Season 3: Episode 4: "The Arrangements"
Everyone dies alone?
Season 3: Episode 4
“The Arrangements”
Written by Andrew Colville & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Michael Uppendahl
Setting: June 1963
One of the strengths of Mad Men (and any great TV show) is that it can connect to your life story. Over enough episodes, there will eventually be one that feels like it understands or even came out of your life.
Good characters don’t just share their lives with the viewer, they invite the viewer to share their life in connection with them.
“The Arrangements” captures the essencse of what Season 3 is, the season where the inevitable takes place. Life is in motion in all its beauty and tragedy. It is made clear throughout this episode that Grandpa Gene won’t see the next one.
We all have death in our lives and I remember the last time I saw my grandmother. She lived in an elder care facility and after a family trip, I told her goodbye and that I really had to use the bathroom. When I returned, she was waiting for me after the rest of my family had gone.
“You know I wasn’t going to let you go without another hug.”
So I held her and said goodbye again, just me and her.
That was the last time I ever saw her and in my memory it feels so special. It was somehow as if we both knew it was the last time but that wasn’t a sad thing that lingered over us, it was a beautiful unspoken thing that I shared this moment alone with someone I dearly loved.
If that moment were in a movie or TV show, the viewers would feel that it was being made obvious that death (or at least change) was coming. Life can be so obvious and we ignore it because seeing change in motion can be uncomfortable. I am so thankful that I got to say goodbye to my grandmother, that we both did not pretend that there may be another moment to share together.
Betty avoids discussing funeral arrangements with her father who speaks bluntly about both of their lives. He even foreshadows Betty’s death as he tells her that she needs to stop smoking.
One of Don Draper’s most famous quotes is that “everyone dies alone” which serves as the justification for a selfish man to cheat, lie, and live for only himself. This does not mean he is immune to the effects of death. He chooses to live only in the present because it does not hurt him but death encourages people to live in the past where their loved ones are. He reacts so harshly to Anna Draper’s death in Season 4 not only because his best friend just died but because it shatters his view that the moment he is in is always the best one.
In Season 3, nothing is hidden. Betty has known that Don was cheating since Season One but chose to ignore it for the sake of their comfortable life. Every character’s secret has been revealed in some way, even Salvatore who Don now knows is a closeted gay man.
His poor wife Kitty also realizes the truth as she watches him expressively performing the opening number of Bye Bye Birdie in their bedroom after refusing to make love to her.
There were hints during their marriage like the dinner party where he paid more attention to Ken Consgrove than his own wife but this is the moment where she knows their marriage is doomed.
There is no mystery in “The Arrangments.” Fate is set:
Jai alai, the forgotten sport I still do not understand, will fail and that failure will rest on Sterling Cooper for taking the ripe advertising budget of this lemon.
Peggy will move to the city and find herself further disconnected from her mother who seems more focused on a dead Pope than her children.
Sal’s sexuality will be further revealed either ending his job, marriage, or both.
Betty will leave Don. A prophecy has been set in motion by her father.
A confirmation of these fates is given after Patio Cola dislikes the Bye Bye Birdie ad they specifically asked for. Peggy slyly smiles after the meeting as her warnings about why the ad will fail are confirmed.
In Season 3, the facts of life are spoken into existence and the past is dangerous. Don, above all others, sees this when Gene is showing Bobby the helmet of a soldier he killed in WWI. Gene wants his grandchildren to be raised as good Americans.
Kneel for God and stand for the flag types but not cookie cutter like their mother. His ideal American makes something of their life rather than existing only in a formula. He sees both Don and Betty as fakes and tells Sally that she can be something one day, unlike her mother.
Grandpa Gene is more lucid in this episode which is strange after he has continued to detriorate mentally but… the episode does not work if he thinks his family are 1920s bootleggers. We see him through the eyes of his loved ones like Sally who will remember the moments where he paid attention to her.
Sally is never going to forgot the love of her grandfather.
The most important character of this episode is Sally Draper. I think the writers realized what an incredible actress they had in Kiernan Shipka and began to give her more focus as the Bobby Draper actors changed during every scene.
The inevitable facts of life such as death are seen through the eyes of a child because they are the future. Sally needs comfort that her parents do not provide in its aftermath.
She retreats alone to the TV and finds only more death awaiting her as a news report shows the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self immolating in protest of the South Vietnamese government’s persecution of Buddhists. The only one there for her is horrible history in the making, she is part of a larger world of suffering and indifference.
Don Draper says that everyone dies alone but in the aftermath of her grandfather’s death, Sally Draper is the one who is alone.
