In Care Of (S6x13)
Airdate: 23 June 2013
Written by: Carly Wray & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Matthew Weiner
Running Time: 48 minutes
Not all seasons of Mad Men were created equal, and some season finales were bound to be worse than others. Even the most devoted fans of Matthew Weiner's period drama, those who had grown accustomed to the occasional quality fluctuation that plagues any long-running series, found themselves somewhat underwhelmed by the final episode of the show's penultimate season. In Care Of, the thirteenth episode of Season 6, promised the kind of seismic shift that typically precedes a series' conclusion, yet it delivered something curiously hollow—competent television, certainly, but lacking the emotional wallop or narrative daring that had defined the programme at its peak.
The episode, co-written by Matthew Weiner and Carly Wray—the latter making her Mad Men debut before going on to win a WGA Award for her work on the series—transports us to Thanksgiving 1968. It unfolds as a catalogue of professional and personal catastrophes for Don Draper, whose life appears to be unravelling at an accelerating pace. When we first encounter him, Don is in a genuinely dreadful place, spiralling through a darkness of his own making. It is Stan Rizzo, of all people, who inadvertently presents an escape route. Stan suggests that since Sterling Cooper & Partners holds a lucrative contract with Los Angeles-based Sunkist, Don might relocate to head up an office likely to expand into a full-fledged agency. This prospect coincides with SC&P receiving a call from Hershey Chocolate, for which Jim Cutler assigns Don to make a pitch. Yet Don's grip on his drinking continues to slip, culminating in a bar brawl that lands him in a jail cell for the night. The humiliation proves galvanising. Realising he has pushed himself too far, Don seizes upon the California idea—not for Stan, but for himself. A change of scenery might regenerate him, he reasons. Megan, when she hears of the plan, is genuinely thrilled; proximity to Hollywood offers a far more appealing prospect than her dwindling soap opera career in New York.
Meanwhile, another brand of disaster befalls Pete Campbell. He learns that his mother has fallen overboard whilst on a cruise ship in Martinique, and—adding insult to injury—she had recently married her nurse, Manolo. Convinced that Manolo murdered her for her money, Pete is apoplectic with rage and lashes out at Bob Benson. Yet Bob, ever the calculating opportunist, finds a devious method of removing Pete from the equation. During a visit to General Motors headquarters, he arranges for Pete to be placed behind the wheel of one of the company's vehicles—knowing full well that Pete cannot drive. The inevitable minor damage that follows forces Pete's departure from Detroit, sending him back to the New York office whilst Bob remains as SC&P's sole representative. It is a deliciously cruel manoeuvre, one of the episode's few genuinely satisfying moments.
The romantic entanglements prove equally messy. Ted Chaogh, apparently unable to resist his feelings for Peggy any longer, waits at her doorstep after seeing her dressed provocatively for a date. He confesses his love; they sleep together. But upon returning home, Ted confronts the reality that he cannot abandon his family. In a desperate bid to escape his own weakness, he begs Don to let him take the California position instead. Don initially refuses.
The Hershey pitch should have been Don's redemption, or at least his temporary salvation. Having taken a drink to steady his nerves beforehand, he begins with what appears to be a brilliant presentation—describing an idyllic childhood memory of a loving father and the simple pleasure of Hershey bars. Then his hands begin to shake. In the middle of the boardroom, Don suffers a complete breakdown and confesses the truth: the unloving stepmother, the brothel upbringing, the Hershey bars as reward for petty thefts. This raw honesty proves too shocking for the SC&P partners, though it does win Don some peculiar favour with Ted—Don agrees to remain in New York, allowing Ted to flee to California. The decision infuriates Megan, who has already terminated her New York career and now decides to terminate her marriage. Before this dissolution, Betty informs Don that for Thanksgiving he must collect not only their sons but also Sally from Miss Potter's School; she has been suspended after being caught drunk and supplying beer to fellow students.
On Thanksgiving morning, Don is summoned to an emergency partner meeting where he is informed of his suspension—effective immediately, lasting several months, and subject to review by his colleagues. Pete, meanwhile, informs Trudy that he will be joining Ted's Los Angeles office. As Don exits the building, he witnesses his replacement, Lou Avery (Allan Havey), being escorted into the office by a grinning Duck Phillips. In a rare moment of warmth, Joan allows Roger to visit her biological son Kevin for the holiday.
The episode—and season—concludes with Don driving his three children to a dilapidated house in a rough neighbourhood. It is, he explains, the brothel where he grew up. This is a moment that should resonate with devastating power. Yet it doesn't. Not quite.
The primary source of disappointment in In Care Of is its troubling conventionality, its adherence to pre-Golden Age rules of season finales that Mad Men had previously transcended. The narrative piles catastrophe upon catastrophe with mechanical efficiency, ensuring maximum personal and professional upheaval for every major character. This creates numerous avenues for the final season to explore, certainly, but it feels artificial—calculated rather than organic. For viewers who had been spoiled by the higher quality of previous seasons and their finales, this episode reeks of manipulation.
Beyond the convenient melodramatic gestures—Ted's midnight confession to Peggy before scurrying back to domesticity, Don's spectacularly timed breakdown—the episode's most glaring weakness is the utterly anticlimactic resolution of the Dorothy Campbell subplot. Pete's mother dies offscreen, her body presumably lost to the sea, and the narrative moves on with barely a backward glance. The same criticism applies, to a lesser degree, to Megan. Her breakup with Don, whilst not unexpected and certainly foreshadowed throughout preceding episodes, lands with a dull thud rather than the crack one might expect from the dissolution of a central marriage.
To their credit, Wray and Weiner focus more intently on the personal lives of their protagonists than on the broader historical canvas. The annus horribilis of 1968 ends not with a bang but with a whimper; Nixon's election is acknowledged as simple fact, apparently carrying no symbolic weight as the death knell of anything positive or revolutionary about 1960s America. This restraint is admirable, yet it also contributes to the sense that the season has fizzled rather than concluded.
Matthew Weiner directs the episode with his customary visual elegance, but one cannot shake the impression that he has somehow lost control of his creation, much as Dick Whitman lost control of the Don Draper persona. What remains is solid television—professionally crafted, competently acted, adequately moving. But if Weiner intended Mad Men to conclude with the brilliance he had long planned, he would need to summon considerably more creativity for the final season than this finale suggests he has left in reserve.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
==
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/
LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9
