Listen, there is absolutely no way I can tell you EVERYTHING you need to know from all previous 6 seasons of Mad Men, so I’m just going to focus on what happened in season 6.
Note: This post will contain spoilers if you have not see season 6.
1. Don’s a fucking alcoholic. This is not something I thought about or really realized during the first time around when I watched last season, even with watching every episode at least twice for the post-mortems. How could anyone really know how bad his habit had gotten though? Everyone drinks (or smokes pot, if you’re Stan) in the office. I never really gave a second thought to splash of vodka in the OJ after a hard night or some whiskey in his coffee cup during the work day, because hey, it’s the 60s and everybody drinks like that. He even manages to get Ted pass-out drunk during a brainstorming session over Fleishmann’s margarine. Of course, Don is not affected by the amount of alcohol the two have had.
Then he goes and punches a minister in the bar and ends up in jail. Jolted by his stay in prison, Sally walking in on him “comforting Mrs. Rosen”, a phone call from Betty regarding Sally buying beer and getting herself and other students drunk, Don realizes his behavior needs to change. He pours out all the booze the day of the all-important Hershey’s pitch. While talking with Don about moving to California, Ted encourages Don to have one drink before the Hershey meeting because you can’t just quit cold turkey. Despite the drink, Don seems to be on a path to change himself. He gives a great pitch to Hershey’s, lying about his past as he has so many times, but then he does an about face. He tells the Hershey people the truth about his past. It’s at this point that Sterling, Cooper and Partners can’t control their star partner. Subsequently, they put him on indefinite leave. Maybe they’ve never been able to control Don (he canceled Jaguar early in the season without so much as a peep to the other partners), but now it’s at the detriment of the company.
2. Peggy is now the HBIC. We all know that Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has said that it’s no coincidence that the show starts on Peggy’s first day. Took 8 years of hard work and dealing with Don Draper, but Peggy has become the de facto Creative Director. Something that hit me immediately during last season’s finale when we see her in Don’s office on Thanksgiving Day wearing pants. Peggy has never worn pants before – not even in a social setting (someone please correct me if I’m wrong).
After he ended their brief affair by telling her he was going to move to California with his family, Peggy tells Ted it must be nice to have decisions. The author of the AV Club Mad Men recaps talked about how the characters last season pushed themselves to new limits, but in Peggy’s case she was pushed into her new position. Though I will say she was pushed around a lot last season by the other men in her lives. Pushed by Abe to live in a part of town she didn’t want to. Pushed back in to Don’s employ by a merger she had no control over. It will be interesting to see how long her new found power lasts and how she reacts to it.
3. This was perhaps my favorite line from Roger all season.
But I think I have to disagree with him. All the events that happened last season and I think everyone changed, especially Don as I talked about above. Even Roger changes. The fact that Roger’s daughter cuts him off from seeing his grandson coupled with Roger seeing Bob Benson as a threat to Roger’s relationship with Kevin (his son with Peggy) leads him to wanting to be more active in Kevin’s life. Of course, Bob is at Joan’s house for Thanksgiving (where wasn’t Bob last season?!) and Roger pouts, but Joan reminds him that she is inviting Roger into Kevin’s life and now her’s. The news of Pete’s mother’s death will cause Pete to change. As Trudy points out to him before he heads out to California, he is now free of everything – no mother, no father, no wife to hold him back. Will he continue to be a grimy little pimp or let this event change him?
4. Dawn is becoming one of my favorite characters on the show. Between her reaction here:
and here:
Sometimes it’s the little things.
5. Harry Crane still must die. We didn’t see a whole bunch of Harry last season, but when we did he sure was annoying. I can’t blame the SC&P partners for not wanting to make him a partner, despite the fact that he did create the TV department from scratch. But then you have to question why he hasn’t actually taken his talents to South Beach, er, L.A., especially since he’s been in contact multiple times with our favorite headhunter, Duck.
6. 1968 was a hell of a year. Major events that popped up on Mad Men that seemed to affect our characters were Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, the ensuing riots in Chicago and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. Of course there is the every day talk of the war. We also get to see movies like Rosemary’s Baby and Planet of the Apes enter into our culture. Also, after hearing about Nixon since the beginning of the series, he’s finally elected President and everything is all right. (I’m sure there are other things, but these are the ones that I remember the most.) I wonder if we’ll spend both parts of the final season in 1969 or if we see part of the 70s.
7. I don’t hate Bob Benson. He’s a weirdo for sure, but when you get right down to it, he was just trying to do some social climbing to get away from his background. He had to go about it differently than Don since he didn’t have a war buddy die so he could take over his identity. In the end, Pete gives him a speech that could have been given to Pete by Don. (James Wolk is now on Robin Williams’ show, The Crazy Ones. I’m wondering if CBS will allow him to still appear on Mad Men. I sure hope so because I’d like to see some more of Bob Benson in those tiny shorts.)
8. Let’s talk relationships.
- Don seems to have met his match with Sylvia. She don’t want none of his business.
- I wonder if Don and Megan make it work as a bi-coastal couple or if he ends up thrice divorced.
- I’m glad Peggy and Abe are done, though I wish she would have dumped him (instead of the other way around) before she bought the shithole.
- I love Peggy and Stan’s friendship (and Stan’s beard, rawr).
- Still on Peggy – I hope she and Joan begin to really take over the office.
- Ted and Peggy. Wrong as it was, I kinda liked it. Should we be giving Ted props for realizing he did something wrong? Or smacking him up the head for hurting our Peggy? So torn.
- Trudy is really done with Pete.
- Of course there are the relationships with the partners. We spent most of last season wondering what to call the newly merged SCDP and CGC. We ended up at Sterling, Cooper & Partners, which is pretty close to where we started at Sterling Cooper. Hopefully the agreement on a name means more cohesion among the powers that be.
I could go on and on and on about the things that happened last season (hell, I didn’t even touch on the fact that they have another car account despite the debacle that was Jaguar), but I think I got the important things down. Or at least the things that popped out in my mind.
I look forward to seeing you all in the Mad Men Open Threads for a live play-by-play on Sundays and then dissecting everything in the Mad Men Post-Mortems on Mondays.
Mad Men season 7 premiers on Sunday, April 13 at 10/9p Central.
Joan/Dawn image via Vulture
