Mad Men and Don Draper meet their end

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
121

Wow, just…wow. I didn’t expect to be this affected by tonight’s episode. All I kept thinking is “Don, CALL SALLY!”.

Lots of people have been critical of January Jones’ acting over the years but tonight she just nailed it. For once though, Sally was wrong about Betty when she said, “he doesn’t know that you won’t get treatment because you love the tragedy”. It’s oddly satisfying (to me, anyway) to see that Betty is no longer the child-woman she used to be and that when push comes to shove, she’s the toughest character in the cast. Kiernan Shipka was incredible in her scenes as well, and I really hope she has at least one more scene with Don and Betty next week.

I’m also surprised at how right it feels to see Pete and Trudy reconcile; I wouldn’t have believed it a few weeks ago.

All in all, it was a great episode and I’m so happy that Matthew Weiner is still surprising us.

122

Through out the episode H kept saying: “uh oh this is where Don is killed…uh oh here it comes, here it comes.” I need to watch it again without the commentary. However… GREAT ENDING

123

The cancer story was a shock. Maybe don and sally do end up sitting " side by side" heading to Madrid,where don said he’d like to go, when don reunites with the family?
If the motel scene and characters were to remind of us of Bates motel, they succeeded. It was totally uncomfortable to watch. Creepy, in a bad way.
The drunken Vets and their horrific story was so sad, pathetic, and disgusting.

Didn’t love this episode.
Lergnom, great explanation of " milk and honey" relevance. last weeks episode had a sweeter touch.

I read some tweets about a plane crash whicita Kansas 1970- would Pete’s ending be the tragic plane symbol in all the PR posters?

124

Musicamom, I think your husband was responding to the creepiness of the Bates Motel, kudos to Weiner he succeeded in achieving unease in many.

125

Are the Draper kids going to end up being raised by a step parent just like he was?

126

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/mad-men-milk-and-honey-route-219225

Milk and honey "

127

I’ve arrived as a later Madmen fan.
Question- did don purposely kill the CO to assume his identity, or was it an accidental death and he then became Don Draper?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/11/mad-men-s-penultimate-episode-don-draper-s-shocking-gone-girl-moment.html

"
Of course, now we know it didn’t happen the way it was presented to us via flashbacks. Don murdered Draper, a married man about to complete his tour of duty, in order to be rid himself of his brothel-soiled name and begin anew as a man of substance and character."

128

We have spent so much time wondering if Don would die in the end that no one focused on the possibility of losing Betty. I don’t see how he could die now as it would be too cruel for the children. When he gave the car to the young man, I felt like it was his way of saying that he had quit running away and that we’ll see him back in NYC at the beginning of the next episode, ready to step up for his kids when he finds out about Betty. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

129

But is the Social Security card in Don’s car such that the kid will become the next Don Draper?

130

No, I totally disagree. Don’s statement in last night’s episode was a very abridged version of what actually happened, which we saw in the flashback. The real Don Draper’s death was accidental; Dick Whitman very nearly died too so if he had intended to murder Draper (which he didn’t), that would have been a ridiculous way to have done it. Don has always felt guilty about Draper’s death, although it was an accident. The only act he was truly responsible for was his impulse to switch his and Draper’s dog tags moments before he lost consciousness himself.

Edit: I read the article @SouthJerseyChessMom refers to above and in the comments it becomes apparent that the author has corrected it from an earlier version where he claims that Don confessed to murder in last night’s episode. The comments rightly take the author to task for not admitting to having changed the original article where he apparently totally misunderstood what he watched last night. Don never murdered anyone.

131

^ thank you for that clarification- whew, I’m glad to know this.

Perhaps the ending will be Don does die, without knowing his family is unsuccessfully trying to contact him.
ugh, he dies not knowing about Betty…

132

SJCM, whether he dies or just disappears, I so fear that he will never know about Betty, assuming that she and the kids are in a good place. I keep telling myself that he promised to call Sally.

133

^^^I really hope not.

This whole half season, it seems that Don has been losing (or walking away from) everything that had given him any purpose in his life. The final straw seems to have been when he called at the Francis home to find that Sally had gotten another ride back to school while he had stopped to get the car washed in preparation for their lunch date. He finds Betty reading Freud for her graduate psychology class and she makes it clear that she is pretty content with where her life is currently and while she is friendly to him, she clearly isn’t interested in having him be any closer to her or the children. After that encounter, we see him heading to Racine in a pursuit of gloomy waitress Diana which the hallucination makes clear, even Don knows is stupid. This is confirmed when he attempts to con her ex-husband and his new wife into revealing Diana’s whereabouts. Her ex sees through Don immediately, informs him that he is just one in a long line of men she has abandoned and basically strips Don of any remaining illusions about a future with her.

