Welcome back to Notes from the Break Room, where we’ve been following Mad Men from the very start. I’m very pleased to be back after a two-and-a-half-season break to take in the final seven episodes of Matthew Weiner’s masterpiece/glossy soap opera (delete according to personal prejudice).
If you’re a bit rusty on where we were at, here’s an excellent three-minute précis of season seven so far from Slate.
‘When someone dies, you make sense of it the way you can’ - Diana
We ended the first part of season seven in a dreamlike state, with the ghost of Bert Cooper telling us The Best Things In Life Are Free. On Sunday night, we opened with Don and a woman in a mink coat, quite unsure whether this was a dream, a new girlfriend, a prostitute or a model. Of course, fashions change more quickly than attitudes and we soon cut to reveal a sofa full of SC&P men with googly eyes. Welcome to the 1970s.
April 1970, specifically. It’s been nine months since we left Don and co watching the moon landing as Roger sold the company to McCann-Erickson, earning the partners millions. But while there’s some swagger back in Don’s step with the return of his status, he’s the same mess he was before. Stuck in a rut of partying, going to bed with younger women and quite literally sleeping through the job. Where did it all go wrong, as George Best might have been asked.
One of Don’s naps resulted in the brief reappearance of season one flame Rachel Menken. Prompted by the dream and the need to find a department store to flog the flagging Topaz pantyhose, Don contacted Menken’s store – to discover she had just died of leukaemia. Despite not having seen her for years, to Don the news was a sucker punch – their old bond cemented, of course, by the cruel symmetry of their mothers both having died while giving birth to them.
“When people die, everything gets mixed up. Maybe you dreamt about her all the time,” suggested waitress Diana in the Nighthawks-esque Olympia Cafe. I think the first impression we were supposed to take was that Don was confusing her for Rachel – but now I’m not so sure. It could have been anyone, really. His mother?
There’s been an increasingly hallucinatory feel, fittingly, to late-60s Mad Men. And these three scenes contained a certain ethereality. I don’t think we’re necessarily supposed to know who Don is thinking of. In fact, as well as the obviously dreamy moment here – Rachel in the fur – even Don’s cogent moments seem to exist on the seam of consciousness. Mad Men began as a dissection of the American Dream: perhaps Don’s actual dreams are where we’re headed. And now might be a good time to note that Matthew Weiner wrote and co-wrote two of the key latter episodes of The Sopranos in which we explored Tony’s subconscious – Mayham and The Test Dream.
Of course, it might just be the booze. Don is still packing a hip flask, telling stories from his youth as Dick Whitman (something he’s never done socially) and hanging around with women to whom we are not introduced – the suggestion being that if the audience barely knows them, then neither does he. Is that all there is?
‘This world is boring: you should write an adventure story’ - Pete
Ken Cosgrove took a central role with his defenestration at the hands of SC&P’s supposedly independent new owner, McCann. (Cosgrove rubbed them up the wrong way when the old company was sold and he worked there.)
Ken’s exit was prefaced by his wife Cynthia telling him to quit. Watching this, I began to to write something about Ken as a cipher of The Perils of Selling Consumerism and of his chance to stop the world and get off. Here was a talented, creative, man who had not used his talents in an intellectually unfulfilling job, shilling for a weapons manufacturer (among others). Since 1960, he’s developed a paunch, lost an eye and come to hate what he’s doing. Here he was given a chance to take the severance, run to the country and write the novel he’s had in his drawer since he was published in The Atlantic a decade ago.
This exchange with Don about his wife’s suggestion suggested he surely would:
Ken: “The very next day they fire me. Can you believe that? That’s not a coincidence. That’s a sign.”
Don: “For what?”
Ken: “The life unlived.”
And then … Dow Chemical gives him the chance to both make more money and screw Pete Campbell as its new head of advertising. “I hate to tell you but I’m very hard to please,” gleamed Kenny as he broke the news to Pete and Roger, the man who had so glibly fired him.
‘I want to burn this place down’ – Joan
Briefly, there were some great Joan and Peggy scenes. We saw them working as equals both with each other and with male counterparts at McCann. And yet – statuses change, attitudes don’t – they were still used as frat-boy fodder for the goons, leading to their falling out.
In a recent interview, Weiner spoke of the pair’s relationship. “I feel like there are times when they need each other,” he said, “and they love each other, and there are times when they could not be more different.” That was clearly referenced here.
I’m keen to hear your thoughts on how this played out – with Joan heading to splurge her new fortune at her old department store and Peggy out for dinner with Mathis’s brother-in-law, Stevie. And almost straight to Paris on a wing and a prayer.
Culture watch
Leiber and Stoller’s Is That All There Is? was a 1969 hit for Peggy Lee, whose version opened and closed the episode. A clue? “When that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself: Is that all there is?”
Was the Olympia Cafe a subtle nod to John Belushi’s venue of the same name in Saturday Night Live? Or a real venue? Any New Yorkers care to advise?
Speaking of Greeks bearing coffee, in the opening scene Don was drinking from one of New York’s famous Anthora coffee cups.
Diana, the waitress in the cafe, was reading the 1969 Signet Classics reissue of The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos, the first book in the USA trilogy. Signet Classics were paperback reissues of classic fiction with cover art designed by – among others – Milton Glaser, who of course did the poster for series seven, part one. I’ve not read The 42nd Parallel, so I’ll leave you to elucidate on any possible further meaning.
Roger referred to Diana as “Mildred Pierce”, given that she’s both a waitress, like Mildred, and also looks a bit like Joan Crawford in the 1945 movie.
Notes
The specific tell that we’re in the 70s, apart from the moustaches, came when Don watched this speech by Nixon, announcing the Cambodian incursion.
Joan’s line about “department stores being blown up by radicals every day” was a reference to the trial of the Panther 21, members of the Black Panthers who were charged in April 1969 with conspiring to blow up five department stores, a police station, railroad tracks and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. They were acquitted in 1971.
The episode was dedicated to Mike Nichols, a friend of both Jon Hamm and Matthew Weiner. One of Nichols’ last film credits was Friends With Kids, starring Hamm and directed by his partner, Jennifer Westfeldt.
Ken’s father in law Ed cooked a Pop Tart. It was very good.
Like Don, I was left wondering briefly if Diana actually was Maggie Ziff (or even Rachel pulling a Dick Whitman), but clearly she wasn’t. The actress was Elizabeth Reaser, who played Matthew McConaughey’s girlfriend in True Detective as well as Tammy Linata for seven episodes of The Good Wife.
There was another dream reference, this one from Pete (who cameoed in Don’s dream) this time about living in California: “Now it sort of feels like a dream, but at the time it felt so real.” I also liked Pete’s pained explanation of the tax troubles of making a fortune as a partner: “I might have to buy an apartment building.”
Further reading
In the build-up to this final burst of episodes, I’ve been trying to collate some of the best recent articles about the show. This isn’t comprehensive but all of the below are worth your time. I’ll keep collating them here in the run up to the end of it all.
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