Season 6, Episode 13: "In Care Of"
After years of drinking on the job, causing secretaries to either quit or drop dead, making decisions without consulting his colleagues, and never knowing when the hell the partners meetings are, it finally happened. Don Draper got fired.
Yes, our Don Draper — advertising genius, Clio Award winner, and deliverer of inspiring speeches about Jaguar accounts — lost his job on Thanksgiving Day in the big shocker of the Mad Men's season six finale. Which theoretically should not have been so shocking since ... well, see previous laundry list of bad Draper behavior.
Sure, Bert Cooper, Roger Sterling, Jim Cutler, and Joan Holloway told Don they were merely asking him to take a leave of absence. But without offering a specific end date — "We can't give you that," Bert said, sounding very different than he did five seasons ago when he professed not to care that Don was actually Dick Whitman — the imposed sabbatical seemed like a nice way of saying that Don is gone, probably for good. You wanted a jumping-off point, Draper? You got it.
The false pretense of Don's dismissal — the idea that this breakup from SC&P was only a temporary setback when it was clearly something more serious — seemed fitting for a guy who has spent the past six seasons pretending to be someone he isn't. If
Mad Men has taught us anything, it's that selling a pretty story is paramount to continued success, whether that story is that you're Don Draper, Korean War hero, or that Chevys are the very best American cars money can buy, and that you should preferably drive one while smoking Lucky Strikes and eating Heinz beans straight out of the can. Honesty will get you nowhere, at least in the ad world of the 1960s.
For example, if you stand up in a pitch meeting and tell the representatives from Hershey that your wonderful father used to buy you candy bars, which proves that "Hershey's is the currency of affection. It's the childhood symbol of love"? Then everyone's all smiles and chocolate rainbows. But if you tell the truth and say, "Actually, I was an orphan raised in a Pennsylvania whorehouse, where I used to cry-eat Hershey bars with great ceremony until my virginity was stolen by some hooker who gave me soup"? Well, that's precisely the sort of candor that leads to your dear friend Roger Sterling saying, "We think it's best for you and the firm if you take some time to regroup," even though Roger is the guy who taught you to drink all day, do a half-assed job, and say inappropriate crap in the first place.
In case you missed the point, Don has finally lost everything he's built. It's hard to believe anyone missed that point since it was hammered home so unsubtly by Lou Avery, a potential Don replacement who showed up at SC&P and wryly asked "Going down?" just as an elevator arrived to assist Don in his continued plummet into his own personal inferno (no Dante necessary). But just in case, let's recap: Don now has no active position in the advertising business. He also may have lost Megan after changing his mind about moving to L.A., which left her without her coveted job playing twin drama queens on To Have and To Hold. Really, all he's got are his fraught relationships with his three kids, one of whom is being asked to testify in the case of the State of New York vs. Grandma Ida, a situation that had better be addressed in the seventh and final season because, dammit, I still contend that break-in will wind up being meaningful.
In spite of all that's slipped through Don's shaky, alcohol-withdrawing fingers, he does seem to possess one thing: a desire to change himself for the better. Why that desire, and why now? Maybe he finally hit bottom after he punched a preacher and wound up in the drunk tank. Maybe he felt a more intense need to redeem himself after hearing that Sally got suspended from boarding school after using false IDs and drinking too much. (Aw, she's just like Daddy.) Maybe the fact that Peggy called him a monster in last week's episode inspired him to prove her wrong. Or it could be all of the above. Whatever the cause, I can believe that Don finally might genuinely try to become a better man. I'm just not sure he would start that process by confessing his deepest childhood-hooker secrets in the middle of an important pitch where he's supposed to be singing the praises of milk-chocolate kisses. Then again, the pitch meeting is where Don has always demonstrated the most confidence. So maybe that's exactly where he would feel strong enough to declare who he really is.
Don's arc — from being the guy who told Sylvia Rosen he "didn't want to do this anymore" to potentially becoming the guy who doesn't do this anymore — was just one of the Mad Men narratives that came full circle as season six shut down.
