Mad Men, “Tomorrowland”: maybe it’ll be an adventure

Quick Take: Mad Men, “Tomorrowland”
“I feel like myself when I’m with you, but the way I always wanted to feel.” – Don to Megan

Review: Mad Men, “Tomorrowland”
(S0413) In an episode capping off the fourth season of Mad Men that had so much going on (as ever), that defied expectations wholly (again, as ever, check), and that sets us up for strange new uplands to contemplate through the long and lonely offseason, it’s fascinating to take a step back and look at how many characters – both old and new – were packed into the hour (and rather seamlessly, I might add, under show creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner’s direction).

We saw some sort of update or movement in the life and times of no less than: Joan and Greg Harris, Ken Cosgrove, Dr. Faye Miller, Peggy Olson, Betty and Henry Francis, Sally and Glen, Stephanie, and (poor) Carla. We also see a healthy smattering of Harry, Pete, Lane, and Roger, though their respective storylines have already been more or less tidied up for the season. Also entirely noteworthy: after rampant speculation about from which quarter Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s “savior” would come from (with the episode title, “Tomorrowland,” leading many to consider whether Walt Disney himself or some of his minions might make an appearance) the episode was much more about Don’s personal life than the life and future of SCDP.

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So let’s start with Don Draper (Jon Hamm), formerly Dick Whitman, or someone who is called Dick as a nickname sometimes, as he tells his children in Anna Draper’s house in California. It seems like the episode transitions sharply – and purposefully so – from regular season mode to season finale mode (playoffs mode?) around the time Don visits Megan’s (Jessica Pare) hotel room in Los Angeles.

To set things up, Don is forced to scramble to get a caretaker for the kids, whom he has planned to bring with him on a trip to California (in “The Good News,” Don had mused to Anna about bringing the kids out to meet her, but now he is making arrangements for the sale of the house). Betty (January Jones), in all her infantile and dysfunctional wisdom, has fired Carla (Deborah Lacey), the kids’ mother-in-practice, in yet another benign incident involving Glen Bishop (Marten Holden Weiner, one of the Weinder brood, and someone I hope we’ll see find a way back into the show and Sally’s life in future seasons) that Betty turns unnecessarily disruptive.

I believe that Don has relatively benign intentions himself when he asks Megan to accompany him on the trip. He is well known as a man who compartmentalizes his problems (and, perhaps, his joys as well). Megan has proved to be good with the kids in the past and is available – she works for him after all – so, problem solved from this shortsighted and selfish perspective. The fact that he has slept with this woman already and happens to have a girlfriend in Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono) doesn’t come into the picture for him until later.

Fast forward to Don and Megan in the latter’s hotel room, followed very quickly by the unsettling cut to the couple back at Don’s apartment on Waverly. The transition has a doubly jolting effect as we’re just getting used to the idea that these two are having an official fling, and we are forced to scramble to figure out what’s going on. It’s not an accident that we had similarly shocking transitions earlier this season when Don was going through his worst binges with alcohol (remember when he woke up in bed with that waitress during a bender?).

The effect here though is unnervingly cheerful. I kept half-expecting during several subsequent scenes for either Don or Megan to awake from a dream, exposing Don’s marriage proposal as some fantasy.

But it’s no fantasy, it’s real. Well, it is a fantasy, of course. And that’s the point. This is Don Draper/Dick Whitman conjuring up a new and fresh storyline (campaign?) for himself. For Don, he has always felt the most comfortable when able to slip under the cover of some new false identity, some new pitch, some new front to step into.

It’s jarring to see Don so needy (Dick-like?) with Megan in her hotel room, telling her that he needs to know if he can knock on her door, so to speak, in the future. This is a man fighting against a dream, wanting it go on forever, but perhaps knowing that it will end, as all dreams do. It’s then again flooring to see him tell Megan that he loves her (have we ever heard Don say that to anyone in four seasons, including Betty?), followed by the proposal.

Faye is perfect for Don in so many ways – she’s smart, strong, independent, mature (much closer in age than Megan at any rate), and perhaps most interestingly, knows a pretty good chunk about Don’s past and has decided to love him and stand by his side nonetheless. But she’s too close for comfort for Don, who would much rather “go undercover” yet again with a woman he barely knows and, more importantly, scarcely knows him.

That’s to say nothing against the Megan that we’ve been shown thus far. She is bright and warm and wonderful with the kids and a very real breath of fresh air (and a French Canadian fresh air at that that, n'est-ce pas?). But she’s young and is Don’s employee and barely knows him (very similar in fact to Roger and Jane at the time of their engagement, though arguably that couple knew each other better than Don and Megan do circa Labor Day, 1965!). It tells us everything we need to know in fact that after she agrees to marry him, Megan asks Don if it’s okay that she use his phone at the apartment to call her parents.

The rest of the episode plays out in this nearly dreamlike fugue (including Betty asking as warmly toward Don as we’ve seen since their Rome getaway in Season Three). I find this choice to be odd and lovely and ironic and elegant for a few reasons. The dream, no doubt, will become real and we will see the aftermath of the Don/Megan relationship run into similar teeth that Roger/Jane had to deal with, though no doubt with a Draper twist (he is an Old Fashioned man, after all).

Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), lords love his pragmatism in the face of Betty’s immaturity, spells out the theme of the episode and the series in some ways when he tells her, “There is no fresh start” (and never mind that the forever entitled Betty has demanded that she is “entitled to one”). But so many characters are trying to defy that maxim, in some cases over and over again (like all of us in the real world?). Stephanie (Caity Lotz) has dropped out of school, Betty has dropped Carla (and Glen) and the old house, Joan has dropped Roger (but not his baby), and so on.

Perhaps Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) – literally caned for attempting to strike out for his attempt at a fresh start in a new country and a new agency and with a “chocolate bunny” to boot – is the best and most depressing reminder of all that our past clings to us, no matter how hard we may want to pretend otherwise.   

More thoughts on “Tomorrowland”:

Video: Mad Men, “Tomorrowland”
Head inside the episode, from AMC:

From Around the Web: Mad Men, “Tomorrowland”