MAD MEN Studies—Part 2 (Second Thoughts on Don)

I’ve gotten a couple of emails and learned some stuff from reading the open thread over there at THE LEAGUE OF ORDINARY GENTLEMEN.

So here’s a revised interpretation of the newly happy Don: He now has a satisfying and genuinely personal erotic relationship with his new because he has revealed everything about his identities to him. He also has a more relaxed and personal relationship with his children, and he’s happy to be late for work in order to make them breakfast. He has a genuinely personal concern with his new wife’s (Megan’s) happiness. He goes home early when he hears she’s miserable. Megan turns out to be pretty smart and cagey, very bilingually tuneful, and talented generally as women can be. She’s uses all she has to make improve Don as a person—to make him more personal and relational. So the seemingly creepy final sex scene was all about getting him to explain why he doesn’t want his so-called friends and colleagues in his home. It turns out he has, maybe for very good reaons, a low opinion of them all as creepy and pathetic. And maybe they are in comparison both to the new Don and his new wife, who are most at home together. Don is less concerend with—but still more effective at—work. He has a new kind of (womanly?) realism about not pushing potential clients in directions they’re not about to go. We can even add that it will be a better show with Don stabilized enough that the action is no longer centered on his seemingly inevitable self-destruction. We’ve known all along he longs to be loved and love and take on all the appropriate responsibilities. (All this is not to say that my first interpretation is completely wrong.)