Ok, so it’s an over the top dramatization but you have to admit that presentation Mad Men’s Don Draper gave to Kodak for the Carousel slide projector was brilliant. You wish you gave presentations like that more often. Come on. Admit it. You know you do. That Kodak moment was the defining moment of the season finale of AMC’s Mad Men which, despite critical debate, has turned out to be a great show – good enough for AMC to renew it for another season.
During the episode we also find out up and coming creative Peggy Olsen was promoted from secretary to Junior copywriter (no small feat for a women in the early sixties one must admit) and that she’s pregnant and didn’t know it! Or just denied it. The father? Pete Campbell? Did enough time elapse between their office dalliance earlier in the season or is the father someone else? Intriguingly, Peggy was promoted by Don to work on the Clearasil account which Pete, through his wife’s rich family connections, just snagged. Needless to say, he’s being painting as the whipping boy, emasculated by his family, stomped on by his boss and forced to suffer – oh the horror – the indignity of working with a woman!
Now about Peggy’s baby…did she really know she wasn’t pregnant? Was the call for a psych consult an indication she’d been refusing to admit she was pregnant all along? Is she angry because she will now be forced to endure the extremely difficult task of being a working mother while single and with no one to help her raise her child? Will she become the resident psycho? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Throughout the season, Don Draper – all while slowly revealing to us his true identity – has been sleeping around behind his wife’s back who, not the dimwit she’s painted to be, knows her husband is cheating on her and cunningly reveals it to her psychologist knowing full well (because she sneaked a peek at the phone bill) the doctor will tell her husband saving her from the confrontation.
In the end, and due in big part to his preparation for the Kodak pitch, Don realizes he’s got a great family and that he’d be wise not to rick losing it as he did his first family. In the final scene, we see him come home from work and tell his family he would, after all, go with them on on the family trip he’d earlier said he wouldn’t. This being a television drama that needs tension to maintain viewership, we quickly see that scene was all in his head and when he opened the door to his house the second time, it was empty and his family and left without him.
Mad Men is a really good show and that fact it centers around advertising is mostly irrelevant. It could be set in a chemical plant or an architectural office and it would still be good. So what if it’s ludicrous the creative director would be overseeing the account management department. So what if it’s ludicrous – even in the sixties – people would be having cocktails all day long. So what if it’s ludicrous an agency parter would sleep with the hot, young secretary. Oh wait, that happens all the time. Sorry. The point…it’s a good drama. And last night, it had its Kodak moment.
