Who could have predicted that Freddie Rumsen would figure so
prominently into the redemption of Don Draper at this late date? Freddie’s
destiny might have just been to be remembered as the drunk who pissed himself
at work and humiliated himself out of a job. I like what Mad Men has been doing with him, establishing him as the guy who
got his act together and is now helping Don climb out of the bottle and get his
own act together by messengering his pitches to the agency and acting as Don’s
unofficial sponsor. The show has always linked characters with multiple doppelgangers
and cautionary examples so it was refreshing to see a positive spin on that.
Don finally appears back on track after flirting with the
bottom yet again. He gets the idea to get the Lease Tech computer guys as
clients but Bert reminds him that initiative is against the rules of his new
state of employment. Rather than work under Peggy on the Burger Chef account,
he plays solitaire in his office, sneaks vodka out of Roger’s office, gets
wasted and tries to go to a Mets game. By the end, it was a relief to see Don
heeding Freddie’s advice to “do the work” and actually brainstorming again.
If Mad Men is
ending as the story of Don Draper’s redemption, I like it. It’s gotten tiresome
to see him fall further and further into unseemly behavior and will be
refreshing to see him pull his life together. When Don finds the deceased
Lane’s discarded Mets pennant, you could see this as a bad omen. You could also
see it as a symbol of hope, given that the season is set in 1969, the year of
the Miracle Mets. Maybe Don will perform a miracle of his own?
I wasn’t sure what to make of the whole plot of Margaret
(now Marigold) running off to live with the hippies. It did seem
sitcom-obvious, like when the show telegraphed her and Roger falling in the mud
from miles away. Maybe the point is that Margaret certainly does take after her
father, who is living with his own high-class hippies at the hotel and doing
his own brand of drugs. At least we got to see the always-fabulous Mona
Sterling.
Was I the only one who was a little excited to see Joan and
Peggy having a closed-door bitch session about the office? This was a nice
callback to the end of season 4, when they shared a warmly catty moment after
Don and Megan got engaged. As in that previous scene, Peggy is still tied to
decisions other people made for her. She doesn’t want to work for Lou, she
doesn’t want to work with Don and yet, she’s stuck. Lou and Jim are moving her
around the chessboard as a pawn in their campaign against Don.
It isn’t all gloom and doom, however. Lou did start paying Peggy
an extra $100 a week (1969 dollars) to work on Burger Chef. Good Lord, I would
be thrilled for someone to pay me
that kind of money, especially adjusted for inflation. That would change your
life.
I will miss seeing the creative department working in the
lounge. It was unsubtle that they dismantled the room to install the monolithic
computer and Ginsberg was unsubtle (but very right) when he yelled that
Sterling Cooper and Partners was removing something unique about the company. The
irony here is that in a few years, despite what the IT guy said, that model computer
will be obsolete and the agency will be stuck with a massive white elephant. Change
is coming and everyone has to adapt to survive but they may all lose something precious
in the process.
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