Editor’s note: This story includes minor details about the midseason premiere. If you don’t want to know, don’t read ahead.
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is, my friends, after just seven more episodes of “Mad Men”?
Matthew Weiner clearly intended for us to contemplate the mortality of his TV masterpiece when he wove Peggy Lee’s bleak 1969 ballad through Sunday’s midseason premiere.
Don Draper, as inhabited by Jon Hamm, has been eternally searching since “Mad Men” made its debut on July 19, 2007. Even Don has never known just what he was looking for, but when each new hope threatened to disappoint him, he was always quick to run. No fresh success satisfied him for long. He might as well be perpetually asking, “Is that all there is?”
As Season 7, which was split in half to make it last longer, picks up Sunday with an episode called “Severance,” we find Don in very much the same place he was when we left him last May 25. He is surrounded by beautiful women, casting a commercial, but always looking just a little past them, searching for something else.
Don is still drinking; the bar cart in his office remains well stocked, but for the moment he seems to have it under control. (News that Hamm recently completed a stint in alcohol rehab makes Don’s struggles even more poignant.) He’s back on solid ground at Sterling Cooper, but inside his head, he might as well be on a ledge, struggling for the footing that has eluded him all his life.
In the episode, Don’s emotional chaos materializes into a specter from his past. The hallucinatory dream leads him to track down a person who once meant a lot to him, only to get devastating news. Meanwhile, a diner waitress (Elizabeth Reaser) strikes a familiar, puzzling chord with him, and he tries to connect with her in a very Don Draper way.
The return episode isn’t entirely Don-centric, though. Other characters need to be served en route to the end.
The first of those is Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), the little secretary from the premiere who has molded herself, for better or worse, into a junior Don Draper.
At this point, the hope that Peggy will be a success, that she will triumph over workplace sexism of the late 1960s, is outweighed for most fans by the hope that she will be happy. Hearts broke for Peggy in Season 1 when she had a child and gave it up, emerging toughened and pragmatic about what it would take to make it in Don Draper’s world.
Even after seeing what Don became, she persevered. Now, Peggy is great at her job. She’s in a position of power, and her underlings are a bit frightened of her. But looking realistically at her life, she has to ask herself, “Is that all there is?” And so, she accepts a blind date.
Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) gets the remaining spotlight in the return episode. Ken, who lost an eye on an ill-fated hunting trip while managing the Chevrolet account, never acted on his ambition to write, and now his wife urges him to make a change. “The life not lived” is also on his mind.
Small moments find others having similar thoughts. After a painful pantyhose pitch meeting and a spat with Peggy, Joan (Christina Hendricks) ponders how she’s spending her money. Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) muses, as much as Pete ever muses, about how he thought California would change his life, but now it seems like a dream. Only Roger (John Slattery), except for his droopy mustache, is very much the old Roger, having roused himself for a big moment in the midseason finale.
Despite all the contemplation of change, “Severance” doesn’t make much obvious progress toward wrapping up the show. And yet, in just six more weeks, the “Mad Men” era will end. All we can wish for now is a finale that won’t leave us asking, “Is that all there is?”
&rule‘Mad Men’
Four stars (out of four)
When • 9 p.m. Sunday
Where • AMC
More info • AMCtv.com/shows/mad-men
AMC will repeat “Mad Men” beginning with the Season 6 premiere at 11:30 p.m. Saturday, running until the midseason premiere at 9 p.m. Sunday. Every episode to date is available on Netflix and on DVD, or for purchase on Amazon Instant Video or iTunes.
About that song
“Is That All There Is?” was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and has been recorded many times. The most successful version, in 1969, was by Peggy Lee. In the verses, which are spoken in Lee’s version, the singer experiences a house fire, a circus and a broken heart, only to feel disappointment. The song ends this way.
I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh no, not me.
I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment.
’Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you,
That when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath
I’ll be saying to myself
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is.
'Mad Men' is back to break our hearts - STLtoday.com
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