Why does Jared Harris have to suffer so much?. He gets shot by Lili Taylor in I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996) and Harris is masterful at conveying Warhol's asexuality and stunted social skills. A few weeks ago, Leonard Nemoy sacrificed him brutally during the Fringe finale, basically turning him into a pile of ash. Now on Mad Men's "Commissions and Fees," he's asked to resign by Don, pushing him over the edge into suicide land. Poor Lane. I wish it was Pete.
Mad Men's season finale airs tomorrow night, and I hope it ends with a bang, because the penultimate episode was pretty "Meh." True, since Peggy's departure I am finding it hard to care about almost everyone else, but Lane's "embezzling" storyline came off as both inexplicable and contrived. This guy dated a Black playboy bunny, appreciated Joan as a working woman central to SCDP, and punched Pete Campbell in the face! His ignoble departure lacks dignity, pathos, and sense.
I was also not particularly blown away by Don's new cutthroat attitude toward acquiring new clients at the firm. I read his aggressive meeting with Ed Baxter at Dow Chemical as a symptom of his insecure worry that Joan's night with Herb was what landed them Jaguar, rather than his brilliant creative pitch. Sure, Don's no longer laying around on his office couch, mooning over his young wife, but he is still struggling to figure out his place at SCDP. With Peggy gone and Ginsberg nipping at his heels, he has to prove that he's still "got it." Then, after wiping the blood from his fangs following that meeting, he and Roger return to find Lane hanging from his office door. Hello guilt. Will there be repercussions from these two events in the finale? Who knows--they both seemed out-of-place to me.
Thankfully, the episode did have some poignant moments, and finally gave Betty her due, as the former Mrs. Draper is able to put aside her roiling bitterness toward Meghan and Don and share a moment of closeness with her troubled tween daughter, Sally. "At the Codfish Ball" gave a sense of Sally's liminal state--not quite a young girl, not quite a teenager either. Yet she's desperately wanting to grow up, even if every step is downright painful.
One of the things I like about Mad Men is that Sally and Meghan are genuinely fond of each other, and share some nice moments. Betty may, at times, use Sally as a pawn or wedge between Meghan and Don, but Meghan refuses to play those kinds of games. If the Gilmore Girls is our parenting model, Meghan's the fun Lorelei to Betty's cold and rigid Emily. Yet Meghan's NOT a mother, and that difference can sometimes become all to clear.
Two weeks ago, Meghan was teaching Sally how to cry on cue (c'mon, admit it, didn't you try her technique out afterward)? Now she's letting her order coffee at Balthazar, or some late 60s facsimile. While Sally mimics sophistication, she still must pour most of the sugar dispenser into her coffee to make it possible to swallow. If we're wielding heavy-handed metaphors, a woman's life can be bitter indeed. Sally gets her first taste of that acute bitterness when she starts to menstruate while on a "date" at the Natural History Museum with her friend, Glenn (who puts the kibosh on any girlfriend possibilities by telling Sally that he thinks of her as a sister). As I proclaimed loudly, while watching, to no one in particular, "Get used to it, honey. Your going to be going through this kind of fun for another FORTY years." Yay.
Betty tells her much the same thing, but in a surprisingly gentle way, revealing that she actually does not have a heart made of stone. Betty's rampant envy of Meghan is smartly tempered by Sally's needing her at this crucial moment. She's never going to be nominated for "mother of the year," but Betty does finally move beyond the simplistic evil-mother representation that has characterized her for so much of this season (as well as seasons passed). I still have hope for her character's growth, and now that January Jones's pregnancy is history, I hope we will spend more "quality time" with Betty next season.
Not so much Pete. Now that Mad Men has killed off a main character, I believe that there is absolutely NO CHANCE that they'll get rid of Pete as well. Grrrr. Come back Peggy!
