It’s hard to know how seriously people have taken the image. They do go on and on about it, and speculate endlessly about suicide, and comment whenever an elevator or a balcony or a window is part of a scene. As a joke it went into “Hi, Opal” status years ago. After eight years it’s harder and harder to believe they’re just joking.
You can say that the entire series has shown Don in free-fall through his life. When he became Don Draper he stepped off a metaphorical edge. He’s tried to escape that life many times, by wanting to run away to California, by leaving his wives, by sabotaging clients. Each previous attempt left him sitting on that bench, as at the opener close.
The series is really ending this time. It’s not life, it doesn’t has to conclude with death. It needs to conclude, though. The Sopranos taught Weiner that. This episode comes closest to the feeling of the opener of any so far. I think that’s deliberate. All the side stories are window dressing. Don’t take your eye off of Don.
Really? He said that last year he was worried about the company going under and/or he being fired. He’s bounced back quite a bit from that. And he did fail as a human being - no doubt about that. But looking into the future he is trying to find a different path. And pushing back on those whose goals are to follow his old path.
The apartment was crap. But Don’s brilliance as an adman was not in selling great products, it was finding a way to sell crap products. He gave the real estate agent a hook that she could use to sell his crap apartment, and it apparently worked. And quickly. If Wiener is trying to show Don as a continued failure, being stuck in that place - which is trashed due to things he has done - would be a symbol of his failure. Him escaping it is a symbol of him moving beyond his failure.
He told the creative guy to find his own solution, and gave him an example. The Creative guy instead of solving the problem copied what Don did - the old Don. And failed.
If someone with a mentor does exactly what the mentor did to succeed, that person is guaranteed to fail. A mentor who says do exactly as I did is a bad mentor. Don didn’t do that, he even suggested a less intense solution. He might become a good mentor - too early to know.
We’ll see how it goes. But Don was working harder at this assignment (despite being interrupted) since the stuff he did the first season. No booze. No women. And an assignment which he realizes is harder than coming up with a good selling point. He might be alienating - but in the sense of “don’t limit your hopes to within these walls. I did, and it was terrible.” He pushed Peggy into having a real dream, something creative, not just a higher level job.
Don has been at zero already. Drunk. Forced out of his job. Divorced again. If this story has a normal arc, he should be heading up from here. And this episode makes me think he is, and realizes how bad it was. Finally. And is doing something about it, like rejecting the booze.
One more thing. Sally of course still sees Don as he used to be, not as he has become. But Don tells her that though she is beautiful, she needs to be more than that. (Remember - he just got told he is nothing but a handsome empty shell - which is not even close to being correct.) Betty is pretty much a beautiful empty shell, though maybe she is about to change also. Don doesn’t want Sally to be like that.
Don is flawed but not evil. Weiner on Fresh Air sounded kind of surprised that Don is hated so much. Maybe he is fooling up, but it is certainly possible that Don is going to be redeemed by the end of the show.
That sure is quite a contrast between how Joan & Peggy dress for business trips.
There’s sparsely furnished and there’s completely empty (or worse, patio furniture in the living room is pure white trash), and hug wine stain in the bedroom is sad in any decade.
You are putting the best possible interpretation on Don’s actions. I’m asking people to look at it another way.
I can’t believe that Don will be redeemed. What could that possibly mean? Redeemed with Betty and Sally? Redeemed with Peggy? Get the Nobel Peace Prize? Discover a cure for lung cancer that can be administered by chain-smoking cigarettes?
*Redeemed *might mean something as simple as curbing some of his tendencies toward self-destruction. Nothing earth-shaking or complicated. Taking his role as a parent seriously. Taking his role as a mentor seriously. Refraining from bedding *every *willing woman who crosses his path. Cutting back on drinking (don’t see him ever being abstinent). He has already taken some baby steps when he sort of stopped running from his past.
<Luke> There is good in him. I can feel it. </Luke>
Being redeemed does not mean that everyone he has wronged in the past suddenly forgives him. It means that he is on a good and sustainable path going forwards.
Don’s sex addiction come from, in part, a deep dissatisfaction with who he is. He seems to have gotten over that. When the real estate agent comes in and finds him naked in the bed, there is no sexual tension at all. I bet that would have been different in a previous season. I’ve already mentioned him rejecting alcohol in this episode.
Don’s previous conquests were models, department store magnates, the wives of doctors and famous comics. Last week he chased a waitress, and discovered that she had committed the unpardonable sin of abandoning her child. Maybe that is what turned him around.
Redemption for Don is going to be him being happy with himself. We’ve already seen him talking about his real past, so that part is done. He has started to delegate creative to those younger than him. He has no problem with Peggy wanting his job - he just thinks she should want something more than that.
Anakin being redeemed doesn’t bring back the people Vader killed. So erasing all the blots on Don’s life is too much to ask for.
It won’t happen, but I’d love for the last episode to have Don and Peggy getting together, in a relationship based on creative respect and not lust. That would be awesome.
On preview: I agree with ThelmaLou also. I wrote too slowly.
This is an inappropriate nitpick. I’ve been a journalist since the late 1980s, when some places were still using actual metal type in printing. “Lede” and “ledd” are industry jargon developed for a particular purpose in the production process. When we are writing content—that is, something that’s meant to be read by people, like a message board post—we spell them both as “lead.”
