continue to resonate with its fans is its realistic portrayal of the human condition.  People may not change, at least except around the margins, but if life is not about trying to be better, of sometimes failing but pushing forward, than we are all resigned to Don’s fate, of continually raising a mask and hiding from the world. 

Henry Francis perfectly summed up this worldview.  In “Tomorrowland” he and Betty have a fight when he learns she has fired Carla.

Betty:  I wanted a fresh start.  I’m entitled to that (emphasis added).

Henry: There is no fresh start, life just carries on.

A lot of Mad Men is about what people think they are entitled to or deserve.  Henry, wizened from years in politics, life and a failed marriage, is realistic enough to know that no slate is ever wiped clean, but rather, it is what we do with our time that counts.