BLOGGING MAD MEN, Season 7 Episode 7: If You've Gotta Go, Go Now

We've caught up! We've reached the end of our week of Mad Men posts. I guess I haven't mentioned that I've actually been portioning out these seven episodes over the last six months or so. It was my way of protesting against the artificial, AMC-imposed divide on the final season, which resumes tonight. (Well, functionally tomorrow, for those of us without any kind of normal television.) Fittingly, it was probably some ad man or woman who cooked up these increasingly common division/delay plans, forcing Weiner and Co. to find the art among the thorns of commerce (which is, incidentally, the name of my new socialist hardcore band). I figured such a divide would have ended these episodes on a down note--if the arc of the season is a parabola, we're now at the vertex. But I forgot that I was watching Mad Men, a show that has always known how to stick every single landing, large or small.

And while we're talking about endings (and since we will be, at large, for another seven weeks) I just want to say--I was CERTAIN this show would end for good on or around the Moon Landing. And yet, here we are. Mankind takes that giant leap, and Bert Cooper sticks around just long enough to see it and admire Neil Armstrong's tag-writing skills. Good timing, Bert.

At first, it seems like everything is ending. Don is in breach of contract and Megan is leaving him. Barbie is leaving Pete and even Julio is leaving Peggy--he and his family are moving to Newark, which might as well be the moon. Peggy, Don, Pete, and Harry get on a plane to Cleveland with almost no sense of what will be waiting for them when they return, if anything. It's a nice, subtle parallel with the astronauts--but the pilot comes over the loudspeaker to make it explicit for anybody having trouble keeping up. Captain Obvious was Delta's go-to guy for the Northeast Corridor in those days, so it really couldn't be helped.

So I was running the other day, and listening to "Born To Run" (because I am an asshole) when I heard the line "Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness/ I'll love you with all the madness in my soul" and for whatever reason, perhaps because of all the time I've spent thinking about Mad Men recently, I thought to myself Holy shit, what happened when teenagers heard that line for the first time in 1975? Did their heads explode? So obviously I very much enjoyed the montage in which all of our characters witness and begin to process the moon landing.

And then Bert Cooper dies, and that sheen of doom was back all over everything. I was right about the parabola, and the vertex, I thought.  Jim Cutler doesn't wait for the body to get cold before making his power play.

But of course, just as Peggy is nailing the Burger Chef pitch (with a grest echo of Don's "carousel" speech in the near-tears it elicits from the executives), Roger is cooking up a daring plan. We've watched these folks struggle in the sometimes-literal mud for so long that it's pretty nice to see them doing what they do best. By negotiating a sale to McCann, Roger saves Don's job, makes Joan rich, and arguably prevents Ted's suicide for at least a year or two.

This re-aligning of the universe could have been enough to end this awkward half-season. We can go anywhere from here, and that's exciting. But even more thrilling, to me, is the out-of-left field play they throw at us in the final scene. This is what I've always loved about Mad Men--the willingness to get weird with it. Early on, I was impressed by the way they played with structure; time could compress and contract and reverse in a fluid, exciting way. Then the music choices got more exciting; The Decemberists intruded from the future and it felt like a creative enterprise at the height of their powers, flexing their muscles. That's always exciting to me. And of course, the endings were always spectacular. Betty throwing up in Don's car. Colin Hanks singing "Early In The Morning." "This Will Be Our Year," too. I could go on. But anyway what happens is Don has a vision of Bert Cooper, dancing around and singing "The Best Things In Life Are Free." It's strange and funny and sad and beautiful and perfect, like so much of this show.

I'm not going to write in any organized fashion about the next, and final seven, episodes. I just want to appreciate them in silence. But watch this space, dear reader, because we may have some more writing, from others, to post. I'll go back to writing about Game Of Thrones, but make no mistake--my heart belongs to Sterling Cooper. -ZL