So that happened.
WARNING: SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP
This episode didn’t leave much on the bone for the post-mortem. The symbolism was straight forward (SCP looses it’s lease in Time and Life – I mean really) and there were few cultural references to pick apart. My thoughts on the episode in no particular order.
- Weiner is going through and very carefully tying up each and every storyline while tossing a few bones to the audience (Here’s one last moment of Peggy and Pete! And another of Pete and Trudy!). We should be happy and yet it feels empty. Clinical even. Devoid of all the nuance and surprises that have kept us coming back for seven seasons. We’re getting what any audience would want but it’s not quite what we’re looking for. Perhaps there’s a meta lesson in there?
- Similarly, Joan’s new man said all the right things and yet something is severely lacking there (perhaps we’re feeling the absence of even a touch of reality in their romance?).
- There really was a certain poetry in watching Don and the gang marching through the entire episode playing the same old tricks that have worked for them so many times in the past and repeatedly coming up short.
- Loved the end when no one bothered to stay around and listen to what Roger et al. had to say about the turn of events opting instead to take off like chickens with their heads cut off. There was a time in past seasons when that would certainly not have been the case but SC&P (along with the world at the time) has moved far past the mentality of unquestioningly deferring to the white guy. There had been a false sense of safety in being able to rely on that precept which has been lost forever.
- I’ll go out on a ledge to give you guys the opportunity to say “I told you so” later. This episode we saw Don look west to California as a source of rebirth as he’s done many times before. That door was ceremoniously slammed in his face leaving him with no recourse. The previews for next week gave us a glimpse of Don staring pensively out a window. I’m gonna predict he jumps next episode and the remaining episodes focus on everyone trying to make meaning out of who Don was to them in their life. It would certainly jive with how Weiner has been wielding symbolism like a sledgehammer this season.
Those were my thoughts. Toss yours in the reply!
[Image]
