Season 3: Episode 12: The Grown-Ups
Season 3: Episode 12: The Grown-Ups
"From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official..."
Season 3: Episode 12
“The Grown-Ups”
Written by Brett Johnson & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Barbet Schroeder
Setting: November, 1963
This was the episode on viewers’ minds from the moment they started watching Mad Men. Series creator Matthew Weiner said that JFK’s assassination was all people wanted to talk about from the beginning.
It was surprising that the episode only received a lukewarm response upon release and I have a theory as to why that is.
Everyone knew November 22, 1963, was coming and that allowed their minds to imagine it. After the series premiere, Mad Men fans spent over two years dreaming about this future episode. Anything and everything could happen.
Maybe Don cries, broken by the death of the President. His cool persona is gone with an assassin’s bullet.
Maybe the shared trauma of the event allowed the Drapers to reconnect and heal their broken marriage.
Maybe one of the characters was even in Dallas to witness the shooting take place!
None of these imaginings happen. The episode is just as much about the characters suffering in life as the nation suffering in the death of the President.
It’s about any shared tragedy, even a small one between just two people.
“The Grown-ups” asks “Who do you want to be with when the world goes wrong?”
Don Draper wants to be alone. He is a man desperately clinging to his failing marriage and the normalcy of life, both things that involve others, and yet he rejects real love and compassion when everyone most needs it.
Like the 1960s, Don Draper is going through a destructive change. He shares a destiny with the decade.
His idea of a normal life is a lie built to shield himself.
This episode displays two approaches to handling tragedy:
Become absorbed in it
Move on from it
Though they each have merits, embracing either is unsatisfying.
The Campbells prove their compatibility as partners and Pete shows his strong moral beliefs after disappointing us more than a few times this season. We feel inspired that Pete dares to stay home from the Sterling wedding because this is a time for mourning.
The Campbells then remain on the sofa, consumed by the tragedy. They are trapped in a fog of sorrow which is understandable but unending.
There becomes nothing else to life besides horror on a TV screen.
In contrast, the Sterling family’s decision to continue Jane’s wedding comes off as selfish but offers a much-needed escape from the fog.
Roger isn’t pretending that the world is great right now. He knows marriages have to start again someday so why not today?
There is a balance between not looking away from reality and reminding yourself and others that life isn’t just pain. Respect that something horrible has happened but do not push away the world and everything in it. The only one who seems to have that balance is Peggy but she has nowhere to put it, certainly not in Duck Phillips who unplugs the TV so she won’t become distracted by the ongoing news of Kennedy’s assassination.
In processing tragedy, people need you and you need others.
Do not confuse an escape with running away from something.
Don isn’t escaping in this episode, he’s just running away from reality. The country and his marriage are broken and his only response is to say “It’ll be okay.” Saying that puts off the problem until tomorrow, a time that neither exists nor matters to Don Draper.
It won’t be okay if he doesn’t heal and he has to acknowledge that there is a wound for that to happen.
Much like how fans dreamed up what the episode would be like, I thought for a year about what I would say writing this. I realized that, in a way, I was creating that same fog the Campbells found themselves in watching TV.
Thinking about tragedy and how to process it was always in my mind and there was never an answer. The complexities of why and how bad things happen drive us mad, just knowing that the world we know always has to die in some way fills one with dread. No answer is sufficient.
Change is inevitable and you will either become absorbed in it or ignore it. Neither offers an impossible comfort.
My simple reflection revisiting this episode never crossed my mind in the past year but it seems obvious and natural.
“The Grown-ups” is about who you want to have by your side when the world turns upside down. Don closes his eyes to horror and Betty is given her final reason to leave him.
His world is not the same as hers, filled with tears and the truth of how horrible everything can be.
Don’s world is within his control and, after Betty says that she does not love him, the only world he has left is his office.
When the world turns upside down, Don has only his job. Peggy shows balance, busy at work but acknowledging that the world has changed. Working hard is her escape, not her running away.
I could examine this episode in great depth but after a year of reflection, I leave the analysis up to you.
Not of this episode but of yourself.
After a tragedy, who do you want to have beside you?
Who do you want to comfort and, eventually, to guide out of the fog and into the new future you both share?