With Mad Mens end fast approaching, longtime viewers are naturally desperate for closure. As the minutes tick away wait, AMC, how many episodes until the finale now? every scene thats not pushing the shows characters towards some kind of comforting finality feels like a moment wasted. Matthew Weiner left The Sopranos before that shows still-controversial smash cut to black, but he seems to have picked up some of David Chases thoughts about endings.
This is still a series that seems exquisitely aware of our desire for a satisfying ending, and just as determined to mess with it. Peggy found a cute guy whos not put off by her ambition and professional accomplishments, but she couldnt find her passport and the moment is lost. Don connected with the latest in a long line of enigmatic brunettes, but that one wont be caught for long. Every new character who comes onto the scene seems like they might be The One, but sometimes theyre just passing through. Joans whirlwind romance with Richard Burghoff, a California-browned real-estate developer played by Bruce Greenwood, takes us through that arc and then some: They meet cute, he comes on strong, backs off when he finds out his lady love has a four-year-old at home hes had kids and raised them; that part of his life is done. Then guess who shows up at the office with a dozen roses and a change of heart?
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In tonights episode The Forecast, written by Weiner and Jonathan Igla Don is expressly charged with looking into the future. McCann and subsidiaries are gathering at a Bahamian retreat, and Roger needs a Gettysburg Address to impress SC&Ps new owners, apparently forgetting that Lincolns indelible speech was mainly concerned with memorializing the dead. As the ad man dictates his own Four score and seven years ago, director Jennifer Getzinger frames him prone on his office couch, an overhead crane shot that pivots off a Time cover of Jesse Jackson. That comes right after the scene in which Glen Bishop says hes enlisting in the military so that the war in Vietnam wont only be Negro kids. The Civil War is over, but the battle rages on.
In the performance review Peggy insists on having, Don asks what she sees for own future. Hes impressed by the clarity with which she identifies the goal of being the firms first female creative director, but the more he asks Whats next?, the more vague her answers become. Create a catch phrase, she says. Be famous. And then? Create something of lasting value. In advertising? he scoffs. Don chides Ted Chaough for the smallness of his vision land bigger accounts, basically then ribs his female protg for the grandiosity of hers. Its meant to be playful, but Peggys all nerve endings where hes concerned. She knows him well enough to hear the contempt in his voice.
The first half of Mad Mens seventh season ended with humanity gazing up at the stars, but this time out, our hero apparently prefers flying low. Hes stunned that prospective buyers dont see his apartment, having been emptied out by his now officially ex-wife Megan, as a blank canvas rather than an evacuated void. (Youre so much better at painting a picture, Ted tells him.) His real estate agent, a Betty clone who opens the episode by hauling her client out of bed, informs him that most people want a place they can picture themselves in.
Dons imagination, however, seems to have abandoned him. Hes blocked on Rogers speech; he can barely decide which candy bar to buy from the office vending machine. You dont have character, Mathis tells him, right after he blows his second attempts at the Tinkerbell pitch and just before Don fires him. Youre just handsome. Sally later echoes the critique after watching her father bask in the glow of her high-school classmates sexual attention. Anyone pays attention to you, and they always do, and you just ooze all over them. Don doesnt deny it, but he strikes back at Sallys denial: You are like us, he tells her, as if being fantastic-looking were some curse passed down through generations. Youre a beautiful girl. The rest is up to you.
At the end of The Forecast, when his apartments sold to a young couple shes pregnant, the seed of possibility already growing with her Don is well and truly free, and the moment hits him, hard. No home, no wife, a daughter whos just told him her lifes ambition is to get away from him: What does he have left? One more romance that wont last. Jesus, love again? Don says when John Mathis reads him the tagline for the Tinkerbell cookies spot. We use it all the time, says Pete Campbell.
A postscript: The episode does provide closure of a kind for one of Mad Mens key relationships, albeit one that the show hasnt paid much attention to for years: the childlike bond between Glen and Betty. The former creepy kid down the street, now tall and handsome, shows up on the Francis doorstep on his way to Rye Playland, where you can both ride rollercoasters and score weed. Its been so long Betty introduces herself without recognizing him, but he knows her, and its more clear than ever that his ongoing correspondence with Sally was a proxy for keeping in touch with her mom.
That two-part farewell a noble goodbye in semi-public, and a touching, somewhat awkward last encounter in their kitchen was a moment we didnt know we needed, tapping long-dormant but still powerful emotions from years past in the way that only television shows and life can do. Glens clumsy pass was too painful to watch, but the image of their faces, mirroring each other but not quite touching, is more powerful than words can convey. Theyve both grown, and at roughly the same pace as Betty points out, hes at college and shes starting again in the fall. Fate and circumstance and sometimes just dumb luck has taken them apart: Glens initial reasons for signing up turn out to be BS; he actually joined the Army to escape his stepdads wrath over his failing grades. But they have those final moments, and when Mad Mens over, well have them, too.
Previously: Business as Usual