“I hate what he’s done to this family” – Marie
Last week we saw Don mourning a lost love, Rachel, who left him behind to live a happy life. Tonight, we found him at the Francis household, literally looking back over his shoulder at a seemingly happy Betty, with their sons and a cosy family kitchen. Meanwhile, his divorce to his next wife is simmering into unpleasantness.
Don has been a disruptive force in the life of all of his partners. But what’s becoming clear as the end nears is that, ultimately, his agency extends only to himself. He might be slowly destroying himself but Rachel died happy; Betty is slowly getting there; Midge’s descent was her own doing; Sylvia – who popped up here – removed him from her life and continued with her marriage. A relationship with Don isn’t the same sentence as actually being Don.
So it’s interesting that Megan’s mother, Marie, is convinced that Don has destroyed not just Megan’s life, but her entire family’s. That can’t possibly be the case and it may well be Marie blaming Don for exposing her to the “poison” of New York. Or, as we know him, Roger Sterling. Megan certainly agrees that her marriage was deathly – echoing Jane Sterling’s claim that Roger took her youth – “Why am I being punished for being young?” – but she’s strong enough of mind that she’ll soon be OK. Just look at how she dealt with the grubby casting couch advances of Harry Crane.
The million-dollar cheque certainly won’t hurt either. That’s one way to speed up divorce proceedings, you suppose. Don obviously has some money spare from the McCann bonanza. But that much? There seems to be a sense that he’s is divesting himself of his possessions. Not just literally (the money; Marie stealing his furniture) but his responsibilities, too: Megan is paid off; his efforts at work being lackadaisical at best, his children being in happy(ish) family home, he’s a man without bounds, and nothing to tie him down, as that wonderful final scene in his empty apartment suggested. You can’t take it with you.
Which leads neatly to his strange relationship with Diana. The waitress from the Olympia cafe has found new employment at a more upmarket brasserie where Don tracked her down. Watching as they lay in bed together you wondered if the ultimate twist to these final few episodes might be Don finding happiness, or at least something approximating it. And with someone who – like him – ran away to New York from the horrors of their own present, too. (Diana, we learned, lost a daughter to flu and distraught, depressed, travelled to New York to escape.)
As Don sniffed her hair and asked what the smell was, she gave us a lament for her mis-sold American dream which could act as a motif for the entire series:
“Shampoo. Avon. I bought it in my living room. In my ranch house. With my two-car garage ...”
This sequence was carried out at a cerebral, almost dawdling pace. But, if you’re watching Mad Men for blood-rushing edits, you’ve come to the wrong show. For once, Don isn’t the brooding stranger in this relationship. A fact he clearly enjoys. But for Diana, the thought of falling in love is to hard to bear and so she sent Don on his way: “I told you about my heart. I don’t want to feel anything else. When I was with you. I forgot about her … I don’t ever want to do that.” This relationship, is clearly going to have some bearing on the end of Mad Men. But how much?
“Everything good I had is from a long time ago” – Stan
The non-Don related plotline involved celebrity photographer Pima Ryan (played by Mimi Rogers). Ryan was shooting a Cinzano ad for Peggy and, as a result, found herself in the SC&P offices trying to get access to her negatives. She immediately seized on Stan’s combativeness, by sending him for his camera before later seducing him in the darkroom. Once she’d done that, she moved to Peggy’s office, explaining that she was glad she never got married because of “the adventures I’d have missed”.
As if to prove her point, she then came on to Peggy, leading to a fun scene in which a pleased-with-herself Peggy and Stan revealed that they were both the subject of her advances. I suspect the main point of this thread was to lighten the drama surrounding Don, but the tension in Peggy and Rizzo’s relationship is slowly bubbling. I’m also not sure if Pima was based on anyone in particular? Was there a hint of Annie Leibowitz, who was just starting out as a staff photographer at Rolling Stone in 1970? What do you think?
Culture watch
The LP that Megan’s mother was holding was 1957’s Exotica by Martin Denny. Denny is obviously a favourite of musical director David Carbonara. His Misirlou features in season two’s The Jet Set.
Possibly the least interesting addition to the Mad Men reading list so far: Don bought Diana a Rand McNally guide to NYC.
Roger’s line upon hiding from secretaries Shirley and Caroline – “I feel like Marlin Perkins is chasing me in the Savannah,” refers to the American zoologist Perkins and his show Wild Kingdom. Or, to give it the title the SC&P team would no doubt prefer: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
The closing song was the French standard C’est Si Bon (It’s So Good). It’s been covered by many artists including Eartha Kitt, Dean Martin, and Louis Armstrong, but this version is by Italian-French actor/singer Yves Montand of Jean de Florette fame.
Notes
Just as Roger thoughtlessly killed Kenny last week at McCann’s behest, here he helped Marie Calvert stick an axe into Don by giving her the money to pay off the removal men.
Interestingly, as Pete’s role in the story has reduced, his ability to be an accidental sage is forefront. This was him on endings: “Jiminy Christmas. You think you’re going to begin your life over and do it right. But what if you never get past the beginning again.”
Lester Chapman from Life cereal is “NAC” aka “no afternoon calls” AKA drinky hand gesture. A bit of terminology I’d assumed was contemporary, but I think may be a Mad Men-ism?
In season one, Don was bribing a psychiatrist to feed back Betty’s therapy sessions, now she’s signing up for a Masters in psychology at Fairfield University.
Selected highlights from Harry Crane’s botched indecent proposal:
“You are every man’s fantasy. You’re like Ali McGraw and Brigitte Bardot had a baby.”
“I can’t believe Don threw you away.”.
“She’s not stable. She said of a lot of crazy things. And she’ll continue to say them.”
And a bonus from Megan’s wonderful, pious sister Marie-France
“Mother we’re here to support Megan, not make her feel ashamed of this failure.”
There was some talk over the previous season-and-a-half about Megan in LA and the Manson Family. I think it was fairly obvious the two were were unlikely to collide but the murders did get namechecked in an exchange between Harry and Meredith, which I presume also dates the episode around the time of the trial, i.e. June 1970:
Meredith: “How do you go to sleep at night knowing the Manson brothers are running around?”
Harry: “Manson … family.”
Don: “Are they coming in?”
Extra reading
A few more good pieces published in the last week or so, as promised:
Michael Hogan’s 10 favourite characters
Matthew Weiner on Jews and antisemitism in the show
The end of Mad Men doesn’t mean the end of the golden age of TV, says Todd VanDer Werff at Vox
