Mad Men – “Chinese Wall”
“I’m not the solution to your problems. I’m another problem.”
Dude’s preaching.
I feel like every week I talk about how we’re one step closer to the inevitable downfall of Don Draper, that we are on the brink of black-hole levels of disaster, the entirety of his social and professional network sucked into the abyss left behind by his mighty supernova. I’m chasing beams of light I think I see from the not-too-distant explosion, forecasting to you, the reader, what has to be around the corner. It just has to be.
Noel covered Mad Men the week “Waldorf Stories” aired and pointed out that things that happen to Don are typically covered in plaster, the monumental errors of his ways typically forgotten, almost sit-com style, until they boil over later if they emerge at all. Last week’s episode featured a panic the level of which we’ve never seen Don suffer in the series. He was irrational and impulsive to a destructive level. But, in the end, it was all okay, his behind covered with the loss of (what turns out to be) a precious account. Though this is an obvious part of the series, I’m starting to become jaded to the fact that we might always be on the brink of Don’s collapse. He is constantly a dying star that finds new ways to slowly burn out while finding new fuels to burn off. The loss of Lucky Strike is a new catalyst for disaster, a new reason for him to make some bad decisions, to forget why he’s trying to rise from the wreckage, and to surrender to his overwhelming self-destruction.
What a weird thing to keep us watching, waiting for the catastrophic and wondrous implosion our protagonist. With the season coming to a close, you have to feel like those beams of light can’t be travelling from too far away now, that we have to see the bang soon. And God help us if it starts from Megan.