Pete Campbell also seemed to find some level of closure, in as much as one can find closure after finding out that his mother has gone missing from a cruise ship. (You guys, did I not say that Pete's mother would have some issues traveling abroad?) Pete was in full-on agitated and unraveling mode during last night's episode, which is the absolute best Pete Campbell mode there is. When he found out that his mother was gone and that she apparently married Manolo Colon (Manolo Colon. Really? No one thought that might be an alias until now?), he assumed Bob Benson and Manolo had orchestrated his mother's murder. Which may not be true, but since it allowed Vincent Kartheiser to spew one of the greatest Pete Campbell accusations of all time — "You don't know that your boyfriend Manolo kidnapped my mother, married her at gunpoint, and threw her off a ship?" — I refuse to believe otherwise.
Especially since Bob, who was supposed to be under Pete's thumb for eternity after Pete uncovered his lies, made Pete look like a non-stick-shift driving fool in front of the Chevy meatheads, prompting Pete to get booted off the account without so much as a friendly gunshot to the eye. The implication of that smile on Bob's face when he happily offered Pete, a Manhattanite who doesn't drive, the car keys to that Camaro: "You do not have the upper hand because I, Bob Benson, have the upper hand, and the gear shift, and the carving knife at Joan's Thanksgiving dinner, and pretty much ALL THE PHALLIC SYMBOLS." With no big account and nowhere to live, Pete could do nothing but slink off to California, where now, as Trudy pointed out, he can finally be free of everything: his mom, the daily office politics and, sadly, his family. The sight of Pete stroking young Tammy's hair as he said goodbye to her was the saddest image in last night's episode.
As for the most heartening image? Oh, that's easy: that was the back of Peggy Olson's head as she sat in Don Draper's chair and cocked that pert bob of hers just slightly to the right, mimicking the Draper silhouette from the Mad Men opening credits. After getting jerked around by Ted, the man who "loves her so much that he can't be near her," Peggy bounced back, stopped parading her cleavage and Chanel No. 5 around the office, put her big girl pants suit on, and got to work. Is it possible she'll fill a Draper-esque role now that Don is on permanent sabbatical? Let's hope so. I like the idea of Peggy and Pete being a bicoastal team of advertising domination. From the beginning, weren't they always the obvious inheritors of the ad agency world that Don once ruled? Maybe in season seven, the kids will finally become the grown-ups in charge.
Speaking of grown-ups, Roger Sterling was trying to be one by episode's end, not caving into his daughter's entitled demands and spending time with his son, Kevin, while respecting Joan's boundaries. And you know what? I think Don, for once, is really starting to be a grown-up, too.
The old Don would have taken off for California despite Ted's earnest plea to let him go instead. But New Don recognized that by giving Ted that chance, he'd be acting like the good man Ted contended Don could still be, and giving his partner the chance Don never got: to save his first marriage, establish stronger connections with his children, and live in a state of sunshine.
Don may still have a shot at establishing healthier bonds with his kids, though. In the last scene in this second-to-last
Mad Men finale, Don showed them that whorehouse in Pa., admitting to his sons and daughter for the first time that Daddy has a past that is rough, unsavory, and shameful. Notably, he took that step on Thanksgiving, the same holiday that at the end of season one, in November of 1960, Don blew off for work. At the end of this season, in November of 1968, Don was finally able to forget about work and be with his children.
What was it Don said about the Kodak slide carousel in that famously brilliant pitch from that season one finale? Oh, yeah: "It lets us travel the way a child travels, around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we were loved." Finally, Don Draper made that journey back home again, with his children by his side. He wasn't loved in that "house of sin," of course. But as that closing Joni Mitchell song, "Both Sides Now," suggested, Don is now letting people see both sides of his life: the pretty stories that can poignantly sell Kodak images and Hershey bars, and the unpleasant realities that made him the man he actually is.
An illustrated recap by Chris Piascik for Unlikely Words.
Read the Mad Men Recaps on The Culture Blog >>
PLUS: Stephen Marche on Why We Love Mad Men and What the Show Really Gets Wrong >>
Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture.
