In losing everything, did Don Draper finally regain what matters most, his sanity?
That’s what we’re left with at the conclusion of Sunday night’s "Mad Men" episode, “In Care Of,” which also marked the end of Season 6.
In robbing us of new episodes until 2014, executive producer Matthew Weiner’s AMC super series instead filled our heads with dreamy possibilities.
Don (Jon Hamm) seems divorced from all his New York responsibilities: he’s unemployed (temporarily?) and toothsome wife Megan (Jessica Pare) has decided to “take those meetings” in Los Angeles without him.
How? Why? He’s had a revelation, maybe two.
After punching out a preacher during a noon-hour drinking binge, he found himself cheek-by-jowl in a fowl jail cell, told to “sleep it off.” Boy, did he.
You wouldn’t think concrete could be that comfortable (it wasn’t a Holiday Inn Express), but The Don took it a step further and dumped his booze down the drain once he stumbled home.
That led him, after shaking off the shakes in a meeting with Hershey, to finally spill his guts instead of hurling them onto the floor: he told the partners and the chocolate men he’s an orphan raised by whores.
Finally, we can talk about it.
Of course, that led to the SC&P round table to exorcise themselves of their Galahad Cad, telling him to take some time off. It’s Thanksgiving, they said, so the holidays will eat up most of that time anyway.
Just don’t ask for a return date, Bert (Robert Morse) tells him.
“We think it’s best for you and the firm if you take some time off and regroup,” Roger (John Slattery) says.
Incredibly for those of us who live our alternate lives vicariously through Don, it’s a dream come true: he’s rich, ostensibly single and free to travel the world.
Upon leaving the building, Don encounters whipping boy Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) entering the building with a potential replacement, someone named Lou Avery from rival agency Dancer Fitzgerald.
“Going down?” Avery asks him.
Knowing Don, yes please, to the seventh level of hell.
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