Every Sunday night for
the past 7 years, I faithfully watched the television series, Mad Men. The main
character, Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm was a complicated person. He started
out life as Dick Whitman, joined the service, and while his lieutenant and the
rest of the platoon was killed, he exchanged his dog tags and became Don
Draper.
Along the way, his handsome
looks, smooth delivery, and hungry drive made him a successful top advertising
executive. And along the way we watched him lose his first company and build a
successful second advertising agency, only to lose it in the end.
He loses his first wife, Betty, and his three children to divorce because he was unfaithful,
many more times than one could count. His second marriage to Megan also ends in
divorce.
Up until I watched the
series finale, I speculated that Don Draper would end killing himself by
jumping out of his office window. What I liked was the few episodes before the
finale started to tie up all the story lines: Betty has six months to live, and
will die because of lung cancer; Peggy the head copy writer, falls in love with Stan; Roger Sterling, one
of Don’s partners is actually going to marry Don’s ex mother-in-law; Pete
Campbell, another partner, takes a job in Kansas and gets his ex-wife back to
start a new life, and Joan who started out as a top secretary and then a business
partner, passes on marriage and chooses to start her own agency. Don Draper
ends up doing meditation in a hippy commune. At the end, while meditating in an
open field with others…a smile crosses his face with the inspiration for the
most famous Coca Cola commercial and the song playing…I like to teach the world
to sing…
Before the ending of
the series, I decided that whatever I thought about Don, no matter all his
foibles, poor choices, ups and downs, he wasn’t going to jump out of the
building and come tumbling down to his death.. He definitely wasn’t going to
kill himself. Don Draper was too much of a survivor who could and would
re-invent himself.
I’ll miss you, Don
Draper. Sunday nights will never be the same without you.
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