Note: I do spoil what happened in last night’s season 5 finale, so don’t read further if you haven’t watched it yet. Or perhaps skip down to the review portion…
What Happened: The episode begins with Don in terrible pain from a toothache and Megan’s mother (the alternately seductive and bitter Juliette Binoche) visiting them for an unspecified “Easter” that seems to last far longer. The firm is still reeling from the shocking suicide of Lane Pryce in last week’s episode–in particular Joan–but Don never reveals to anyone why Lane did it (i.e. Don caught him embezzling and forced him to resign rather than give him a second chance). Later in the episode, Don pays a visit to Lane’s widow in order to give her 50,000 of the 175,000 life insurance policy that paid out to the firm on Lane’s death, but the chilly encounter leaves Don feeling worse than when he came.
Elsewhere, Pete runs into his ex-mistress (the Gilmore Girl’s Alexis Bledel) again but this time WITH her husband on the train to work. It’s said she’ll be “visiting her mother” (which always seems to be bullshit on this show) but she later calls Pete’s office to meet up with him, and—-during a hotel tryst—-admits she’ll be undergoing electroshock “therapy” for her depression. Towards the end of the episode, Pete meets her post-“treatment” and admits to her (who doesn’t understand anything he’s saying) why he cheated on his wife, and that it isn’t a problem with his marriage so much as a problem with himself that’s always been there. On his way back out to the suburbs, he runs into his mistress’s sleazy husband again, and (after the man insists they go cruising for chicks) calls the man out for his assholish behavior, and the two fight. When Pete gets home, his wife (the underused Alison Brie, better utilized on NBC’s Community) thinks he’s been in a car wreck, and insists he get an apartment in the city…which is what he’s been angling for.
Roger is pretty quiet this episode, but manages to have sex with Megan’s mom again and ends the episode tripping on LSD.
Finally, there’s Don, who’s having visions of his dead brother all episode long seemingly brought on by his toothache but more likely because of guilt over Lane’s death. [Lane hung himself just like his brother did, after both begging for Don’s help.] He’s having to suffer a miserable Megan who can’t seem to land an acting job and feelings of restlessness in his career (the agency is doing so well it considers buying a second floor, but the work is clearly not exciting to Don anymore). He gives into her request to get her the lead in a commercial—-that she originally said she would try to get her friend but instead took it for herself—-and seems to know exactly where this marriage is headed (i.e. Betty) towards episode’s end. [His happiest scene in the finale is running into the recently-quit Peggy at a matinee movie theater.] The cliffhanger final scene involves a woman hitting on Don at a bar, asking “Are you alone?” and him giving her an ambiguous look that could mean he goes back to his adulterous ways after spending this season faithful.
Review of this (and the season): The show’s so often praised, let’s start with what didn’t work. For starters, after the show was criticized for years for not having more diversity among its cast or trying harder to incorporate minority viewpoints of the time period, they made a lot of noise this year by hiring Don’s black secretary, ummm…Dawn. This turned out to be nothing more than tokenism as Dawn had no significant story lines, scenes, or even dialogue. [As many characters talk about her as to her and she’s spoken to ten times more than she actually speaks. You could have replaced her with a black mannequin and gotten the same effect…unfortunately.] We don’t get her viewpoint, thoughts, or feelings at all, and it’s telling that the most significant scene involving Dawn was her sitting in Peggy’s apartment, listening to her complain.
Then there’s no denying that this was the least significant finale they’ve ever had. Although the two episodes before this one featured major changes for the show (Lane’s suicide, landing the Jaguar account, Peggy’s departure to another agency) the actual finale featured nothing as significant as season 3’s ending of Don’s marriage/beginning of a new agency or season 4’s salvation of the agency/surprise engagement to Megan. It’s hard to look at this episode and see a thrilling new direction for the show, as it mostly involves going back to where we were at in season 1 (a thriving agency commercially but not soulfully, Lane not on the scene, Roger having sex with anything that moves, Don cheating, etc.).
Still, all that begin said and considered, it was a strong episode and a fitting ending to a strong season. And all those complaints laid out only show how superior Mad Men is to practically anything else on TV (I still say Breaking Bad is the better show). The fact that I’m able to say this season was merely as good as the others, is actually a very strong compliment when you consider the roster of cable dramas that started out good and grew bad (True Blood, The Walking Dead, Treme) or just as likely started out bad and stayed that way (Shameless, The Killing).
With Breaking Bad ending its run soon, I’ll be the first to admit how necessary Mad Men is to the cable landscape. It shows other dramas what they should be, and the networks (home to the abysmal ripoffs The Playboy Club and Pan Am) what they can never be.