Mad Men recap: season seven, episode 14 – Person to Person (warning: spoilers)

For all the bold theories about how the show might conclude, it ended just as we probably suspected from the last few episodes

Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Mad Men airs on AMC in the US on Sundays at 10pm ET. Do not read on unless you have watched season seven, episode 14 (which airs in Australia on Showcase on Monday 18 May at 3.35pm and 8.35pm and in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Thursday 21 May at 10pm)

‘A lot has happened’ – Don Draper/Dick Whitman

So who had “a happy ending” marked down on their card? A thing like that.

For all the bold theories about how the show might conclude, it ended just as we probably suspected from the last few episodes. With Don on the west coast, finding peace with himself, as the other Sterling Cooper crowd drifted off happily into the 1970s.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conclusion of The Sopranos throughout these past few weeks. Matthew Weiner finessed his craft on a show whose ending still divides audiences (I’d go with masterful, rather than annoying). So we might have expected ambiguity. But, if anything, the last scene of Mad Men was the opposite.

We cut from Don meditating in California to McCann’s most famous advert for the world’s most famous company. In Time and Life, I suggested that if California was Don’s Jerusalem, Coke was an ad’s man’s paradise.

I’d love for that to be the reason why we were played out by I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke but you suspect it’s less our man finding advertising nirvana (he couldn’t care less now) than Weiner coyly pointing out that even as Don found peace, the ideas of love and understanding – the hippy dream by which he did so – would soon be co-opted by the biggest of big businesses. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose … as Roger might say.

But let’s just skip back the the start of the episode. It’s Halloween 1970. Don has made it from Oklahoma to Utah and was channeling his California mechanic period, helping out some young petrolheads on their way to El Mirage Lake. In return for a cash stake to enter them into a race, they dropped Don off in LA. There he called on Stephanie Horton to give her Anna and the real Don Draper’s wedding ring.

Stephanie was heading north to an Esalen Institute-like retreat in Big Sur.

Like Beatrice taking Dante into heaven, she took Don with her and the pair embarked on a number of spiritual classes that Don tolerated in silence, while Stephanie came apart talking about her past.

At first Don took to the classes with a world-weariness. His inability to engage in an exercise where he had to silently communicate with a stranger earned him a violent shove. But after being stranded when Stephanie took off without him, he was persuaded to join a group therapy session.

Then, rather than give Don one last bravura speech – one last Carousel – something strange happened. As we were waiting for Don to take the speaker’s seat, a man called Leonard stood up and began to tell his story. One of being walked past, of not being noticed, not even by his own family. The opposite of Don Draper, but perhaps not of Dick Whitman. Then Leonard told us about a dream (and perhaps helped give some extra clarity as to why closing doors are so important in the show):

I had a dream I was on a shelf in the refrigerator. Someone closes the door and the light goes off. And I know everybody’s out there eating. And then they open the door and you see them smiling. They’re happy to see you but maybe they don’t look right at you and maybe they don’t pick you. Then the door closes again. The light goes off.

With that, Leonard broke down. And Don stood up, joined him, hugged him and broke down too. His peace found. At last.

And then we left him, cross-legged, with his back to the Pacific, the smallest of smiles on his face, as his guru led him into the future with lines that could be either a yogic mantra or the copy for a new TV ad for Seacore Laxatives. Take your pick:

The new day brings new hope. The lives we’ve led. The lives we’ve yet to lead. A new day. New ideas. A new you.”

And after all that speculation, the last scene was on YouTube all along …

‘People just come and go, and no one says goodbye’ – Don/Dick

Woven throughout the episode were a number of crucial phone calls. Two made on a person-to-person basis (in which the call only goes through if you can connect with the named recipient). First Sally called Don to tell him about Betty, then Don called Betty to tell her he was coming home. The moment where he silently told her I love you (“Birdy …” “I know”) took us back to a tender past we’ve barely witnessed.

Then, crucially, Don called Peggy, his protege, his mirror. At first I thought this was him calling to arrange a car (a call-back to The New Girl in which Peggy bailed him out after a car crash). But it wasn’t. It was to say goodbye, to apologise. To tell her (obliquely) about Dick Whitman. And to give the impression that Don might be about to kill himself.

