# Mad-Men: 6.13 "In Care Of", SEASON FINALE, (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 24, 2013, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748 "2013-06-24T01:42:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/21 "2013-06-24T07:16:23Z")
Bob is going to wind up dead or a partner. They are all con men, but he is the best con man of them all. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/22 "2013-06-24T10:30:48Z")
How much time passed since the prior episode? They pretty much gave up on the “long, hot summer” angle. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/23 "2013-06-24T11:28:34Z")
> [@What\_the](#): > > How much time passed since the prior episode? They pretty much gave up on the “long, hot summer” angle. Yeah, two or three months. August to November. Nixon won – silent majority and all that. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/24 "2013-06-24T12:18:54Z")
I was disapointed that Roger agreed with having Don suspended. If anyone at the office understands Don, I thought it was Roger. Bob is just Don in training. He’s manipulative but is still working on polishing his act and build cred. He’ll be the next partner or fail spectacularly. Glad Pete is going to California. The mooning and the puppy dog eyes through that entire affair with Peggy was vomit inducing. Good riddance Sylvia. Glad she did not appear again. Maybe she’s gone for good. Also, so long Megan (I hope). She stunk up almost every scene she was in. Except for when her mother came to visit. Brilliant character (the mother), brilliantly played. Best line of the episode: “She always did love the sea.” Don’s crisis of conscience… that can’t last, right? ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/25 "2013-06-24T12:31:49Z")
> [@Meltdown](#): > > Was it a suspension or a firing? With no return date and with Duck waiting in the hall to bring up (I’m assuming) Don’s replacement, I thought the “take a couple of months off” carried an implicit “and don’t come back.” Duck is doing recruiting, so that was Don’s replacement he had in tow. Which is why Don commented that he knew who the guy was. I suspect that Duck turned up early just to turn the screws to Don a little more. > [@Voyager](#): > > Bob is going to wind up dead or a partner. They are all con men, but he is the best con man of them all. Well, this is one time he actually _did_ turn out to be a master manipulator. But… it was against _Pete_. I’m not sure I’m impressed at all about outwitting Pete; he normally outwits himself just fine on his own. And Bob’s record for being successfully manipulative isn’t very good. Nice callback to Pete’s ineptitude behind the wheel, though. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/26 "2013-06-24T12:40:46Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Don’s crisis of conscience… that can’t last, right? Eh, they have to bring the character to a close somehow. Having him fess up to his various double lives seems as good a way as any. Maybe the series will end with him turning himself in as a deserter. Also, was Don taking his kids to Albany from NYC by way of Central Pennsylvania? That’s quite the detour just to see the old homestead. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/27 "2013-06-24T12:50:02Z")
Also, doesn’t Pete have his knowledge of Bob’s fake past to use against him? Seems kinda crazy for Bob to fuck with like that. Especially since Pete did kind of have a good reason to be angry, with Bob’s friend murdering his mom and all. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/28 "2013-06-24T12:59:07Z")
I think we’re meant to infer that Pete, like Don, has been temporarily defeated by life, and has given up on scheming. Don accepted his exile and fessed up to his kids. Pete accepted his failure at GM and is going to Cali. I’m not sure if Roger & Joan fall into that theme, too. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/29 "2013-06-24T13:13:57Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > I was disapointed that Roger agreed with having Don suspended. If anyone at the office understands Don, I thought it was Roger. Roger pulled Don’s drunk/stoned ass out of a swimming pool before Don drowned. When you consider the season as a whole: Don unilaterally killing Jaguar, Don killing the public offering (Vicks as well but just Jaguar was probably enough), Don’s bizarre behavior with St. Joseph’s and Hersey, habitually late to meetings or entirely absent, etc he goes beyond the business style drinker who maybe has too many once in a while and has turned into a liability for the company. Those weren’t all liquor related but the arc this season has been Don’s destructive behavior and it affecting not only his life by SC&P. I could see Roger agreeing to a suspension as both a friend and concerned party with SC&P. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/30 "2013-06-24T13:15:34Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > Duck is doing recruiting, so that was Don’s replacement he had in tow. Which is why Don commented that he knew who the guy was. Did anybody else find the double meaning of “Going down?” a little blunt? I loved Pete and his brother’s “Spare no expense in learning what happened to her… and by spare no expense we mean ‘up to a hundred dollars’” attitude with their mother. Of course her death probably wasn’t the most devastating news they ever received. I kept expecting her to walk into her empty apartment after her sons had looted it. It seemed more like a penultimate episode than a finale to me. The show’s never really ended a season on a cliffhanger but usually there’s something a bit more dramatic than this. Roger’s daughter is Varuca Salt all grown up and married, isn’t she? If Don were asked to remove himself from the company, wouldn’t he have to be bought out? Or, meanwhile, wouldn’t he still be earning a share of the firm’s profits? I think the little boy in a whorehouse eating a Hersheys would have been a surefire Clio, up there with the Mikey and “My baloney has a first name” kids. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/31 "2013-06-24T13:26:56Z")
