Knowing what he’s done to Sally -that he’s made her the product of a broken home like the one he was raised in-, and knowing that he’ll be doing the same to Ted’s family by leaving them in New York, Don has a change of heart mid-meeting, and as he confesses to his real childhood memories of Hershey, the ones where he’s rifling through the pockets of John’s instead of having dear old dad ruffle his hair, the Don Draper persona dissolves completely. This isn’t Don curling up in the fetal position by himself, or confiding in Peggy; this is him abandoning all artifice at a critical moment in his career, in order to salvage a bit of his soul. If the description doesn’t make it clear, the whole scene is one big Emmy submission tape for Jon Hamm, and it’s a damn fine one.
While the rest of the office might be a little happy to know that Don has had a breakthrough, they’re less jazzed the moment of clarity struck during a meeting with a client. Showing up the next day in the wee small hours of the morning, Don is ambushed by Joan, Roger, Cutler and Cooper, who might as well offer him a blindfold and cigarette the moment he walks in. “Should I sit down?” he asks indignantly. “Yesss,” Cooper growls back, the old dragon roused to deliver some punishment from on high. The sentence for Don’s erratic work ethic and behavior: several months’ suspension, with Peggy taking over as creative director in the interim. Leave your tumbler and Kools on Roger’s desk.
Speaking of, if there was any remaining curiosity about how the cops from the season’s teaser poster would figure into things, then “In Care Of” clears that up with several scenes of characters acting out like they’re in control of laying down the law. Deciding to spend some time with the one kid he has who isn’t always hitting him up for money, Roger finds his attempts to get back into Joan’s good graces are still being Bob-blocked. After practically interrogating the guy in his office (“I’m asking the questions here!”), Roger comes to the same conclusion Pete did: that Bob, while reflecting the appearance of being perfectly benign, is one to keep an eye on.
What Roger and Pete now also share is that they’ve both lost their mothers in the last year. The Campbell vehicular curse continues, with Pete receiving a telegram stating that Manolo and his mother have eloped to a cruise ship, but that she’s now honeymooning with the fishes. Scraping together information from opposing hemispheres, Pete is left with only has one person to point fingers at, and that’s Bob. Could Bob really have been involved in a plot to have Mrs. Campbell offed, so that Manolo could reap her (non-existent) fortune? Despite being one of the saner conspiracy theories thrown out this year, I don’t buy it, but Pete’s anger is understandable. In that anger though, he rips up the Campbell-Benson Peace Accord that was drawn up last episode, and pays the price for doing so.
When Pete did layout the reasons he had for not exposing Bob, it was a sign of marked growth on his part. While Bob might not have had a smoking gun piece of incriminating evidence hanging over Pete as leverage (accompanying him to a bordello hardly counts), Bob has proven himself nothing if not tenacious at glad-handing his way into the pockets of powerful people. And Pete’s on the receiving end of Bob’s, pat-you-on-the-back-while-I-stab-you tactics almost as soon as they touch down in Michigan. Having been tricked into embarrassing himself in front of Chevy by showing his inability to drive stick (paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Sigmund Freud), Pete gets kicked off the account faster than you can say “Not great, Bob,” leaving him right abouts where he started at the year’s beginning.
Having been thoroughly trounced by Bob, and about to join Ted out west, Pete visits Trudy, the other major loss he’s suffered this season, but finds comfort in watching his daughter sleep peacefully. Roger, having also been displaced by Bob, finds similar joy feeding his bastard son Kevin some turkey scraps, and it’s in these familial connections, ones being desperately fought for by Ted, or recovered by Don, that the emotional truth hidden under the saccharine gloss of the Hershey’s pitch comes to be proven real.
And it’s a truth, a life preserver, some thing to make it all worthwhile that Peggy now realizes she needs more than Don’s office. With all the talk of doubling this season, it’s easy to jump back and forth about how different arcs and aspects reflect different characters, but when it comes down to the core of Mad Men, Don is Peggy, and Peggy is Don. She had her shot at a meaningful relationship with Abe, and that was stabbed to death. She had a chance at torrid romance with Ted that could have maybe turned into something more, but now the guy’s proving his love for her by leaving forever.
Peggy ends the season more powerful than ever within the office, yet as the result of having no control over things. “Well aren’t you lucky –to have decisions,” she snaps, a hissing goodbye/kiss-off to Ted, and as she reclines in her new office, her face receding into the shadows, she and Don have switched places almost entirely. Don, by opening up to himself and his family, may have finally found a way out of his miserable existence. Peggy, after being so grievously wounded by Ted, has retreated into the black heart of the office. Don grew up a little tonight, just as he grew from Dick Whitman into Don Draper, from a go-getter Bob Benson, into a cynical Roger Sterling, and from a self-loathing cretin, to a man who might finally be able to forgive himself. Peggy has grown this season as well, but little of it has been for the better. With one season yet to go, Mad Men’s star still has one year to find salvation, but its hero may yet turn into the monster she once railed against. The Merry-go-round of Misery isn’t out of juice just yet it seems, and it looks like it might be Peggy’s turn to take a ride.
- Stray Thoughts
-The unpaid-off plot I was referring to earlier was Joan and the Avon account, which she won, according to Matthew Weiner in this interview. Just about every season of Mad Men could use more Joan, but given her new role as a partner, and her desire to get in on the accounts game, it’s a real shame we had almost no Joan in these last two episodes.
-Despite seeming like the “good guy” thing to do, Don backing out of California does screw over Megan in spectacular fashion. Things are left ambiguous as to whether her goodbye to Don is permanent, but unfortunately, Megan hopping on a plane back to Montreal might be the best thing for the show between seasons.
-Also ambiguous is whether Don’s suspension is really just that. While the tone of the conversation makes it sound like a more permanent leave of absence than just a few months, I find it hard to believe season 7 will have Don removed from the office completely.
-That’s all for this year. It’s been a pleasure covering the show this season, which on a gut reaction, I’d rate a little better than season 5, but still below the four that came before it. We’ll save the hard judgement calls until the season has had time to settle on the palette, but regardless, it sucks that there’s no more Mad Men until 2014. At least Matt Weiner was kind enough to make this arguably the most GIF-able season yet, so we can tide our selves over in 5-second chunks in the interim.
