‘Mad Men’ season 7, episode 12: ACLU stands behind Christina Hendricks’ Joan

Given the cultural relevance of “Mad Men” as a series, we have seen a variety of occasions where various businesses and organizations have used recent events to press forward their own message. The majority of the time, though, it has been businesses trying to capitalize on a story. The most famous one is when Jaguar followed along the story in season 5, which probably had a few scenes in particular they weren’t that thrilled with.

Following last night’s episode, the ACLU actually got involved after the disheartening story for Christina Hendricks’ character of Joan, who moved over to McCann and quickly realized that she was the subject of blatant discrimination due to her gender. She was not allowed control over any of her accounts, and she threatened legal action or contacting the ACLU. Eventually, she decided to just take the $250,000 buyout to pursue other opportunities in her life, however hard that decision was for her to make.

The important thing in this storyline, and the tweet from the ACLU below, is that they help to further shine a light on real issues of discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. While we may be more than four decades removed from the events of the show, discrimination is unfortunately something that still happens.

At the moment, we don’t quite know where the story for Joan is going to go from here. It has been great to see her grow and develop as a character over the years, and we don’t want to see the show end without her being fulfilled. It may be realistic that not everyone gets exactly what they want; maybe the problem is us for watching with an idealistic point of view.