Spoiler Alert...if you haven't seen this season's episodes of "Mad Men" you might want to skip this one. Or, hurry up and watch it and then read this. Go ahead. I'll wait.
The Mad Men series finale has come and gone, but I'm left contemplating the decade that shaped a generation or two. Growing up in a small town I think I was insulated against the turmoil and angst of the civil rights movement, the controversy of the war in Vietnam and the burgeoning hippie movement. I think there was one hippie in Marshall and she was actually closer to my mom's age (who was about as far from hippie-hood as you can get). I say she was a hippie because she had long, straight hair, parted in the middle and wore pants. She went to our church, so she couldn't have been that odd.
There was so much I loved about Mad Men. Early on, I loved the scenes of everyday life...like Sally running around with a plastic dry cleaning bag over her head and her mom yelling that she'd be in big trouble, Missy, if the dry cleaning was on the floor. Or the picnic scene in the park, where Betty reached down to get the plaid blanket and tossed all of the trash on the ground and just left it. Obviously Lady Bird Johnson had not put the word out to "Keep America Beautiful" just yet.
And all the smoking! During pregnancy! America had just been warned that smoking may be harmful to your health and the ad men of Madison Avenue had to scramble like crazy to keep America smoking. To hell with it being beautiful. With all that incessant smoking it seems logical that someone would have to succumb to its evils. But geez. Did it have to be Birdie?
I loved the set decorations. Seeing things I had in my home growing up has reignited a passion for all things mid-century. Princess phones, aprons, casserole dishes, fish sticks. Soda cans that open with a tab. I don't have any of those things, but I like remembering about them.
As I watched the seasons unfold, I thought a lot about my mom and the other women of that generation. They were expected to stay home, raise kids, fix three meals a day (every day), do the laundry, clean the house, grocery shop and pretty much put any ambition they had out the back door. Forget the back burner. The back forty was more like it.
Peggy and Joan were beautifully drawn characters. Peggy, a young, eager secretary, quickly showed her strength and determination when she, a good Catholic girl, got pregnant, hid it from everyone (including herself, really) and made the only decision available to her. We only occasionally saw the ramifications of her youthful indiscretion, but she made a very poignant speech about the constraints placed upon women pre women's lib. If men "got girls in trouble" they could walk away, without a second glance. Women couldn't. My birth mother couldn't. You could say Peggy and my birth mother walked away, but after carrying a child for nine months and giving birth, there's going to be a residual scar that doesn't ever completely go away.
Joan...what a woman! She was every inch female and she knew how to use it. She slept her way to the top and didn't look back. Tough as nails and going back in for more. She had Roger's baby while married to another man, but because she was married, it was okay. Really? I guess family values have always been subject to multiple interpretations.
And Betty. Beautiful, smart, artistic and completely stifled. While Don's in the city getting busy with too many women to remember, Betty is at home, taking riding lessons and seeing a therapist (who, by the way, calls Don on a regular basis to tell him what's up with his wife...hello HIPAA!) Betty's not a particularly warm woman, but I can't really blame her. When she finally gets to do something for herself (besides get her hair done once a week), she goes back to college, but it was just too late. The beauty queen had become Mrs. Robinson. In the end, though, she dealt with her life on her own terms. And I think that's the part Sally will remember. I'd give a million bucks to know how Sally's life unfolded. Mainly because she's pretty much me. Except for the boarding school part. And catching her dad "comforting" the lady two floors down.
I guess I have to say a word or two about Don. All of the other guys kind of blur together, with their changing hairlines and sideburns and leisure suits. But Don. Or Dick. What a complex character. You hated him. You loved him. You ached for him (not in that way, for me, anyway). He was a tortured soul who was constantly trying to keep three steps in front of his past. Always tense. Always searching for something to fill the hole in his soul.
And finally he found it. I instinctively knew that he'd end up at some EST commune after his Keroaucian odyssey. In one of the last scenes of the show, he's dressed in "country club casual" chinos and a golf shirt, looking out over the ocean and there's a looseness about his stance that I'd never seen before.
Shortly thereafter we see him meditation, doing his ohms and just a hint of a smile.
And then - as we're led to believe - he goes back to Madison Avenue and writes the most iconic commercial of all time. Starring some of his new-found enlightened friends.
I liked the ending. It was just the right amount of closure. And even though the title says it's all about the men, I think it's the women who grabbed the brass ring. And they held on for dear life.
So, to all the Mad Women, here's to you...it's the real thing.
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