The truth shall set you free, Don Draper. But then you have to deal with it.
In Mad Men’s gut wrenching season six finale, “In Care Of”, we see the inhabitants of Don’s universe come to grips with the truth of their circumstance. Pete’s pipe dream of reclaiming his hairline marriage to Trudy is ignored as heartily as she encourages him to find peace, freedom, hope – anything – in Los Angeles. Ted also looks West, but for different reasons. He thinks uprooting his family to Los Angeles will salvage it, not reinvent it, and that 3000 miles of distance will be enough to subdue his boner for Peggy, not that she has any say in it. Megan, meanwhile, doesn’t “even know why we’re fighting this for anymore”, then leaves Don in a huff when he tells her he can’t move to Los Angeles anymore.
Don, of course, is the one who does the most revealing truth-speaking. Most notably at a pitch for Hershey’s which starts in typical glazy-eyed Don Draper fashion before devolving into a makeshift circle of trust through which he can outwardly verbalise that which has so long eluded him: the truth. He was raised an orphan in a whorehouse in Pennsylvania, deprived of anything associated with the nuclear American family, and only ate chocolate when he had stolen enough money from the pockets of sleeping Johns. Don Draper 2.0 is even self-aware enough to realise the difficulty of having a meaningful relationship with his children if they don’t even know who he is. And so, finally, he illuminates that blind spot in his personal history by taking them to the house he grew up in.
The most interesting thing about the depiction and dynamics of everyone’s personal transformation over the past six seasons was how it was signposted throughout with callbacks to the series pilot, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”. For example…
1) MAN WATCHES HIS KIDS SLEEP WHILE HIS BABY MAMA LOOKS ON
S01E01 Don = S06E13 Pete.
2) OUR HOUSE
The pilot episode ends with the shock reveal that Don has a house, wife and kids. The screenshot above is the second to last scene before we dissolve to an exterior shot of the immaculately maintained Draper residence. Last night’s episode ends with another house someone grew up in. This one though, looks more like the boarded up crack den Snoop from The Wire hides dead bodies in.
3) PEGGY WEARS THE PANTS
On at least three occasions throughout the pilot people tell Peggy Olson to show her legs more. Joan suggests that someone with such “darling little ankles” should find a way “to make them sing”. Pete states it “wouldn’t be a sin to see your legs”. And a phone operator tells her “You have great legs. I bet Mr. Draper would life them if he could see them.” But by the season six finale Peggy “Boss Mode” Olson is all like fuck legs I’m wearing pants and I’m gonna take this motherfucker over because I’m that fucking good you pieces of shit.
Which leads us to…
4) PEGGY MIRRORS DON
BAM!
5) BAND OF GOLD
Don Cherry’s “Band of Gold” (1955) is heard at the bar in the first scenes of the pilot when Don is trying to come up with ideas for Lucky Strike. It appeared again last night when Don was – yep – at a bar.
