Ted Chaough, on the hot seat (courtesy AMCtv)
This week's episode is mostly about the characters who know who they are, and those who aren't as self-aware.
Dick Whitman, of course, really is a monster: a serial adulterer, cold husband, and lousy father who works out his grudges in the workplace without regard to their implications for SC&P's fortunes and credibility. He is never "just looking out for the agency"; he is never looking out for the agency, period, except insofar as it affects him. He just doesn't like it when others (especially Peggy) notice it. He is not really Don Draper; he stole Don's identity in Korea and never looked back, pushing his brother to suicide in the process. Tim Goodman:
When a person takes stock of their life, something Don has never wanted to do but something Mad Men has been pushing for through its entire six seasons, the truth can be devastating and/or depressing. What’s left for Don to lose? He lost his identity, he lost his brother Adam, plus Anna Draper who protected his secret and truly loved him as a person (was that the last time Don was truly happy?); he lost first wife Betty and probably second wife Megan by next week, daughter Sally, colleague Ted and the one person he took pride in mentoring, Peggy. Hell, if Mad Men had ever developed Don’s sons as viable characters then he could have suffered their loss as well. And no doubt I’m forgetting someone (while purposefully leaving out all of his sexual conquests, even the ones that mattered more than just as sexual conquests – Midge, Rachel, Faye).
So, now what? Well, that’s the greatest part of finally coming to the end of this season and having the last fragments of everything Don loves get lost to him: He needs to do something else than just be Don. He can no longer exist as we’ve come to know him.
Bob Benson knows who he is, too, and in many ways he is another Don Draper, charming as hell, eager to please and good at it, but lying about his origins, ready to run at a moment's notice.
Pete Campbell thinks he knows who he is, too: someone who learned enough from his efforts to expose Don as Dick to try something different with Bob Benson, to make the identity thief an indebted ally rather than an enemy. Pete knows that this world is not the white-shoe world in which he was raised, and opportunism matters more than merit. “I don’t know how people like you do it," he tells Bob. "You’re certainly better at it than I am at whatever I do. But I would like to think that I have learned not to tangle with your kind of animal."
Teddy Chaough, on the other hand, does not realize who he is. He doesn't see how everyone else sees him pining for Peggy's affection and losing his business judgment in the process; he wants his protégé to win the Clio, hop into bed with him, etc. Instead, he loses half the budget for the St. Joseph's ad, his client's trust, and the ability to claim Peggy wrote the ad when it comes to Clio time, as Matt Zoller Seitz recognizes. He is a Robb Stark in an agency of Lannisters, a D'Angelo Barksdale who thinks Stringer Bell is looking out for him.
And then there's Sally Draper, who knows enough about herself to want to get the hell out of New York and away from her parents, but maybe not so much insofar as she didn't realize how much she'd enjoy seeing Glen Bishop (!) beating up Rolo for an aggressive attempt at necking-and-beyond. She handled herself with her mother's steely confidence, thank goodness.
So go ahead, and let's watch a Nixon ad:
Oh, yeah: and Ken Cosgrove got cheneyed in the eye! And welcome back, Pete's rifle, the Chekhov's gun we're still waiting on. Next week is the season finale.