About ten years have come and gone for the folks of Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men. The saga started in 2007 right before the Great Recession. Then as the economy began to sink, so did the values, ethics and character of the actors in this addictive fiction.
I lived on the East Coast when I began my modeling career, then later landed a middle-management job at Beckman Instruments. Having watched yesterday’s episode #708, I felt the sting of humiliation that Peggy and Joan experienced when pitching a client to McCann Erickson’s dubious account managers. Even several decades after their encounter with sexism, it was pitiful-not to mention illegal now-recalling the memories of my first corporate job. Women were gravely mistreated. I was the first woman that Beckman hired for middle management in their Atlanta office, and they certainly gave me a run for my money. (Which incidentally was much less than men were paid).) Our “bosses” didn’t drink on the job, as the Madison Avenue crowd did, but office politics and company parties consisted lots of inappropriate language and behavior, causing women to run to the ladies room in tears.
WHAT WILL DON DRAPER BE UP TO AFTER MAD MEN RETIRES HIM
Here are my top ten outcomes for Mr. Don Draper, or known before the Korean War as Richard “Dick” Whitman.
1. Don gives up the ad business, moves to California and joins Scientology.
2. Pushing aside his womanizing, he comes out the closet with Stan Rizzo, the agency’s Art Director. They move to Palm Springs and adopt a female Corgi.
3. Gets fired, becomes addicted to heroin, goes to rehab in Connecticut and joins AA.
4. Consummates his hidden affection for Peggy, who’s pregnant with Michael Ginsberg’s child. They marry and move to the Poconos, where he gets a job as the ad guy for Cove Haven, a favorite venue for honeymooners.
5. Takes the 1.5 million from the McCann Erickson buyout and opens a Taco Bell in Irvine, California.
6. Converts to Judaism and spends the next year on a kibbutz with his daughter Sally.
7. Don is diagnosed with lung cancer and takes his last breath surrounded only by his son Bobby and Roger Sterling.
8. Don is in a coma from war wounds suffered in Korea. The entire plot is a memory of what was and what could have been.
9. Don discovers that Diana, the waitress he had sex with, is his half-sister.
10. Don and Selina Meyer hook up.
As in real life, you can always count on that things will change…so who can tell what Mr. Weiner has in store for our tragic hero.