I’m really hoping that the series wraps up with Don finally finding purpose and meaning with having sole responsibility for the children he had with Betty. He’s made some headway with Sally, who is almost grown up but his sons are still strangers to him and there is still time for him to finally create something real and lasting with the only true family he has left.

134

I also don’t see Don severing ties with Sally and the boys. What he’s searching for on his road trip is unclear, but he’s certainly finding some kind of redemption – offering the thieving kid a car and an escape is a kind of helping hand he never received as a young man. It is ironic that the kid might be driving away with Don Draper’s social security card - and the possibility of becoming Don (or not.) At any rate, he has the option of living not under an assumed name, and the option to “go home again” – gifts from Don of which he’s not aware, but which Don certainly knows the value of.

Don may have the possibility to “go home again,” too - once he finds out about Betty - to take care of the kids while the grief stricken Francis tries to get a grip. What Weiner makes out of that possibility is something I’m looking forward to seeing in the final episode.

135

What they’ve set up is that Betty is dying and Don is the kids’ father and thus legal guardian when they die. Betty has a brother she doesn’t much like - and a sister-in-law she really doesn’t like - but no parents left. Don has nobody. Henry has no legal role in the kids’ lives when Betty dies because that can’t be willed to him by Betty. This sets up some way in which Don finds out about Betty and maybe the show ends with him sitting in a carpool lane or at a parent-teacher conference for Gene. In other words, he’ll either own up to his responsibilities as a father or …

BTW, I mentioned the Jewish hobo because I’m sure Matt Weiner knows or learned this stuff and Don is like a Jewish hobo, meaning both are rare. In Don’s case, it’s because he’s actually rich though he carries his possessions in a Sears bag (that doesn’t seem nearly large enough).

Kiernan Shipka years ago said the show is about Don Draper’s work life and his home life. We’ve seen the work life. Earlier in these episodes, Don was at the Francis home making milkshakes for the boys and the camera catches him looking back at the family scene that’s not his though they are his children. We also know the only truly important relationship the show has ever presented for Don is with Sally. Maybe that’s how it ends, with Don Draper’s family life.

I note that the Pete and Trudy romance stuff - which was wonderfully written and acted - is a getting together after a divorce because those two are made for each other. With Don, it isn’t that he’s made for Betty. It is in fact as they both know a better life for her with Henry, the man who truly loves her. But Don and Sally? They’re peas in a pod.

136

oh no! I just realized that last night was not the final episode! (a little slow on the uptake)

137

At last, Tom and Lorenzo’s take on the episode: http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/05/mad-men-the-milk-and-honey-route/

138

I think Don will come back for his kids. Remember how his face looked when he learned the waitress had abandoned hers?

139

So (determined to kill off Don Draper) If this hapless kid gets killed in Don’s car with Don’s ID…Dick Whitman is free to live his life as himself?

140

BTW, I think Sally nailed it when she said to Betty, “He doesn’t know you won’t get treatment because you love the tragedy.” Why shouldn’t Betty love the tragedy? We see her dragging herself up the steps at school, perfectly made up, perfectly dressed, as her voice describes how she should be buried and as her daughter looks at a picture of her mother wearing the favorite blue chiffon, which is now hanging in the closet next to the fur coat, which she’s to be interred, intact, in the family plot. It’s a performance. A good one. And that is a powerful statement about life.

As Augustus lay dying, the man who made the Roman Empire though he had no physical gifts and could never stand combat but who defeated the most violent rivals, he had himself made up and raised in bed so he could greet his family one last time. His words, “Have I played the part well?”

Or Shakespeare, when MacBeth says:

“Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”

Henry wants Betty to fight the inevitable but he doesn’t realize that would destroy her, that she is this person in her favorite blue chiffon with the perfect hair and makeup and she will fight this out as she has lived. It’s bravery. It’s tragedy. And she does love the tragedy because she knows this is how she can remain herself. This is who she is and this is how she’s going out.

And this from The Tempest, which could be said about Betty and the show in general:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

And in Betty’s case, a sleep in blue chiffon.