‘Mad Men’ season 7, episode 1 analysis: Don Draper leaves himself in the cold
Welcome to our weekly “Mad Men” analysis piece! While we weekly episode reviews for the AMC hit, there is no doubt that this is a show as complex as they come. Sometimes, things need a little more time to incubate than the a window for a review provides.
Every week, we’ll dive in here to one scene, theme, or topic related to the previous episode, and we begin here with a question: Is Don Draper really left in the cold?
One of the longest-standing themes of “Mad Men” is of the artificial world. The show revolves around a business that convinces people to purchase things they don’t really need, and almost tries to brainwash them to make it happen. For many years, you had a man working there under a false name with a false past, and with a wife who he has crafted a false relationship with. Even when Megan knew where Don came from, she still doesn’t know everything about Sylvia … or now Lee Cabot, the mystery woman on the airplane who Don forged a quick connection to.
The episode ended with a (literally chilling scene) of Don sitting outside in the New York winter, allowing himself to be enveloped by the temperature and the nasty rain / snow mix. This is his world now: Lonely, distant, and cold. He gets along best with a woman he doesn’t know on an airplane, and his own wife is hesitant to be intimate with him, a sign of the growing emotional distance between them. He is even delivering ideas artificially still to SC&P via freelancers, and keeping up appearances with a salary he is not earning.
Can you have sympathy for Don’s present state? It all depends on whether or not you believe that Don is someone who can cope. Is his Princess Else – “the cold doesn’t bother me anyway” state just who he is, or who he is choosing to be? If it’s the latter, then he’s done this to himself. There is always an easy way out of it, such as moving to Los Angeles himself, or not trying to stake some sort of artificial ownership of Megan’s place with a TV set, a way to better distance himself when he is there under the guise that it is a gift for her.
For a brief glimpse at the end of season 6, it seemed like Don was finally ready for the spring in his life. He welcomed his children into a tiny sliver of his world that he has previously hidden. Now, it feels more like that was one of those warm fronts in March that makes you feel like the worst is over, when there is half a foot of snow on the ground the next morning.
The other evidence to suggest that this is really all on Don’s power of choice is Pete Campbell, who seems to be skipping around in summertime now in Los Angeles with a Realtor who he is awfully close to. Don could start over, or at least try to get a clean slate and realize that he’s created this blizzard for himself. Maybe he will in the next few episodes, but if he doesn’t, this show will end up with him being buried in an avalanche.
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Photo: AMC