
"Well, one day you're there, and then all of a sudden, there's less of you, and you wonder where that part went, if it's living somewhere outside of you, and you keep thinking maybe you'll get it back, and then you realize it's just gone." -Peggy
As the wondrous second season of "Mad Men" comes to an end, it's October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis is underway, and as far as the men and women in the orbit of Sterling Cooper know, the world could be coming to an end at any moment. And that sense of impending doom shocks all of our major characters out of their comfort zones, forcing them to do or say things they might never have considered if there wasn't a chance that bombs could start dropping. And in their words and deeds, they acknowledge that they've had to leave a part of themselves behind -- sometimes a very large part -- to become the person they are right here, right now, waiting and wondering about the nukes.

What an amazing scene, so expertly-played by Elisabeth Moss and Vincent Kartheiser. I've given them both a hard time in the past -- Moss for sometimes (mostly last year) being a little too inscrutable even by "Mad Men" standards, Kartheiser for trying too hard to seem like a man of 1962 (though, as I said in my "Flight 1" review, that approach really fits the way Pete's been written as an artificial human). But both were note-perfect here.

As for Elisabeth Moss... wow. Maybe Peggy was in denial at the moment she gave birth, maybe even in the weeks to come, but what she makes clear in that speech is that the Peggy of 1962 knows exactly who she is, and what she did to get there. She has no illusions about abandoning that baby, but also no regrets. And what's amazing about Moss in that scene is watching Peggy's mood change as she delivers the news to Pete. At first, she's simply trying to shut down Pete's advances once and for all -- and to unburden herself from the secret -- but as she talks, and especially as she sees the hurt and confusion on Pete's face, she begins to realize what a cruel thing she's just done. Pete didn't need to know -- Peggy is now assured enough personally and professionally that she could have fended off his passes forever and a day -- and though she feels much better for telling the truth, she realizes that some secrets are better off being kept.
In our post-season post-mortem interview, Matthew Weiner said that Peggy isn't literally referring to the baby in the quote at the top of this review. Peggy, as Don's protege, had to give up more than the baby to become the independent career woman she is at the end of this season. She had to give up her innocence, and some of her compassion, and many of the other qualities that defined her when we met her back in the pilot. In most ways, Peggy's station in life has been vastly improved. But just as we saw how at peace Don was as Dick Whitman during his trip to San Pedro last week, and how much he had to sacrifice along the way to his Coupe de Ville, in that speech Peggy is recognizing the cost of her own success.

It was another tour de force by Jon Hamm (I don't know that I'll ever get tired of watching the moment, screencapped at the top of this post, where Don finds out that Betty's pregnant and so many emotions wash over his face) in a season where he somehow topped the brilliant work he did last year.

I don't know what a pie chart of Betty's reasons would look like -- 50 percent baby, 30 percent Don's apologies, 20 percent anonymous sex in a bar manager's office? -- but whatever the proportions were, the Drapers are back together. Where last season ended with Don finally wanting to do right by Betty, it didn't take (Weiner expands on exactly what went down in the interview), because he hadn't examined himself as thoroughly as he did this year, and because Betty hadn't openly confronted him about his cheating. Last year ended with Don alone; this one ended with Don holding his wife's hand. If Weiner's right that Betty went through adolescence this year and came out the other side a grown-up, then maybe we come back in season three to find a relatively healthy, much more mature Draper marriage.


Whoever is in charge of the newly-merged Sterling Cooper when the show returns -- and would Don even want that job if offered? -- we're in a very interesting place going into next season, whenever it will be set. (The most Weiner would commit to is that he doesn't want to deal directly with the JFK assassination, but then he also said he might have it take place during that season, just as in the background as possible.) Don is back with Betty and committed to making a more sincere go of it than last time. Duck is likely gone, Pete may yet get the head of accounts job, Sterling Cooper is now part of a larger machine and can work on a bigger stage, and no matter when season three takes place, we'll be heading deeper and deeper into the period that we actually think of as the '60s, rather than the chronological decade.
I can't wait. Can you?
Some other thoughts on "Meditations in an Emergency":

� One nice thing they can do with the period setting is to show Don returning to Betty with hat literally in hand.

� In the Weiner interview, we talk about how frequently we see characters lie about things where we got to see what really went down. Tonight, it was Roger trying to play to Don like he didn't want to do the merger and had to be talked into it by the Cooper siblings.

� It's amazing how much I've grown to hate Harry this year, after he was arguably the most likable of the chipmunks last year. Where the other guys are cruder and far more abrasive around women, they at least seem good at their jobs, which is the real mark of status on "Mad Men," and they're at least somewhat politically aware. Harry just has his head in the sand, not caring about anything but what directly affects his fiefdom; the Cuban Missile Crisis only annoys him because it means "The Lucy Show" won't air in pattern. Perhaps the best (and funniest) example of his myopia: his panic at seeing that there are canapes ("Good ones!") in the office fridge for the meeting with P,P&L.
� Apropos of nothing, my daughter loves the "Dwayne the bathtub" knock knock joke that Sally tells to Don. As my daughter's five, I'm wondering how long I have to wait before I can show this episode to her, and whether she'll remember her love of the joke by then.

� Betty's moment alone in the Draper kitchen, munching on a chicken leg, worked as a nice bookend to Don alone and swigging milk back in "Maidenform." The key difference is that Betty actually had sex, where Don's alone with the milk bottle because Bobbie was busy and he doesn't have anything better to do.
Finally, as we come to the end of another season of "Mad Men," I want to thank you all for both the quantity and quality of your comments each week. I thought that nothing would top the interest and level of discourse that I got for my "Sopranos" posts, and then for my "Wire" reviews, and yet you people have been bringing it, week after week, to analyze every small point in the Sterling Cooper universe. It's been a pleasure to read so much articulate, enthusiastic fan response; this kind of the show is the reason I do this blog.
When you have an hour or so to set aside (and that's only a slight exaggeration), I highly recommend reading the Matt Weiner interview. Even in the course of a 90-minute interview, we couldn't touch on every detail of the season (I would have loved to get some of his thoughts on Salvatore's marriage and his reaction to Kurt's coming out party), but we go through a whole lot in there, including Weiner (who isn't currently under contract) expressing his desire to stick with the series for a very long time.
What did everybody else think?
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