Okay, so it has been a while since I have done one of these updates regarding Mad Men.
Truth be told, I have been enjoying this season immensely so far. Each of the characters has been going through very rough times, and each in their own way, have been pushed to the limits.
At the end of season 6, Don had just lost the stability of his job. He had not outright lost his job, exactly. In fact, his situation was ideal in some sense (at least, most of us would consider it ideal). He does not have to show up for work, has no specific date that he is supposed to report back to work, yet he still receives pay. Plus, he is still a partner, and the firm would owe him quite a bit of money if they were to outright let him go.
Don is wrestling with demons. As ideal as that set up might sound, the ambiguity regarding the whole job stability is really killing him. Although he is not (yet) having to deal with serious financial issues, he clearly does not know how to make the most of his time, obviously. And, of course, he is wrestling with his drinking problem, which is growing very serious. It is what got him in trouble at work, and is what had made things rocky in his marriage. He knows that he needs to get in under wraps, but is struggling with this.
That is how this season opened up, and it is the same situation that he is dealing with even after he gets back to the firm. You almost wondered what he was thinking, signing the contract of some tough terms that a man with the ego that Don has suddenly will be forced to cope with, answering to Lou, his apparent new boss (even though Don himself is a partner). Don is in a subordinate position, for the first time in the show's history, really. And if he screws up at all, he loses his partner status, and the funds attached to that, which means that he really has to walk the tight rope. So, when his drinking (at work, no less!) comes very, very close to getting him into trouble again, we begin to see the seriousness of the situation, and what he faces.
Peggy is still trying to make do, rebounding from a broken heart, and trying her best to cope. Her life is not what she wants it to be. She has looked for love, for a partner, and we found out in the last episode that she has reached the age of 30, and still not found it. She is a mother, technically. But she certainly does not fit the mold of a typical, or even ideal, mother. She is a working woman with a career, but she still struggles to be taken seriously in a work environment still dominated by professional men. And now, with her and Don on more equal terms than ever before, she has struggled to try and get him to comply and be a team player, when he takes it as an affront to be so reduced.
In this last episode, we see that she is really struggling with the old stigmas regarding Don. She has come up with what seems, for all intents and purposes, to be a great idea and presentation. But when Pete suggests, almost passively, that Don should give the delivery, with Peggy coming in towards the end to assume the mother role in their advertising campaign, she feels threatened, and seems less than thrilled. Also made clear in the last episode, Peggy is becoming what we would, these days, call a "workaholic". She is perhaps escaping her unhappiness in her personal life by busying herself at work, and seems almost surprised that more people are not on board, and want to have lives of their own separate from the office.
After quite a while with tension between Peggy and Don, we see them finally in a friendly capacity once again in this last episode, with Don being the only one who goes to the office (other than Peggy) to try and get some work done. Like Peggy, he is trying to escape the demons of his personal life - Megan has just returned to Los Angeles (there is a great scene where we see both Bonnie and Megan, oblivious of the connection that they have, both lost in their thoughts, both feeling lonely and miserable and lost in their thoughts, wordlessly). Don's marriage is clearly rocky, although it may or may not survive, it's hard to tell. Also, he feels unhappy with his life, although he is trying to bring work back to a comfort zone. They see each other, and sit down and talk in the office. Before long, they are talking like old friends, which they in fact are. And when Sinatra's "My Way" comes on the radio, Don invites her to dance to it.
Pete is living in Los Angeles, and he seemed to be really enjoying himself. He has his new girlfriend, Bonnie, who really seems to like him (almost surprisingly). So, he lives in sunny California, has a decent job, and a beautiful girlfriend who wants to make a new life together. Everything is ideal, at least on the outside. But we catch glimpses of him being the overly ambitious jerk that he was earlier in the series, back when it was supposed to be the early sixties. He is very ambitious, and actually is quite good at making inroads for new accounts. But he takes things too personally, and feels slighted whenever things do not go his way, feeling that others are keeping him down.
In this last episode, Pete returns to New York, and we see that he is rather stunned to find that his own daughter does not seem to know him, let alone feel comfortable in his presence. He sees that Trudy has picked up and moved on with her life much like he has done, but rather hypocritically, he criticizes her for this, reminding her that they are still technically married. And even though he seems to like Bonnie quite a lot, he is not exactly able to hide his frustrations that contribute to driving her away, back to LA. And it is unclear whether or not she is just returning back home to LA and waiting for him, or if this separation is something more serious.
Somewhere along the line, Pete has developed quite a sense of attachment and loyalty to Don. While the other partners, including Roger, seemed ready to kick Don to the curb at the end of season 6 (and stretching through much of this season), Pete seems to have every confidence and faith in Don, and is not afraid to voice this. Given the rather tense relations these two had in the beginning of the series, this rather invisible change is a bit of a surprise. I was sure that Pete was going to try to make better use of his knowledge of Don's really big secret, but so far, not only has it not surfaced, but Pete seems to be one of Don's strongest and most loyal allies.
Another ally for Don is Roger, although he is obviously criticized for it on several fronts. Unlike the other partners, he seems to have thought that the leave that they had forced Don into was not a firing in all but name, but rather actually forcing him to pull himself together before returning back to work. Roger seems to want to keep Don there, as much to have an ally in the workplace as anything else, since he seems to be facing more of the rivalry following the merger than anyone else. We also find that he is having some bizarre episodes in his personal life, with a strange young girlfriend which they share sexual partners with, and a daughter who has run away from her familial responsibilities as a mother, in order to live at a hippie community, enjoying the freedom (including sexual) that comes with it, and showing no interest in returning to her home.
And so, now, we await the next episode, which is called "Waterloo". Given the suggestive significance behind that title, I am really looking forward to seeing what is about to happen to the characters, and who is about to implode (presumably, someone is).
It should be really interesting!
http://news.yahoo.com/mad-men-recap-season-7-episode-11-strategy-180226151.html;_ylt=A0LEVz7wH3tTrEIATgBXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB0Yjkwb3VoBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDM3MF8x
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-mad-men-recap-the-strategy-20140518,0,2919176.story?page=2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/mad-men-final-season-split_n_3942431.html
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