Jaimie Trueblood/AMC Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm on the set of “In Care Of,†the season finale of “Mad Men.â€When a “Mad Men†season begins with references to Dante's “Inferno,†you know that at some point Don Draper is going to be put through hell. Abandon all hope, ye who read any further without expecting to have the season finale of this AMC drama spoiled for you.
In Sunday's episode, Draper (played by Jon Hamm) was finally called to account for the very bad behavior he'd exhibited all year: he was placed on a leave of absence from his job at Sterling Cooper & Partners, following a pitch meeting gone awry; he pulled out of his plan t o move to California, instead offering the opportunity to his rival Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm), but straining his marriage with Megan (Jessica Paré); and his relationship with his daughter, Sally (Kiernan Shipka), never recovered from her discovery that he was having an affair with a neighbor (Linda Cardellini). With no place to go but up, Draper started come clean to his children, and the season ended as he drove them to the house where he grew up as Dick Whitman.
Jaimie Trueblood/AMC Not divine, and not too much comedy: Jon Hamm as Don Draper on “Mad Men.â€As always, Draper's descent - and possible redemption? - is orchestrated by Matthew Weiner, the creator and show runner of “Mad Men,†who directed the season finale and wrote the episode with Carly Wray. Mr. Weiner spoke last week about this episode and the events of the past season, one that elicited a wide range of reactions, some positive and some strongly negative, from longtime viewers. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
The season finale felt like a long-awaited comeuppance for Don, though maybe not the one we were expecting.
Basically, we started the season saying, Society is in revolt. Don Draper is in a place where he has been before, and his anxiety has never been worse because he knows he's been there before. Certain things are conceived as twists â€" you definitely expect Megan to find out about his affair, and it's Sally [who does]. That felt like that would be the worst thing that ever happened to him. His central problem, as you learn more about him, is this childhood and that anxiety of who he is and how he feels about himself and sex, and why he can't get into that life that he wants, and he'd be forced to â€" not necessarily change, but at least the admission of who he is. Looking in the mirror and saying, “Oh, yes, this is who I am.†What a gigantic step for anybody. Most of us never get there.
But there were some strong hints, going all the way back to the doorman's heart attack in the season premiere, that Don was going to die.
Oh, I wanted you to think that Don was the one who was dying. Death can be literal, but death can be a transformation. I don't know if it's my concept of the tarot or what â€" the death card is always about change, and people get scared when they see it. But it's about the death of a condition or a state of things. As things in America, theoretically, go back to the way they were, with Nixon's election and every one of these revolutions and movements for social change being tamped down by the end of 1968, mostly through violence, people turn toward the things that they can change. In the Martin Luther King Jr. episode, a lot of that was about people being driven together by this tragedy instead of being broken apart, and turning to the part that they could control or find joy in. Sally having her image of Don destroyed like this was irreparable. I think he realized that he had to recognize that he was keeping a secret that was destructive for them.
Is Don's marriage to Megan over? Has he lost his job at th e agency?
No. I think his job is what it is. It's a leave of absence. It looks bad. But there has to be some punishment for the way he behaved. Firing their most important client, forcing them into a merger and then waging war on his partner, and the destructive swath that he cut through the agency, killing the public offering and everything else, that cannot go without punishment. The Hershey's meeting has little do with it. You have to be way, way more intrinsic than Don was this season to get away with that kind of stuff.
His marriage to Megan, you'll have to wait and see where that ends. I loved her showing some backbone and I loved her realization that he is the problem. When he went to California and was on hashish, you saw his fantasy version of her, which was her pregnant and tolerant of his philandering, and quitting her job. He's beyond old-fashioned. What he proposes to her in the finale and when he reneges on that, even tho ugh we know it's for more noble reasons that she thinks, I was glad to see her not just roll over and take that. I don't know how much hope there is for their relationship, but I would not take that as a definitive ending.
Where did this season's subplot about Bob Benson and his rivalry with Pete Campbell come from?
We really wanted Pete to have an underling, that there was someone nipping at his heels, but was really, really good with people. Someone who, even without any substance, had a blind affection for Pete, almost an obsession with him. I don't even think it's gay. I think he honestly just loves what Pete represents, because Pete has everything that he wants. I'm not saying that he has not had that kind of experience, I don't know how he knows Manolo. But what I think the American e mployment structure allows for is completely, let's say, unsubstantiated success. [Bob] has lied about everything, and I loved the idea that Pete would find this out and realize that there was no point in going against this guy. Because he had lost this battle with Don, and he was outmatched in some way by someone who was that wily. I'm not saying that Bob doesn't have a diabolical side. You can see it from the finale, that he definitely should not be messed with. [laughs]
The season finale seems to suggest that Bob could be back in further episodes.
I would not say that we'll never see Bob again. We only have one season of the show and I have a lot of people to juggle. But I would love to work with James [Wolk] again. He was fantastic.
So you're committed to the idea that the next season of “Mad Men†will be its last?
I am. I don't know much about it, as a season. But I definitely am committed to that, yes. I can tell you that if you don't want to repeat yourself, a show gets harder and harder, and we're at Episode 78. And I think it's time to come into the home stretch. I am not prepared for it emotionally. And there's been no discussion of anything other than ending it. I am just going to take a couple of weeks off, and regroup, and we will get back in it.
You told me this year that you had stopped reading the online commentary on “Mad Men.†Were you able to maintain that throughout the season?
I really did that. It was better for me. Because I can't get involved in that conversation. I don't have any control over it. All the commenters who are writing about it, it's not a voice that you need in your head. People have found a way to tell me about it, and I've never received such a positive response to the show. The themes of the show this year really seem to capture the mood that people are in right now, which is one of anxiety and the loss of confidence, and fear of the future and a kind of curiosity about what we have to do to not feel this way.
Now that the season is over, will you go back and read what was written? Because the reaction was very polarized. Some viewers really felt that this season had gone off the rails.
I'm not going to look at it. I think that people who are writing about the show while it's actually happening are doing it for themselves, and they should work that out. I have evidence of people saying the show's going off the rails, that nothing was as good as the pilot, when they were watching the “Carousel†speech [from the Season 1 finale]. So I don't know what to tell you. The desire to be discuss ed is being satisfied, and that's what I want. There's no way to talk about this without being defensive. What would you do with the show? I don't know. Where is your show? [laughs] I would say this: A polarized audience is an involved audience.
