Mad Men – Season 7, Episode 8 – Is That All There Is? 1

It wasn’t a bad inaugural episode for Mad Men‘s final chapter, but it also reminded me that I’m kind of weary of the show.

The trouble with Mad Men, as it’s dragged on through the ’60s, is that it went from a show about particular place in time, and the people who worked at a fictional New York City advertising agency, to one about The Sixties. And even as someone who loves a lot of the music of the decade, I find dramas about the era to be predictable. Even on a well-written show like this, with a different setting than most ’60s-era dramas, the cliches and news references just jump out. If the show had been about the same advertising agency, but set in 1966, I probably wouldn’t have watched it in the first place even if the reviews were glowing.

The other problem, and it’s pivotal, is that I’m tired of the lead character. Everything about Don Draper, who was interesting and sometimes unpredictable, has grown tiresome. He just sort of goes in circles, hanging around the same agency – in its latest iteration – for no other reason than that he’s the main character and he can’t just leave. Warning: Spoiler alert about another show coming. I was reading an article the other day about  the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, who supposedly was critical of the finale of Breaking Bad because it ended too neatly, with the bad guy at least partially redeemed by killing a bunch of worse guys. I’m not unsympathetic to this criticism, having made it myself after the finale first aired. (Go back and look if you’re curious.) But what’s more conventional TV than keeping the main character static, in the same job and not really changing at all, because the show wouldn’t work as a show otherwise? Walter White changed. That’s one of the premises of Vince Gilligan’s show that made it interesting. Don Draper is basically the same jerk, only he’s a decade older and is no longer a young hotshot. Everything we know about Don says he should have left long ago, aside from stopping by and seeing his kids. But he’s hanging around, at least for the final seven weeks of the series. End spoiler.

And so this was my problem with Don’s plotline in this episode. At a diner, he sees a waitress who looks like his old flame Rachel, so he looks Rachel up – and it turns out she just died of leukemia. Bigger fans of the show will remember Rachel a lot better than I do. (She gets a cameo in a dream sequence.). I do recall her as an interesting character, but as the seasons have passed, my memory of her has clouded. She’s just another woman Don was cheating with, really. The fact that Rachel died shakes up Don, but his reaction is so self-absorbed that I was reminded of why I’m sick of him. He finds that waitress and has sex with her behind the restaurant, in part because the waitress thinks the big tip she got from Roger was actually from him – and he wanted something in return. The waitress’s name is Diane, Di for short, and isn’t that subtle?

He visits Rachel’s home, where the family is in mourning, and his sister wants to shoo him away – because she knows their past even know she’s never met him. Don sees that Rachel had two children, and that the sister wants him gone, and he still lingers. All of this may be totally realistic, and fine, the show is doing callbacks to past characters as it’s coming to the end, just like Justified. It’s not badly written or acted, but I found myself annoyed.

Peggy has some interesting things to do, from dealing with the panty hose makers to a telling elevator scene with Joan, in which the two women – both of whom deal with obnoxious sexism from their new bosses at the agency that purchased them – turn on each other. That scene seems sadly on the nose. Later, Peggy goes on a date, which goes unexpectedly well, as the guy – who initially seems lame – actually comes across as a nice guy who finds her fascinating and fun. They go from awkward chatter at the dinner table to planning an unrealistic trip to Paris, which she is actually taking seriously. But she has no passport, which has been left behind at the office. It’s not clear whether the guy will ever be back, because he might get a job elsewhere.

Ken gets fired because his father-in-law’s retirement from Dow gives the new bosses a chance to do what they always wanted, to get rid of Ken for old grudges. Roger lets it all happen. Ken’s wife already wanted him to quit, noting that she’s rich and he has already lost an eye working for that agency. But instead of becoming a writer, he gets a job at Dow (yes, more topical ’60s references), where he can torment his disloyal former colleagues by being a pain-in-the-neck client. This may give him some momentary satisfaction, but it’s hardly a way to make important career and life decisions.