I’m not sure what exactly it was that changed Don’s mind about going to California. Ted wanted to go to start over with his family and Don basically said, “Sorry pal, you’re too late; I’m going.” The next scene Don scuttles Hershey and then tells Ted that he (Ted) can indeed take the CA gig. Don doesn’t want to start over? Get away with Megan and make a better life? His time in the drunk take and his self assessment of being out of control led him to want to go to CA. What exactly changed? Also, I must have missed the significance (if any) of the ending. Unless he said something to his kids offscreen about it being a whorehouse or explaining his foster family situation, to the kids it was probably just an old house. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/32 "2013-06-24T13:29:38Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I loved Pete and his brother’s “Spare no expense in learning what happened to her… and by spare no expense we mean ‘up to a hundred dollars’” attitude with their mother. Of course her death probably wasn’t the most devastating news they ever received. I kept expecting her to walk into her empty apartment after her sons had looted it. It was funny. The whole story arc was pretty bad though and it felt like Wiener just decided he was bored and didn’t know what to do to end it so… yeah, sure, off a boat and eaten by sharks. That’ll work. It’d work better if we were watching _All My Children_. > [@](#): > > It seemed more like a penultimate episode than a finale to me. The show’s never really ended a season on a cliffhanger but usually there’s something a bit more dramatic than this. The previous couple seasons ended in a way that could have ended the series: the SC Heist with them all in the hotel room and the Jaguar contract with them standing in the new office expansion space. This felt, like you said, unfinished. Like “Ok, that was it? What happens next week?” ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/33 "2013-06-24T13:33:47Z")
> [@divemaster](#): > > I’m not sure what exactly it was that changed Don’s mind about going to California. Ted wanted to go to start over with his family and Don basically said, “Sorry pal, you’re too late; I’m going.” I think Don realized that this wasn’t for Ted so much as it was for Ted’s kids. Refusing Ted would lead to another broken home (remember Betty’s comments regarding Sally). Ted let on that his father was an alcoholic and I think it implied that Ted had shit in his childhood too except he was trying his best now to make it work. Don wanted to let someone have the chance to save something rather than just trying to pick up the pieces. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/34 "2013-06-24T13:35:33Z")
It was an old house in a shitty neighborhood in a crappy part of the country. That was the intro to him starting to tell his story to the kids. Prior to that they didn’t know a thing. This in comparison to having seen the mansion and fancy area where Betty grew up. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/35 "2013-06-24T13:35:42Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > I think we’re meant to infer that Pete, like Don, has been temporarily defeated by life, and has given up on scheming. Don accepted his exile and fessed up to his kids. Pete accepted his failure at GM and is going to Cali. I’m not sure if Roger & Joan fall into that theme, too. I guess, but it’s not like Bob knows that. Seems kinda crazy of him to antagonize Pete when Pete 1) can expose him as a fraud 2) has a not terrible case that he’s an accessory to murder 3) is kinda sorta his boss. Especially since Pete actually has a pretty decent reason to be angry for once. Anyways, it was a really good episode, but it felt kinda like they tried to cram two episodes worth of stuff into the last half of this episode, making it hard to figure out what was going on. Pete is apparently going to CA with Ted, but that was never really explained. Don is being suspended and Peggy is covering his job, but then maybe they’re replacing him (can they even fire a partner without consulting him, and it seems unlikey Roger and Cooper would vote to fire Don without even talking to him first, or even that Ted would do so given that Don just kinda fucked up his own life to help Ted out)? Bob is in Detroit starting a new position, but three days later manages to be in Joan’s apartment in NYC for Thanksgiving. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/36 "2013-06-24T13:39:51Z")
I guess they’d want a sales guy on Sunkist 24/7 for $8 million in billings just like GM wanted a local guy. But no one mentioned it for the first 50 minutes of the episode and, until then, it was “Blah, blah one desk…” This leaves SC&P with Cosgrove, aside form any no-name sales guys they might have. Who, a month later, is still a cyclops. Edit: Also, they have Harry out there. You’d think he’d be the local Sunkist “guy”. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/37 "2013-06-24T14:10:59Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Glad Pete is going to California. The mooning and the puppy dog eyes through that entire affair with Peggy was vomit inducing. I think you mean Ted was mooning over Peggy. But Pete and Ted are both going. I hope next season doesn’t turn into _NCIS_ –\> _NCIS: Los Angeles_ > [@](#): > > Also, so long Megan (I hope). She stunk up almost every scene she was in. Except for when her mother came to visit. Brilliant character (the mother), brilliantly played. No kidding! Megan is becoming increasingly grotesque as time goes by. > [@Jophiel](#): > > I think Don realized that this wasn’t for Ted so much as it was for Ted’s kids. Refusing Ted would lead to another broken home (remember Betty’s comments regarding Sally). Ted let on that his father was an alcoholic and I think it implied that Ted had shit in his childhood too except he was trying his best now to make it work. Don wanted to let someone have the chance to save something rather than just trying to pick up the pieces. Bingo! I believe this is exactly correct. > [@hajario](#): > > It was an