Just in time to rekindle viewers' interest, Mad Men gets back on track for one last season, revisiting its steady, deliberate pace and style on its way to a sure-to-be-compelling climax. Note: Mad Men's 14-episode final season has been split into two parts, much like its powerhouse network AMC did with the last season of its other flagship drama Breaking Bad to milk it out another year, returning this year for the second half, which is all I have reviewed here.
"Severance"
Mad Men took the jump into the 1970s after taking audiences from 1960 to 1969 in just seven years as it began its final stretch of episodes before the finale. There's a feeling that creator Matthew Weiner isn't quite grasping just how little airtime he has left for his advertising saga as he shoehorned in dream sequences and the death of a minor character at best from seasons ago. I am, however, on a positive note, glad that Don Draper (the brilliant Jon Hamm, who still criminally has yet to win an Emmy) is back at the forefront of the show that began as primarily his story, as in recent years he's taken a backseat to supporting characters like Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) to develop - not that there's anything wrong with that, they are great characters and two of my personal favourites.
But at the end of the day, it's Don's show. That's how it began and that's how it should end. This week's focus on Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) as he lost his job and discussed moving away to become a novelist with his wife indicated to me that due to this small handful of episodes left with so many things left to wrap up (Don's home life past and present being a father, pseudo-stepfather and ex-husband to two women, and his wartime experiences under a different name, to name a couple), that this would be Ken's farewell to the series, and that bright-looking future for a character who's been an aspiring writer and unhappy with a career in advertising since the very first season. But alas, it was buildup to a larger arc where he'll make the lives of his betrayers at Sterling Cooper & Partners a living hell. Whether or not they can wrap all this up in time for the finale remains to be seen, but it looks like they're trying to do too much. but as far as style goes, which is this slick drama's key selling point and main draw for viewers in need of something visually striking, this was a solid (re)opener that hit the mark.
"New Business"
Peggy's newfound love interest from last week that seemed to be setting up her arc for the rest of the season went completely unmentioned this week, and with this week's focus on smaller and unnecessary characters like Stan and his infatuation with Mimi Rogers' guest-appearing art mogul, and Megan's extended family dealing with her divorce, as well as a distinct lack of such main cast members as, say, Don, Peggy, Joan, Roger, Pete etc. whose stories are still open-ended.
Overall, it was a relatively passive and unneeded episode, especially considering there are only five left until the end. On the other hand, I am intrigued by Don's newest mysterious romance with Diana. We've neither seen her nor heard of her at all but the man himself is sure he knows her from somewhere. I'm sure that's all leading up to some big event in the finale that will hopefully both shock viewers and offer them some closer. As for Pete, Roger, Joan and the rest of Sterling Cooper & Partners (as it's now called after various name changes over the years), they've yet to have much go on for them. I know Weiner and his crew want the show to feel more like real life than a drama, and in real life nothing big and dramatic happens just like, for the most part, nothing big and dramatic happens on Mad Men. But something has to happen at least. This is the final season, after all. We're never going to see these characters again, you'd think Weiner would've wanted to leave the dedicated followers who avidly viewed his show for the past eight years of their lives with something. Well, hope is out that he does want that and I'm just being paranoid. Maybe the plan is to escalate things from wrapping up smaller characters to wrapping up bigger characters, culminating in wrapping up Don in a big, epic finale.
"The Forecast"
Despite a title that would have you assume it sets off the path for what's the come in the final four chapters of the Mad Men story, this week was more of the same pattern of showing what smaller, more minor characters are up to without even actually wrapping them up. No mention of Diana or Don's vague story arc. Just a ton of Sally, which would've been OK if she did anything more than use the F word after Pete foreshadowed it saying "a four-letter word beginning with F." That's another thing, the F word's been creeping in a lot lately. The fact that Matthew Weiner originally tried time and time again to get his show to HBO shows that he probably planned to use that word and more a lot more with the unrestricted language allowances on premium cable. When the show finally found a home at AMC, he had to abide by their strict one-f**k-per-season rule that Breaking Bad was also subjected to. I've always thought the toned-down, clean language made the show so classy. Now that he's using the show's popularity to his advantage and they've loosened the reins on the cursing rule, it's sacrificing some of the class. It's more realistic to have the characters swear, as people swear in real life, but I've always seen Mad Men as replicating the style of films made in the period it's set, at a time when swearing in films was highly uncommon, so it's losing that aspect too.
There was some romance for Joan (Christina Hendricks) this week, which I liked to see even though her new man is kind of demanding and bigheaded and she deserves better. Joan has always been one of my favourite characters as she's a woman in the 1960s who stands up for herself and has fought to become one of the leading partners of a major New York advertising firm. At the time, a successful businesswoman was rare, and that's what makes Joan so great. She's one of few upstanding, strong female characters on TV today (among the likes of Game of Thrones' Daenerys, The Walking Dead's Michonne, Maggie, Sasha, Tara and Carol, Girls' Hannah Horvath, and Mad Men's own Peggy), and she's wasted on this A-hole, but she seems to like him, so I digress. As long as Joan's happy, I'm happy. Creepy Glen (played by Weiner's nepotistically cast son whose name escapes me) makes a return as he is shipped off to the Vietnam War. I never really cared for Glen but Sally always liked him (inexplicably) so her emotional response was interesting to watch. At first she was angry, then made the transition to sympathetic, which she played well. Also, Don flirting with a sixteen-year-old was a tad unnerving."Time & Life"
This week's minor character getting fleshed out before the end: Trudy Campbell. While I love Community's Alison Brie and was happy to see her return, I'm becoming increasingly nervous about the end of the series. Can they wrap it up in time and pull off a successful ending by wasting this much time on the small characters? I'm still holding out on that one, and I'm desperately trying to trust that Weiner has some big plan to pull over everyone's heads right at the end effectively. But it's possible that won't happen, and every week it seems more and more likely it won't happen.
Pete and Trudy had a sort-of reunion, and we saw Pete's good side. This was a fantastic development, one of those moments they keep pulling out of the bag that suspends my faith that the series will go out with a bang. For eight years, Pete Campbell has been the laughing stock of the office, the village idiot at Sterling Cooper who is talked about behind his back. Here, we saw him standing up for Trudy's honour to a petty dean, and it made us stop mocking him and for once like him as a character. Plus, we caught a glimpse of the show's signature historical accuracy in that Trudy is treated as a pariah in her neighbourhood, and looked down on for being a single mother. Nowadays, being a single mother isn't a problem, and is in fact considering brave and noble. But back then, if famously accurate Mad Men is to be believed, they were disrespected. This not only educated us in 1970s history but also gave Trudy some drama to play around with before she bows out. Meanwhile, Ken kept his promise of screwing SC&P as he changed his mind back and forth on campaigns during a meeting with Pete and Don, but that's a subplot we could've gone without. I just wish Ken had left SC&P with his head held high, moved away with his wife, and become a writer. That would be a nice end for his character and get rid of him to make way for the bigger cast.
There was a glimmer of something bigger as McCann absorbed SC&P, and we saw Don's idyllic life come crumbling down as he lost his home, now his job, and failed to make an impact with one of his signature presentations. And he can't get in touch with Diana. And he walked in a gay couple getting intimate in a drunken attempt to locate her. And he and the other SC&P partners couldn't spin the news of the absorption in a positive light, causing the crowd of employees they'd gathered to disperse. They usually win, but for the first time they've lost. And this was touched on when Don was accused of being too handsome to suffer consequences for any of his actions, and until now, that was true. But now consequences are dawning, and hopefully this will keep growing for episodes to come, culminating in a tragic finale. But hey, I couldn't write Mad Men.
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