Don Draper wants to be alone.
Episode: Shut The Door…Have a Seat
Mad Men Season Three

This is the one episode where a casual viewer of Mad Men could sit down and see every possible angle of the show. Coming in at fifty-three minutes; Don, Roger, Bert, Lane, Pete, Peggy, Betty, Joan, Henry Francis, the kids all get a shot to plead their case. Sterling Cooper is on its last legs and this is the end of Mad Men as we know it.

Don learns in the first few minutes, from Conrad Hilton (father figure), that Sterling Cooper is about to be sold to another advertising agency. Don believes that he reports to no one so he runs back to Bert Cooper with the news. Don wants to make something real, Bert reminds him of the risks involved. (I wonder if Don knows from risk? I think so Bert.) Don doesn’t care. Making the point that accountants just want to turn a dollar into a dollar ten. In these scenes, Don is ruffled, Hamm plays this perfectly, wiggling, nervous, tense, shouting out demands, begging, and appearing perturbed that no one sees his point of view. Hamm has a talent for revealing Don’s impatience with a look, a sly frown and deep unflinching gaze. Bert and Don brace Roger and Don has to beg for Roger and Lucky Strike to join them in this new agency that will become Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price or SCDP for short. Remember, Don doesn’t like Roger because Roger tried to snuggle up to Betty, and to Don a married woman is sacred. The moments of change are swift around the office. They need accounts to make SCDP fly, which means they must secure Pete. He is such a slimy scumbag, with the keen ability to make customers think they need him. When in actuality, Pete convinces customers that they will get Don Draper if they sign on the line that is dotted. No one is better at selling Don than Pete.

Don is drunk by 9:30am when he convinces the other egos in this scheme to join him, but he still needs Peggy, his creative whipping girl. Peggy knows she’s under Don’s thumb, and makes him beg. He does, but let’s be serious, it’s only to get her to come with him. If nothing else, Don is a convincing liar. When Roger and Don beg Pete, or, lets say, convince Pete to come over to the new venture, they butter him up, and make him feel that they need him. He’s such a fool, and his fool wife is in the next room smelling a kingdom of riches. Pete tries to balk at the proposal and we hear, “Peter, may I speak to you a moment?” from the other room. Trudy is so Captain Obvious. But they do convince him, well, not really, because Pete needs a job, so he goes along to get along. Peggy still wants to be convinced, and Don almost gets down on his knees to do it. Peggy wants to belittle Don, even if it’s to give him what he wants.

What is at work here is an all too simple parallel that the writers Erin Levy and Matthew Weiner rather obviously trot out from their bag of tricks. Don has flashbacks from when his father quits a farming cooperative, and then a young Don takes his first drink and watches his father get kicked to death by a horse. Weiner is using heavy symbolism (they say flashback never works in Hollywood), and it’s almost too much to deal with. The cooperative being a stand in for SCDP, it’s rather obvious, and if you twist my arm, that’s my only complaint. Don is thinking about all this when he finds his daughter asleep in the guest bed where he’s been banished by Betty, since she found out he’s she’s not really married to Don Draper. This cat got loose, and now we see Don as a regular man trying to hide something. Which is the opposite of what he wants, which is to become a man known for creating something from scratch. Hamm, again, delivers the best moment of the entire series when he braces Betty and tells her, “I gave you everything you wanted, and now I’m not good enough?” (Distilling divorce in most cases, with one line) and he goes on to call her a whore, which I would argue is a bit much (On the surface, she is and she isn’t, but in my heart, yes, she is.), since an eternally eighteen-year old Barbie Doll “virgin in spirit” can’t really be a whore. Betty is breathing heaving with Henry Francis, who basically steals this China Doll out of the Draper residence to put it in his own curio. I’ve never liked Henry, and that’s the point. He’s the safe bet, the easy way out, and now that Betty has what she wants, presto, she needs a new guy to take care of her and the kids. She does this by giving Henry her beauty, pet his ego, trap him with vice, (he wants a young hot wife, it’s really simple, but is reminded by his own mother, “Henry, you could’ve gotten that without marrying her.”), and Betty almost barters it all away by overselling her barely plausible reasons for divorce to her lawyer.

The most difficult moment of the show is when Don and Betty have to explain why Don is leaving to the kids. It’s a pounding scene, and one that will shift the children’s allegiances forever. It’s not only grueling to watch but upon repeated viewings becomes a kind of roadside abortion. Don must go, despite the good it would do to have him stay. Betty can’t have him in her life anymore, her curdled milk existence.

You can look at this show another way. Kennedy’s body isn’t even cold yet, and his death, like 9-11, changed everything in the country. We’ve never looked back to those pre or post 9-11 days without wondering what would’ve happened if that day was just any other day. What if Don doesn’t leave his key to his secrets in his bathrobe? What if Betty didn’t get curious? There has to be some kind of struggle, something bending towards tension, and this show wraps everything together so tightly. Betty says that she’s had a “hard year”. And I ask, doing what? Watching your African-American Nanny take care of your kids? Living in the house Don bought you? Spending his money that he makes in the coal mines? Betty does nothing with her life, and expects it to rain Hershey Kisses all day. Her character is grotesque, and I weep like an open wound when she arrives on screen. I was thrilled when her vanity card was shat on in season five, all that weight, sorry for your luck. You’re such a cliché. It’s not easy to watch a little girl being allowed to play in a grown-up world, where she gets to reap the benefits of adulthood but never really taking responsibility for what comes with it. She arrested at the age she married Don, and that’s painfully obvious. I’m not a Don apologist, but he is a man living his life, albeit, an adult life riddled with bad decisions. He married the wrong girl, and it would seem there are no “right” girls for Don. Oh wait, except Joan.

Professionally Don wants to be left alone to make his name and he knows that he needs to get paid to achieve that. Freedom does cost something, and Don doesn’t live cheaply. It’s almost enough for him to work his sincere magic on people, making them think that he needs them. At least it’s enough Don, or it’s what makes him happy, but not really, really happy. Remember when he got a check for five grand as a signing bonus? “Now I know what makes Don Draper smile,” said Roger.

In this episode Roger says something very interesting, that Don doesn’t value relationships, and that certainly is true. He doesn’t care about anyone, especially himself. Don just wants to be left alone. The funny thing about this series is that Weiner never lets that happen. That is the tension, Don trying to find peace and quiet, while dealing with all the office bullshit and being a single father. This episode is the turning point to the entire series and is the apocalypse that the future of Mad Men will rise from.