old house in a shitty neighborhood in a crappy part of the country. That was the intro to him starting to tell his story to the kids. Prior to that they didn’t know a thing. This in comparison to having seen the mansion and fancy area where Betty grew up. This, too. Sally actually looked at Don with curiosity… she’s right: she didn’t know anything about him. Neither does anyone else. I also hope next season isn’t all about Don’s rehab. And BTW: \*moreJoan-moreJoan-moreJoan!! \* There’s an excellent reelyreely LONG article in the _[Huffington Post.](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/mad-men-finale_b_3480900.html?ref)_ > [@](#): > > …Much as we can rag on Don for not growing or changing enough to suit our modern-day obsession with spiritual and personal evolution, he did make some big moves recently. You could say they were too little, too late, but aren’t these attempts at honesty better than nothing? He’s arrived at an almost grown-up truce with Betty. He was truthful in the Hershey meeting. He tried to solve a problem by moving to California, then he realized that would be a huge mistake. He was honest with Megan about that mistake, as soon as he realized it was a mistake. He showed his kids where he grew up. > > Yes, he’s still a lying, cheating, broken man, but, er, points for effort? … > > …And no matter what, thanks to Jon Hamm’s ability to convey aching vulnerability, vast reservoirs of pain and a desire to somehow be a better man despite Don’s selfish jackass tendencies, we’ll never be able to look away. … Lots more in this (did I mention?) LONG article. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/38 "2013-06-24T14:18:49Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Edit: Also, they have Harry out there. You’d think he’d be the local Sunkist “guy”. Harry is a media buyer. He doesn’t do creative, and he’s not the guy handling the client. Ted would be doing creative, and Pete presumably would be handling the client. … I just realized, this probably means a series of “Pete’s drug hallucination hijinks in California” episodes next season. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/39 "2013-06-24T14:30:54Z")
Loved this episode. Will post more thoughts later, but as always I’d like to remind everyone to check out [Alan Sepinwall’s review](http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/season-finale-review-mad-men-in-care-of-both-sides-now), which is always a good read, and also he’s posted a [post-season interview w/ Matt Weiner](http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/mad-men-creator-matthew-weiner-on-dons-confession-bob-bensons-origin-and-more-from-season-6) that’s pretty interesting, especially this bit about how Weiner views the creative work Don’s been doing this season (I know a lot of posters here felt that Don’s work had been slipping and that he didn’t do any decent creative this season, Weiner sees it completely the other way around): > [@](#): > > **Sepinwall:** Relating to Don’s behavior, he was behaving erratically, missing meetings, making unilateral decisions that hurt the firm. But what I also noticed was that even when his pitches were good, they involved specifically omitting the product. The Royal Hawaiian and Diamondhead are not in that ad, the ketchup is not in the Heinz ad, the car doesn’t appear in his Vega teaser ad. Was there something specific to that? Was Don already disengaging from the game at that point? > > **Matthew Weiner:** That’s a very interesting analysis. It’s hard for me to explain this, but Don’s ads this year are spectacular. That omission is actually kind of an expression of creative genius. It is where things are going. It is the way advertising will be in 1975. You just have to talk the clients into it. The idea of how do you draw someone’s attention in when you live literal photography and you can scream at them with the product bigger and more accurately than ever, is something they’re struggling with. I don’t want people to think Don is off his game. The clients are a little behind. That’s the way they should see it. What they should really think about is that he ruined a public offering, he fired their most important client, he impulsively forced them into a partnership merger and then went to war against their partner. That’s why he has the leave of absence. I don’t think there should be any doubt that he is at the height of his abilities. The great thing about Don, and part of the contrast with Ted, is Don is not a fad-ist. Don is still operating from his own relationship with the product, which is more timeless. Despite trends in humor, photography and everything else that’s going on in what the advertising agency’s self-proclaimed creative revolution, Don’s advertising, I think, is still great advertising, and probably better than a lot of the advertising that is getting sold. His understanding of television is the reason they got Sunkist, you know? > > That’s a really interesting analysis, though. What I found out there is that there is a style to what Don pitches, and it didn’t even occur to me. It’s constructed by so many people here at our fake agency. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2013, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748/40 "2013-06-24T14:31:51Z")
Well, I assumed Harry over Pete. I know they’d still want local creative. I only thought it because (A) Harry does client relations (as he went on about when he got the big ad buy and demanded a partnership) and (B) Pete going to LA stretches the SC&P sales force to almost no one in the NY office. You know, the office that serves most of their clients. You can hire more people but the only one with a relationship to the clients is Cosgrove. Who is literally being slowly destroyed by the industry. I’m not sure there’s enough to do in LA for a dedicated full time sales guy unless the expectation is to actually grow a west coast division. But the only ones with that dream seem to be the ones who want to go there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mad-men-6-13-in-care-of-season-finale-open-spoilers/661748.md?page=3)