"Faye has so much to offer: smarts, sympathy, insight, lamp-rattling sex, genuine self-sacrifice. But not romance, or at least Don’s fantasy of it. On paper, they seem like a great match — except for the fact that Faye is awful with kids and perhaps requires too much from Don... Faye would like Don to keep doing that hard nitty-gritty work of digging into his past, but he's already thrown out that journal. He’s ready to cannonball into the future... The proposal is rushed, sudden, and ill-informed, plain and simple. All Don knows is that she’s pretty, tall, bad at answering the phones, and that she likes the arts, advertising, kids, and, most important, him. But it's important that she's not just good with kids, but great with kids (a Von Trapp!). And there is that one moment when you see something real. In the diner, Sally knocks over a milkshake and for a split second it’s chaos: Sally recoils, horrified. Don violently jerks his head around to find a waitress. It's like a grenade rolled out onto the table. And then sweet, calm Megan says, “It’s just a milkshake,” defusing the crisis. It’s a strange and brilliant little vignette — the kind of thing that’s almost impossible to describe when you try to explain how much you love Mad Men. And it clarifies that Don is falling in love with Megan, in large part, because she’s not Betty, exploding into rage, or Faye, nervous and freaked out around the kids. She’s not high-strung and unpredictable....Don's sudden proposal was shocking and strange, but it wasn't out of character." — Logan Hill, New YorkThat's not the issue. Ad men marry their secretaries all the time, as roger Sterling could attest; Don Draper is perfectly capable of choosing a flight into fantasy over Miss Sobriety. The question is whether this turnaround was sufficiently dramatised or not. The writers were trying to put a supertanker through 180 degrees in the space of one episode, and then pass off the viewer's whiplash as part of the plan. The makeover of modelicous Megan, who wafts through every scene as if undulating on a heat-wave of her own hotness, into Maria Von Trapp required more than a spilled milkshake. She responds well to the spillage not because she is the polar opposite of Betty, but because the writers spotted an opportunity to make that point. I felt their sticky fingers everywhere. Likewise, I never bought Faye Miller's uncharacteristic failure when it comes to the kids, despite being winner of the 1964 Empath of The Year Award. So the model turned out to be better with kids than the psychologist. If you say so. There was too much of this in the finale, not bad writing exactly, just fur brushed the wrong way, waiting to be brushed back.
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I've had a problem with the dramatization since Sally's tripping at the office. It just seemed too neat a test, especially when Faye virtually screams to the audience, "Hey I just failed a TEST!"
ReplyDeleteMy charitable side thinks the following. Faye's problem is not that she is bad with kids per se, but that she is too concerned with what Don thinks about her. In another words, her extreme self-awareness curdles into self-conscious performance anxiety. When she decides to give Don the Heinz tip, she failed the real test in Don's eyes-- that "spark" of independence and fight that would have told him to get the hell out of her face. Megan, on the other hand, takes control. She says she won't be crying the day after their fling, that "I just want you right now." In other words, she's asserting her desire instead of just waiting on Don.
Don wants more than a mother figure (Anna, Faye) and not a daughter figure either (Betty). He wants a woman who goes after what she wants while remaining cool, graceful, caring toward her family. He wants to reclaim being a dad and husband, with a wife who is just as Draper-smooth as he can be. He wants to fulfill what is expected of him. He is deluded, and the tragedy will soon become apparent.
I am increasingly of the opinion that the viewers voicing their feelings about "what Don Draper should want" or whether he "should" have chosen Faye over Megan are no longer well equipped to serve the show as critics.
ReplyDeleteDon Draper is a tragic figure. He is not a hero. His redemption or path to redemption is no more the obligation of Matthew Weiner than saving the soul of Tony Soprano.
What makes Don Draper an interesting fictional character is that the period in which his flawed character is exercising its existential being-in-the-world is a period that has finally begun to open itself to a full historical, cultural, philosophical, psychological, and sociological set of analyses and perspectives.
Those of us who were alive and aware during that period are familiar with men whose life-choices are reflected in characters like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. History has not treated them well. Why should we expect an exceedingly well written, well directed, and well acted television series to find a heroic masculine soul in all of this?
