‘Mad Men’ Season Premiere Recap: Is That All There Is?
And so it begins.
The second half of Mad Men‘s final season kicks off the same way its first half ended: with a death. It’s been nearly a year since Bert Cooper’s abrupt passing — a glimpse of Nixon’s televised speech about Cambodian troops levels places us in April of 1970 — but you’d scarcely know it from the premiere episode (titled, all too appropriately, “Severance”) where time practically seems to fold in on itself. As one of the characters says, “When people die, everything gets mixed up.”
This time, it’s Don Draper‘s old Season One flame Rachel Katz, née Menken, who’s passed on, though not before — or is it after? — visiting him in a dream. It may be the only part of the episode that’s explicitly unreal, but the whole hour has the feel of a fevered hallucination. Peggy Lee’s suicide note-cum-pop song “Is That All There Is?”, with its lurching tempo and startlingly bleak lyrics about “that final disappointment,” plays over the opening scene closing credits, but listen closely during Don and Roger Sterling‘s visit to a diner early on and you can hear it played as almost subliminal background music. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end here, but not necessarily in that order.
“Severance” eases us back into Mad Men‘s world with a familiar image of fantasy: a beautiful woman, not quite naked beneath a $15,000 fur coat. Don is directing her, as he has so many females, sculpting the dream for his (and our) pleasure. But the illusion won’t quite take hold. Don seems trapped. He’s in his shirtsleeves, gripping a cup of lunch-cart coffee. This is work.
Don’s not the only one discovering that money can’t buy happiness. Joan is, as Peggy observes, “filthy rich,” but that doesn’t stop the jeering fratboys at McCann from harassing the both of them with crude double entendres. She responds to a crack about her figure with a blistering “Excuse me?” but Peggy doggedly returns the subject to her information sheet, as if bringing the conversation back to dollars and cents might will away the distinctions between the women on one side of the conference room table and the men on the other. Way back in Season Two’s “Maidenform,” Joan advised Peggy to “stop dressing like a little girl”; now the latter turns it around, effectively telling the former that she was asking for it. “So what you’re saying is I don’t dress the way you do because I don’t look like you,” Joan shoots back in the elevator. “And that’s very, very true.”
Cash ruins Ken Cosgrove‘s life, then nearly saves it, and then ruins it again. After his father-in-law retires from Dow Chemical, Ken’s wife suggests he quit the advertising business, which is slowly eating away what’s left of his soul. “You gave them your eye,” she points out. “Don’t give them the rest of your life.” As if heaven-sent, a McCann executive forces Roger to fire Ken — who, in fairness, did once refer to his former colleagues as “retards” — the very next day. He’s aghast at his boss’s inch-deep loyalty, then quickly sees the bright side. Maybe this would-be Salinger actually will write that Great American Novel after all. Unfortunately — and, entirely typically — Ken’s wounded pride and competitive instincts take precedence over both his happiness and his spouse. He returns to Sterling Cooper & Partners’ office as Dow’s new head of advertising. Rather than go for the quick kill by pulling their business, he promises to inflict long-term pain as the client from hell.