<p>I imagine it becomes Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Campbell.</p>
<p>I found the story of Lane to be a complete morality play: he forges a check because he can’t tell anyone - Bert, Don, Roger - with the truth about his real needs and then kills himself because he can’t tell anyone, let alone his wife, the truth. Keeping it in kills. We saw him attempt to break out with his black Playboy bunny girlfriend and even with his refusal to leave NYC. But he can’t escape how his past and his upbringing binds him to a set of lies he can’t admit. Only Joan has seen hints of the lecher underneath the facade. I call this a morality play because Lane is like the tragic hero who is undone by what we called in English class his “fatal flaw.” </p>
<p>BTW, Lane doesn’t understand cars well enough to start it first and then stop up the exhaust. It looked like the Jaguar failed but it was really him being inept. </p>
<p>I thought Don’s speech at Dow was great. It showed a deep understanding of their challenges as a company - complacency in marketing versus development of great products - and of their PR challenges. The line “If America needs it, Dow makes it” about Agent Orange was dead solid perfect. </p>
<p>I’ve been going through who and what is left in the show. They got rid of Jane Sterling so we don’t see that part of Roger’s life. Greg Harris is gone so we don’t see Joan’s marriage anymore. Peggy is gone, hard as that is to take. Lane is gone. The last 3 of those were central focal points for character and plot development out of work. </p>
<p>We still see Pete’s home life and Don’s. We’ve barely seen Betty this season, which makes sense because she’s now peripheral to Don’s life and the show is in the end about Don’s work and home life. When we’ve seen Betty, it’s almost completely through the lens of Sally, which makes sense because Don relates with the teenage daughter who is often like him. On the other side of ledger, we’re seeing more of Bert Cooper, which is terrific, but I can’t imagine the show getting into his home life. </p>
<p>I guess the moral is that time changes things, that people come and go and characters come and go like in real life. As much as we care about Peggy, in her work life Freddy was right: she should move to get ahead. I also wonder if cost pressures didn’t push the moves along: they were under a lot of pressure to reduce the cast and getting rid of principals is a big saver. Actors in those roles get paid the same even if they’re not in an episode or only have 2 lines. </p>
<p>I loved the details of Sally and Glen. I went to a prep school just a few years after this show’s setting. They could be cruel. Places like Hotchkiss were known for it. It doesn’t mean Glen is an outcast; it means that is his life right now and that can suck. Just like he said in the elevator with Don. That was a bit of Holden Caulfield talking.</p>
<p>I was happy for Betty that she felt wanted by her daughter. It’s funny for me to watch their interactions. They aren’t half as bad as many parent/kid relationships I knew from that era. (Sally is probably a few years older than me.) By 1967, there wasn’t a generation gap; there was a generation gulf. People younger than that have no idea how much things changed in such a short period of time. Earlier in the season, Don says to a girl waiting for the Stones show, “We’re worried about you.” Older generations always worry but this was one of the few times when the older generation was completely disconnected from the younger. Even the 20’s, with its short dresses and drinking and music, was a version of older culture only with the underbelly brought to the surface - meaning the way decent girls and boys then acted was the same as how indecent girls and boys always acted. We saw disillusionment in the aftermath of WWI, but as this season has explored nothing like the shift in the quality of dreams, in the point of life, in the reason for being like the way people across society became interested in what they wanted to do and become. As Don said, his dream growing up was indoor plumbing. The dream shifted to personal growth and fulfillment. </p>
<p>I see kids covered in tattoos and remember how the world grew long hair and started wearing bright clashing colors and that happened overnight. In a year or two. It wasn’t just drugs or the war but the first large scale rejection of the existing, older culture by the younger people. Older people adopted pot - and to an extent LSD - because older people drink and smoke and use pills. But they couldn’t adopt those attitudes. Megan, btw, is too old for that. She is 24, not 20, not 17. Part of the sad humor in Paul Kinsey is that he is way too old for that and it shows how lost a soul he is.</p>