Matthew Weiner has always sculpted the character of Don Draper to make decisions in his own self-interest. As well he should. Draper is interesting to study because he has a touch more depth and perspicacity than many of the men of his age. (He is certainly less sensitive to the needs of others than any of the women surrounding him.) As well, his open wounds and unique vulnerabilities help to reveal a pattern to the manner in which he solves creative problems and deploys his survival skills. But I think we are deeply mistaken to conflate these wounds and vulnerabilities with any cause for additional sympathy--or with somehow holding some special key to his personal redemption.
Episode after episode we see that Don Draper has the potential to be "so much more" than he is. But that is true of every character who has ever existed--as it is true of each and every one of us. Still, episode after episode I listen to viewers speaking of being "disappointed" by Don Draper (and, thus Matthew Weiner) because he did X instead of Y. (If what people want is a dependable hero, maybe they should watch reruns of "Walker, Texas Ranger.")
The character of Dr. Faye Miller is obviously much more intellectually evolved than Megan. What the finale shows us is that Don Draper chose otherwise. Will he face existential consequences for this choice next season? Of course. No one gets off scot free.
I am increasingly of the opinion that the viewers voicing their feelings about "what Don Draper should want" or whether he "should" have chosen Faye over Megan are no longer well equipped to serve the show as critics.
ReplyDeleteDon Draper is a tragic figure. He is not a hero. His redemption or path to redemption is no more the obligation of Matthew Weiner than saving the soul of Tony Soprano.
What makes Don Draper an interesting fictional character is that the period in which his flawed character is exercising its existential being-in-the-world is a period that has finally begun to open itself to a full historical, cultural, philosophical, psychological, and sociological set of analyses and perspectives.
Those of us who were alive and aware during that period are familiar with men whose life-choices are reflected in characters like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. History has not treated them well. Why should we expect an exceedingly well written, well directed, and well acted television series to find a heroic masculine soul in all of this?
Matthew Weiner has always sculpted the character of Don Draper to make decisions in his own self-interest. As well he should. Draper is interesting to study because he has a touch more depth and perspicacity than many of the men of his age. (He is certainly less sensitive to the needs of others than any of the women surrounding him.) As well, his open wounds and unique vulnerabilities help to reveal a pattern to the manner in which he solves creative problems and deploys his survival skills. But I think we are deeply mistaken to conflate these wounds and vulnerabilities with any cause for additional sympathy--or with somehow holding some special key to his personal redemption.
Episode after episode we see that Don Draper has the potential to be "so much more" than he is. But that is true of every character who has ever existed--as it is true of each and every one of us. Still, episode after episode I listen to viewers speaking of being "disappointed" by Don Draper (and, thus Matthew Weiner) because he did X instead of Y. (If what people want is a dependable hero, maybe they should watch reruns of "Walker, Texas Ranger.")
The character of Dr. Faye Miller is obviously much more intellectually evolved than Megan. What the finale shows us is that Don Draper chose otherwise. Will he face existential consequences for this choice next season? Of course. No one gets off scot free.
I felt the same way about the whiplash (and Faye's implausible inabilities with children, for that matter -- after all, she's so good with Don, and he's a child, isn't he?).
ReplyDeleteThe proposal scene really brought it home for me. It was almost apologetically meta: they knew it was too fast, even for a decision that was supposed to be too fast; and they knew we knew it; so they gave Don and Megan dialogue that was a string of cliches so we'd know this was *supposed* to be a lapse. But even if you believe that the characters were acting in character, the telling of it was ill done. What the heck was Don thinking about at the foot of the bed for all those hours? That's what we care about; showing him briefly staring over her sleeping shoulder out the window at the end is not sufficient. I felt like we lost track of his interiority in a way we had never before, even when he's at his most silent and broody -- and not in an interesting way either. To paper over that with the easy symbolism of his retreat into sunny childishness only makes it worse.
Great post but I'm not sure why everyone's so surprised...in the last episode when Megan came into his office, she suddenly and very specifically started organizing his life with such confidence, that's when it hit me...in fact, I thought I saw Eve Harrington shoot outta Megan at that very moment.
ReplyDelete