Mad about ‘Mad Men’ season 7, episode 8: Don Draper’s ghost story
It is in this spot that we tend to enjoy writing previews for Sunday night shows, but the conundrum that comes along with “Mad Men” is somewhat simple: How can you preview an episode without actually knowing anything about it? To date, what we have is a coy promo and a super-coy synopsis.
Therefore, we are using this space instead once a week to travel down the path of the past, a move that both Don Draper and the series itself use in equal measure much of the time. This is a reflective show in so many ways. It is not afraid to revisit old ground, but do so in a new way. It is different than the crime procedural, who puts the same stories in new packages and suddenly delivers them to you with “hey, it’s new!” aplomb. This series does the opposite: It brings you something new in a familiar package, and then allows you to generate the excitement for yourself.
Such is the story of Rachel Menken a.k.a. Rachel Katz, a woman who by some measure we had forgotten due to the sands of time. Why would we suddenly want to see Maggie Siff on the series again? No one was begging for it, but at times series creator Matthew Weiner seems to understand more of what we need as viewers, and what Don needs as a character, five moves ahead. Don needs a way to remember; he needs a way to attach. This is a man who has spent his life in many way haunted by ghosts, but not necessarily in the way that you would think.
Is Don haunted in a sense by his childhood, or his life as Dick Whitman before the name change? We don’t see so much specific people turning up in his dreams. We don’t see him being haunted so much either by Betty or Megan Draper, or by clients who got away or friends that he once had. Instead, his ghost is regret, the man that he could have been if he was not so spent questioning his manhood. Don’s whole fascination surrounding the death of Rachel was in many ways about himself. He wanted to understand how she was able to move so much ahead in life since he last knew year, and yet fail to deliver the same results himself. He had chances to be a good husband, a good father, a guy those around him could trust. Why let that fall apart? It is something within the inner workings of his brain, a rip in his confidence or a disconnect between what he needs and what he thinks that he needs, that allows him to sabotage. He wants to be good enough, but never feels like he is. It consistently entertains us how Don is in many ways looked upon by those from the outside as this sort of emblematic figure of manhood, when he is a very weak character striving for a life he could have, but one he repeatedly takes away right when it gets close.
For a man like Don, he will most likely forever continue chasing these ghosts. We felt for the longest time that he would change and that the amalgam of small moments in his life would produce the shift, but they did not. They only made it clearer that emotional changes in his life are transient and ghostly in their own way. We longer believe that Don is a man who can find happiness, mostly because he will never let himself find it. Instead, he’ll search for the quick-fix, the waitress who looks somewhat like Rachel and gives him that temporary high, the only one that he feels like he deserves.
We’ll be back tomorrow with another overall review of “Mad Men” 7×09. You can read all of our news, including an archive of stories now, over at the link here. Also, sign up today to score some additional TV updates on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: AMC.)