Season 5: Episode 13 - “The Phantom”
You only live twice
Season 5: Episode 13
“The Phantom”
Written by Jonathan Igla & Matthew Weiner
Directed by Matthew Weiner
Setting: March 1967
Optimistic or pessimistic, the end of each season of Mad Men is always about the same thing.
Ghosts.
We are watching a show about ghosts who are being haunted by ghosts.
Judging by the livers of most of these characters, they likely did not make it to the early 2010s. Their time is over, but we carry the ghost of the 1960s in everyday life.
In our fashion.
In our music.
In our fear and turmoil.
The 60s will never leave us.
Mad Men is about making peace with the ghosts we see rather than fearing or seeking to join them.
Any time Don takes a pill, has a fever, or is put to sleep, there is a chance to hallucinate something insane. Season 5 ends with the phantom of his brother Adam looming over Don like a bad omen.
A man who had hung himself because of Don’s actions is now joined in this act by Lane Pryce
Lane has become one more ghost that Don can only attempt to avoid by consuming himself with work, booze, and affairs. Throughout each season, Don collects ghosts.
He has finally reached his breaking point.
This breaking point was not from Lane’s death but from Megan’s life. His beautiful, young wife had become a living ghost. Flesh and blood, but just as haunting and reminding of his failures
Using his influence to secure Megan an acting role will get her out of the apartment and into a career she loves, but it will destroy how Don views her. Don has always believed that money and influence will solve his problems. It is a painful realization that those things do not solve problems; they make them disappear, sometimes only momentarily.
A solution to a problem is different from making it disappear. We see this when Don rejects any suggestion that he should go to the dentist because that means acknowledging that there is a problem.
No one wants to admit they are sick.
Don Draper tried to live through 1966 as if he had no problems. Outside of more hallucinations, he is faithful to his wife and damn good at his job.
He can simply believe there are no problems. Pain and suffering can be ignored, but seeking any escape acknowledges that he is hurting
His beautiful, young wife has been given every comfort in the world by a faithful husband and yet she is unhappy.
A criminal coworker was given an easy way out and yet decided to end it all rather than face humiliation.
SCDP’s biggest account was not acquired by how good their pitch was, but rather through a horrific price paid by Joan. Don was the only one who insisted she not go through with the act.
While no saint, he did his best to live a good life this season. Unfortunately, even a good life has its problems. He refused to address them.
He was taught the wrong lesson, that doing good does not matter when bad will still happen. Everyone would have been better off if Don had continued to follow the better path he briefly walked.
Instead, he ends Season 5 embracing his destruction.
Nancy Sinatra’s “You Only Live Twice” serenades Don as he walks away from Megan, now beginning her acting career under her maiden name. She has begun her second life. The spoiled wife of a wealthy man who once helped him dream up advertisements is now in one.
Don, who always appreciates life in the movies more than reality, shows a genuine love for Megan as he watches her film reel.
She has become more than a dull and depressing reality to him. Onscreen, Megan is a dream given life.
That still does not make the dream real.
Don has lived many lives, and the episode’s last shot sees him slip back into the man we have always known.
He will lie and cheat because he knows he has a problem. His only way to answer that problem is through destruction rather than honesty.
There is no guilt over what he is doing to Megan because he has given her an acting career. Season 5’s consistency of awarding good behavior with tragedy has conditioned him to do the same.
Don’s life has been a tragedy and the good in it always surprised him. He was so eager to leave and forget his family in the earlier seasons because he does not carry the beautiful, lasting things in life.
He does not see Megan’s reel as the captured image of his beautiful wife, whom he will love forever.
She is a momentary pleasure immortalized inside a film canister, he can return to her at this moment and smile but not in their home, where she waits wine drunk beside a cold dinner plate.
Don is searching for perfection and never finds it because he believes that nothing can last. The only things that do last for him are painful memories.
Phantoms.
The common reading of the season’s last line “Are you alone?” is that Don has always been alone. Throughout both marriages and his entire life, Don has never truly felt as if he is a part of something.
He is a man sitting at a bar and waiting for life to happen to him.
I do not believe that this is true. Don is never alone.
Beside him sit the ghosts of everyone he has loved and lost, visions of the tragedy of time and his own actions.
He is never alone. That is why he chooses to destroy himself.
Sorry for the delay in posting, I just moved into a new home and didn’t have wi-fi last week. Next week’s Friday post will be an episode ranking list of Season 5 and then Mad World will jump right into SEASON 6!