I like to act like I know more than the average Joe Schmoe, that I can spot the causality between A & B, or that I know how things will turn out. However, when I'm watching television, a movie, a play, or reading a book, I live in a state of suspense. I don't want to know how the ending will turn out, I don't even try to guess, and I disdain when people silently whisper to me who they think stabbed the grandma in the heart with a bayonet. So, you can only imagine how much I love Matt Weiner for consistently one-upping himself with his shocking "Mad Men" season finales every time. Every wrap-up not only makes you yearn for the next one, but makes you seriously ponder what the hell just happened in the last 13 or so episodes.
Trying to dissect Season 4 Ep. 13 "Tomorrowland" -- or any Mad Men episode for that matter -- is harder than writing an essay explaining the difference between Stalinism and Leninism (trust me, I had to try). So, I'll just give my rudimentary, unsophisticated, I-never-took-a-creative-writing-class, I-constantly-refer-to-the-thesaurus-to-sound-smarter opinion of what Season 4 meant to me as an engrossed lover of Mad Men.
Overarching Theme of the Season: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Plenty of spoiler alerts, btw.)
You get a big wallop of changes at the end of Season 3, with Don and Betty divorcing, Betty getting with Henry Francis (who really seems like a nice guy, really), Joan marrying Dr. Harris and consequently shutting things down with Sterling, the unfortunate dismissal of the lovely Sal Romano, and of course, the demise of Sterling Cooper and birth of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. If you think that's a lot to swallow, then you had to hold your head together with all the tumultuous changes, both good and bad, that could make your head explode.
One of the most interesting people to change was Peggy Olson, who I thought became more liberated throughout this last season. She's made great strides becoming the first female copywriter at Sterling Cooper, but she's really grabbed the balls of the company and her life in Season 4. She's much more aggressive with her male co-workers (including a laugh-inducing naked scene with the douchey copywriter Stan), has an ambiguous but fun relationship with the hippyish Joyce, and does not get pushed around as much (except for a pivotal, epic scene in my favorite episode all season "The Suitcase"). The thing is, even at her most abrasive and condescending, I still liked her.
Also, the relationship with Sally and her mother, Betty Draper - how I loathe her - has reached new lows. Obviously, having had pushed away her father and still living in the same house, I can understand how Sally could greatly hate her mom. I guess the biggest change with Sally was just how much more she acted on her impulses, i.e. running away from home, cutting her hair off, et al. I fear that, the more she does this, the more she devolves into being, well, like her crazy-mom. But, it'll be really interesting to see what Sally's bigger role really is in the lives of Betty and Don. Is she just the glue that makes it possible for Matt Weiner to keep Betty's character around? It's not that I don't like that aspect of Don's life, I'm just trying to understand it better.
Even the lives of "other" characters like Lane Pryce & Pete Campbell deserve a second of analysis. Pryce, who I deemed as the "British crony sent to clean up/out Sterling Cooper," has really grown on me. I love his internal conflict of high-brow Victorian sensibility (oh, and getting hit in the face with your father's cane was CLASSIC; I guess that's how they roll in England) and a lust for youthful recklessness. Sleeping with a hooker for $50 a night. Check. Falling in love with a black Playboy bunny in the 1960's. Check. You're the right Pryce (pun fail!). Pete Campbell, another grating, necessary thorn on my backside, has also become more likable (which I don't think is what Vincent Kartheiser would want). He is still the same greedy slimeball of yore, but with a more valid reason to be so -- he is one/fifth of the firm now. Plus, he's a baby daddy twice over, although publicly this time. His changes are more abrupt and obvious, but I love the lingering tension he still has with baby momma number 1, Peggy Olson. And there's not too many sideway, long glances between the two that it's annoying, but just random scenes throughout the season that keep the faint possibility of Pete/Peggy in the back of viewers' minds.
If there's a character as big as any of the partners, it's the firm itself. The show, after all, is about an ad agency. First of all, the real-life events of the '60s serve as an ep's backdrop and even play a big role in the characters' lives; Greg Harris's deployment to Vietnam is the most obvious example. But, the ads and the clients themselves are this show's best vehicles for brilliant narrating that glorious, hazy, and socially-evolving era. From the Samsonite ad that took after the memorable Liston-Clay bout in New York, to the earth-shattering departure of Lucky Strike that led to the brilliant new strategy by Don, every ad in every episode tells a story beyond the storyboard. Especially notable was how Don responded to Lucky Strike firing the agency, because it just gives you a more fascinating view of the present-day reality of smoke-free environments and the severe restrictions on advertising cigarettes.
And, of course, in Season 4, change is spelled D-o-n. I can't possibly go through all my thoughts/opinions when I think of what Don has gone through this season. The whole separation thing, that's child's play and inevitable. The ascent from Creative Director to partner, whatever. It's really what happens with his relationships with different women that gripped me so much this season. I think his personal life kind of forms like a supply-and-demand curve with his business life; I can't explain it another way. He started off the season really at his personal lowest just as his new agency gets off to a fresh, albeit rocky, start. He was sleeping with hookers, for god's sake. He's Don.Freaking.Draper. By the end of the season, just as SCDP is laying off employees to keep the firm afloat, we find Don at a high emotional level, in love and engaged to his secretary. Again, I'm holding all strong cynicism until next season, given this shocker of an ending. He most definitely didn't get to that apex without three strong women this season:
1) Dr. Miller - a sex buddy turned girlfriend?! Who knew Don was capable of such things? But this is the first time I've really ever seen Don be honest about his past with anyone. I don't know if it's because he was trying to sort out through some pent-up issues with a psychiatrist, or if he was really just tired of hiding.
2) Peggy - Just as Dr. Miller is the one woman besides Anna who knows Don's past, Peggy is the only person beside Anna who knows Don's present. You can never remove the possibility of Don and Peggy in a "get to know you, in the biblical sense," but you would never want such a thing to happen. Because what they have is different, and its special. Again, if there's anything that perfectly captures what I'm talking about, it's "The Suitcase" Episode 7.
3) Anna - the one woman who really knew who Dick Whitman was/is. I really, really love the episode wherein we got to see the strong, comfortable, honest relationship between Dick + Anna '64. I like the cool facade that Don always puts on the other 99% of his life, but it is relieving to see him be vulnerable once in a while. It also makes me think that the reason why Don proposed to Megan at the end of Season 4 is, besides the fact that he is in love/lust with her, is that he spent the most meaningful time with her in California where Anna lived. On some level, Megan must've reminded Don of Anna, and he even gave her Anna's engagement ring from Don Draper 1.0. I want to say that means Don Draper (2.0) is ready to address who he really is (Dick Whitman) in the next season.
Or maybe he's just like Sterling, running off with his secretaries. Who's to say? With a mind as good as Matthew Weiner, we can only wait in agony for Season 5 and the exciting odyssey that is the late 1960s.
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