Honestly, I was just looking for a video of Dionne Warwick singing "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" Still in my Mad Men finale mourning phase, that particular tune has been in my head since last weekend's Mad Men marathon on AMC, during which my Mom, sis, and me watched not quite all but most of the 92 hours of Mad Men broadcast from 2007 to 2015.
Was that any way to spend a vacation with family? Well, yes, it was. It was quite relaxing and enjoyable, having a long overdue visit with my Mom and sister, savoring past memorable moments from the show, dissecting the characters and their motivations, and speculating about the finale and the characters' futures. Did we guess the outcome? Not really, other than to say that we thought Don Draper would survive and persevere, as would Peggy Olsen. Other than that, we didn't have a clue, which was as it should be. We ended up pleasantly surprised along with the rest of the long-time aficionados of the show.
What was also surprising was how sad we felt watching the end of series. Seeing the outcomes for each character was touching. In my mind, for the most part, each character got what they wanted, not what they felt they should have, a recurring theme in the series, the tension between desire and obligation. Peggy found love, Joan found success, Pete found his family again, Roger found fun and maturity, and Don found his true self.
What Betty Draper Francis and her daughter Sally Draper found exactly deserves a separate, fuller discussion. For another day.
At least that's my interpretation. There are a zillion others out there, so please read and determine for yourself. And that's another beauty of the ending: You are left with some ambiguity. How long will each character's happiness last? Are they doing what they want or doing what they feel they should do? And what does Don do next? Follow his bliss, his own path in life? Which may or may not include returning to New York and recommitting himself to his profession as an advertising executive and becoming more creative and successful than ever. Or it may also include being true to the values of the 1960s and 1970s and rejecting the old ways, striking out in new, countercultural ways--all while watching those same values quickly co-opted by business and pop culture all for the sake of selling Coke (the Real Thing). And possibly some coke as well.
To tell the truth, I was tired of Don's story at this point in the series. The way he tried to escape his existence through the fantasy of sexual pleasure--at first that seemed daring, dangerous, and provocative. But by the series' end, it just became predictable, boring, and even unseemly to me. I loathed the affair with Sylvia, played by Linda Cardellini, who became something of a guilty, weepy-eyed Ida Blankenship in my mind (Ida Blankenship, the "Queen of Perversions," as Roger Sterling described her). That icky relationship went on way too long and seemed to tread much of the same ground as his other affairs did. I quickly became tired of Megan Calvet, too, Don's second wife, who stayed on the scene from seasons 4 until 7, ferchrissakes, and took lots of attention away from other characters, especially Don's far more interesting first wife, Betty.
After a while, Don's sexploits seemed like something out of smutty James Bond movie--but with less diversity of partners (lots of white women, mostly brunettes, representing his mother or stepmother, no doubt). His conquests became more like compulsions--in today's parlance, Don would no doubt have a sex addiction. Rewatching the latter seasons of the series, I kept thinking of the movie Shame, being just as detached from and creeped out by Don's plight as much as I was from Michael Fassbender's character's story in the movie.
I think that's entirely the point, by the way. I just don't necessarily want to watch that on a weekly basis.
That may be down to my prudishness or my becoming bored quickly by ritual and routine in all areas of my life. However, I think I took issue with Don's issues because, perhaps, it took away from my own childhood, childlike fantasies of the '60s and '70s.
My sadness at the end of the series was as much about saying goodbye to the characters, including Don, as it was about saying goodbye, once again, to what has passed and slipped through my fingers.
How much rehashing does this require? I felt it more acutely earlier in the week, wanting to have a good cry whenever I thought about the finale or remembered songs from the era, "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" being just one of many that returned to me for a fleeting moment a simple and safe American childhood, sitting in the front bench seat of a huge Mercury or Ford, wedged comfortably between my Mom and my Dad, listening to the hits of the era on AM radio.
It's a very nostalgia trip, yes, and one not necessarily in tune with the reality of the time, which was conflicted and convulsed by issues of equality--racism, sexism, political assassinations, the Vietnam War, countercultural protests, terrorism, and so much more. While occasionally my life was touched by those issues--the Vietnam War and the fight for racial equality in particular--my life was quite idyllic in many ways. We were working class with limited exposure and opportunity, but like the Dons, Peggys, and Joans of the world, we survived and persevered.
Nonetheless, could that sadness be due to something else, something more than just mere nostalgia for times past? That was a thought that skated across my mind over last weekend, my reaction to the finale reminding me of when All My Children ended. Or as Cairo put it to me gently during a recent phone conversation, "Do you think you feel sad because you feel like you're closing one chapter of your life?"
Yes, exactly.
As always with me, there's more to the story. But given that it's Memorial Weekend in the U.S., for now, let's just conclude with a hearty "God bless America" and track the scent of this tale another day.