Don: “I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am.”
Peggy: “Don. Listen to me. What did you ever do that was so bad?”
Don: “I broke all my vows. I scandalised my child. I took another man’s name and made … nothing of it.”
Peggy: “That’s not true.”
Don: “I only called because I realised I never said goodbye to you.”
Peggy: “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

Though any worries about Don’s possible suicide were quickly forgotten. Peggy, finally unburdened, jumped straight on on the phone to Stan …

‘There’s more to life than work’ – Stan

Having been staring at him right in the face, Peggy Olson finally found a man worthy of her. And conveniently for a workaholic, he’s within sprinting distance of her office. This felt like the only real misstep here. Peggy going from that conversation with Don to them both quickly declaring their love for each other. It seemed very … un-Peggyish. Un-Mad Men-ish. Perhaps acknowledging that there might be criticism for those expecting Don to drive off into the sunset with Bobby, Gene and Sally (or jumping out of a window), Weiner decided to throw us a bone and finally explode the sexual tension between Stan and Peg.

We left them, ensconced, happy, at McCann. In his penultimate scene Pete (kindly) suggested that in 10 years’ time (ie, the span of another entire Mad Men) she might be a creative director. More like CEO.

‘We won’t answer to anyone’ – Joan Harris of Holloway-Harris

If the happy-in-love endings for Peggy and Roger (who made it to what I presume was Paris with Marie) made you smile, perhaps the happiest of all endings was reserved for Joan.

Having worried that we saw the last of her in Time and Life, we met her and Richard in Key West, having a bump of Richard’s birthday cocaine (the final chapter in Mad Men’s drug odyssey).

Fuelled by latent ambition (and maybe a bit of that coke), Joan – with the help of some divine Cosgrovian intervention – decided she could turn her hand to producing ads. Having worked her way into power, and powered her way out of it, here she could do something on her own. With her name on the door. Or two names.

During the lunch scene when she asked Peggy to be the other, you could almost hear the viewers at home cheering. But, Peggy – ambitious as she is – wasn’t ready and wants to be near Stan. (And doesn’t have $250K in her bank.) But who needs two partners (or an actual partner, the decision to start a business cost her Richard) when you’ve got two names? We left her running Holloway-Harris out of her apartment. Finally in charge. The real thing.

Culture watch

If I’d had to guess which Doors song we were going to hear tonight, I’d say this one. Not Hello, I Love You, which played on the Utah garage stereo.

Kevin was watching a Bert and Ernie Scene in Sesame Street, which began its 46-year run in 1969. Not the first time these two worlds have collided.

Notes

What an extraordinary creative decision to give Mad Men’s final great scene and monologue to an almost unknown actor and a character who made his debut in the last 10 minutes of the final episode. Evan Arnold’s performance as Leonard was irresistible.

Trudie seemed to be channeling Jackie Kennedy circa November 1963 when she and Pete got on the Learjet. Not a great omen.

I was so close, and yet so far, with my Holloway-Olson suggestion ... Holloway-Harris gets me a least a half-mark.

Poor Ken. Despite the Atlantic delving back into its archive to republish his most famous work, he’s now reduced to worrying about being outgunned by the “plastics and packaging”.

Roger and Marie were in bed smoking Du Maurier cigarettes. They taste like “ze shit”.

Don was racing the Dodge through the Bonneville Salt Flats, where Gary Gabelich had just (on 23 October) broken the land-speed record.

If you were a regular reader of the Monterey County Weekly, you might – by process of elimination – have worked out that Big Sur might have had a role to play in this finale. Here’s a NYT piece on the history (and lucrative real estate) of California’s sacred retreats. And another on the Esalen Institute, the most fabled of these.

Devil’s Advocate Alternative Ending Theory: Don’s experience at the retreat didn’t change him at all, instead he mined it upon his return to McCann Erickson and gave the world the most famous TV ad of all time. Forget DB Cooper, is Don Draper really Bill Backer? (No.)

And finally …

Well, that’s it from me, and for Notes from the Break Room. On behalf of the other bloggers – Paul MacInnes, Zoe Williams, Richard Vine and myself – I’d like to thank everyone who’s commented over the past six or so years. And I’m sure we’d all like to thank Matthew Weiner and all the cast and crew of Mad Men for seven wonderful series. I trust we’ll see you here next year for episode one of Holloway-Harris: The Cocaine Years …

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