You think you’re going
to begin your life over and do it right. But what if you never get past the
beginning again?-Pete
Don Draper is the king of the fresh start.
When he switched the dog tags with the real Don Draper in
Korea. When he told Lane to fire him and the rest of the partners at Sterling
Cooper so they wouldn’t have to go work for McCann Erickson. When he asked Rachel to run off with him to California after Pete found him out. There’s
no problem that cannot be solved by running away and starting anew.
Don’s always been able to live that away but it’s different
when it’s reflected back on him. I would’ve assumed that Diana, the waitress
from last week’s episode played by Elizabeth Reaser, was a one-off designed to
allow Don to reflect back on Rachel. Instead she is back in an even larger role
in “New Business” and reveals she has a bit more in common with Don than first anticipated.
Early on in the episode, after Don has pursued Diana at
another restaurant where she’s a waitress, she reveals that she is from the Midwest and divorced her husband not long after her daughter passed away. Any sympathy
for her situation takes on a different light though when she reveals at the
episode’s conclusion that she also has another daughter who is still alive that
she abandoned. Just like Don, she was unable to deal with the past so she ran.
The difference is that while Don hid the shame of his past
cowardices with a new life that included a high-powered job in advertising and
a family in the suburbs, Diana is living is in a state of self-punishment,
living in a rundown one-bedroom apartment and working as a waitress. She knows what’s she has done and can’t forgive herself.
For Don, he has rarely, if ever in the span of the series,
come across another character who shares his same “hobo code” sensibilities and
maybe it will cause him to further reflect on the choices he’s made as we near
the end. Just like his barren apartment where he stands in the final scene, Don
has amassed a lot of material wealth, but what does he truly have in his life?
He now appears to be finalizing his divorce and we seem to
conclude Megan’s arc on the series (though there were about two or three
episodes last year that I would’ve guessed were her final ones as well).
Jessica Pare has always been a bit of weak link on the show, mostly because she does little to elevate what's already a pretty uninteresting character, and this
week’s episode didn’t really change that.
Megan seems to have done a lot of reflecting on her choices
and after a meeting with Harry seems initially promising but is instead more
evidence of his creepiness, she’s had enough. She seems to view her marriage to
Don as some sort of pact with the Devil, telling him he has ruined her life and
her floundering acting career. But it’s a pact that will likely still keep her
living comfortably (as evidenced by the $1 million check Don hands her) and
maybe her biggest regret, based on her telling her sister that at least their
mother did something about her unhappiness by leaving their father, is not
having gotten out sooner.
I suppose it all sheds more light on Megan and her place in
Don’s life, but I’m not sure all of the machinations, up to and including her
mother spitefully clearing out Don and Megan’s apartment and then calling Roger
to pay the movers, were a necessary storyline with so few episodes left to go.
Back at Sterling Cooper & Partners, Peggy and Stan are
battling it out as we’ve finally reached a point in
Threatened is a new side for Stan to play as he is usually
the cocky, alpha male who always has a wiseass comeback even though he’s been
proven to be all talk in the past. He’s left feeling inferior compared to Pima,
but she’s ultimately a pretentious manipulator who basically plays Stan and
Peggy against each other while flattering them to try and get work.
Some other notes:
*Still no Sally, but the rest of the Francis family show up
in the episode’s opening scene. While
Don looks back poignantly at his family seemingly happy without him, he has no
way of knowing they probably aren’t any happier than he is (Betty seems pleased
with herself and tries to get a reaction out of Don by telling him about her plan to pursue a master’s degree in psychology, but somehow a career of listening sympathetically to other people’s problems doesn't seem like something at which she would excel).
*It was definitely a welcome surprise to see Meredith still working
Don’s desk in last week’s episode and while she seems to be slightly more
competent with her duties, she’s still pretty much a little girl pretending to
be an adult. She also gets one of the funniest lines this week, questioning the
safety of Los Angeles: “How do you go to sleep at night knowing the Manson brothers
could be running around?”
*Not sure what to make of Don and Diana’s elevator ride with
the Rosens. Arnold’s amused reaction to Don being with another woman seemed to simply be him taking digs at Don running around with lots of women now that he
and Megan are divorcing, but Don tells Diana that’s not what that was. I guess
Sylvia’s Catholic guilt could have caused her to tell Arnold everything and now
he’s rubbing it in Don’s face, but not sure.
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